This pattern is in the Hiawatha Book Beaded Bags and Chains from http://www.etsy.com/shop/RumbleSeatCat

This is the 1924 edition.

I believe this is the first project that I didn’t start a Ravelry page for the day I started!

A few notes--there are mistakes in the pattern. For the pattern to come out evenly, you need to cast on 60 stitches.

The middle diamond shape (halfway through where you fold the bag) only increases to 7, not 8, slided beads. To fix this, instead of reversing the pattern for the second side of the bag, I just started at row one again. This bag doesn’t flip like others in the book, so that was fine.

They left off a knit 2 plain in the rows. As written, you’d slide beads right next to the bead 3.

Here’s how it should read:

K2 (K2, B3, K2, slide pattern 1, K2, B3, K2, slide pattern 2) repeat to end of row, K2, to end with K4 (that is, omit the last slide pattern 2)

You’ll have four of slide pattern one, and three of slide pattern two.

It also fails to mention that you don’t do the bead 3 on the wrong side. Other patterns in the book mention that, but this pattern only says “K the balance of the ridge in the same manner.” I took this to mean that both sides were done the same. Not so! The bead 3 was very crowded. You do slide beads on each side, but just do the normal beading on the right side.

Fortunately I discovered this in the part that would be covered with fringe and didn’t have to start over! (Again, as the first time the beads I chose didn’t work--they were too clear)

Sliding beads is easy and fun. You just put whatever number of beads between each stitch. It magically grows, so yes, you can slide 8 between two stitches. I love it!

And I found this out the hard way--your knitting has to be larger than your frame, not match it. Yikes. So instead of a frame, I looked through the book for another idea, and I’m going to put two straps and a bangle on it. This will be obvious in the pictures. My strap pattern is as follows:

Cast on 8.

K 3, slide 1, knit 1, slide 1, knit 1, slide 1 knit 3.

And this is only important on the set up row, but one mistake I made at first was to forget to count the stitch after the slide, so instead of knitting two, I was knitting three.

I’ve also decided to leave out the side fringe since I want the knitting to stand out more, and to have a somewhat looser bag.