I’m trying to make this as close to the original as possible. Of course, I used gold beads on the blue and silver on the white when it clearly calls for silver on the blue and gold on the white! No real matter though :)

Since this uses so many beads, I was happy with a modern substitute. Someday I’ll knit with vintage cut steel beads, but not when I need almost 6000 for the ends alone--I didn’t calculate the middle.

I am making some changes to the pattern. Since I’ve done a bag with loops of beads before, I didn’t expect this to be difficult to knit. However, the YO combined with the drop of beads was driving me crazy. On the first try, it was too loose so I took it out. I pulled the YOs as tightly as possible on the second try, and then very badly dropped a stitch. I decided then that I wanted to enjoy knitting this, and decided to add a purl after each drop of beads. Since there were 12 drops, I added 12 stitches. I also added two stitches for an edge. I didn’t want to start with a YO (same as the other purse on Ravelry)

The pattern now goes like this:

Cast on 62

Odd rows: p (yo, p2tog, slide 14 beads, p) yo, p2tog, yo p2tog, p

Each odd row, slide one fewer bead until you have two.

Even rows p (YO, p2tog, YO, p2tog, p)

Basically, the p2tog should have the previous row’s p2tog first and the YO second. Then purl the purl.

The center:

Odd rows: p (YO, p2tog, slide two beads, p) p,p

Even rows: p3 (YO, p2tog, p)

Those start with a p3 because it ended with a purl for the beads and two stitches leftover, so I just purled them all.

I noticed when I was about halfway through that the white stripe doesn’t have the YO p2tog at the beginning, so the loops are meant to be staggered. Funny thing, before noticing that, one of my favorite things was how the loops overlapped, so I don’t really mind my oversight :)