Red beads contrast against the white rayon lasting cord to make an interesting and distinctive diamond or lozenge pattern. The beads must be selected very carefully because the over-all size must fit the space they fill in the pattern and they must have holes large enough to take two strands of the knotting material.
Each diamond is a pattern unit, and it is knotted from eight doubled cords or sixteen ends. The directions cover one unit and the transition from one unit to the next, both horizontally and vertically. In the knotted piece that was photographed, the cords were mounted with Reversed Double Half Hitches and a row of Horizontal Double Half Hitches were tied immediately below the mounting knots. The mounted cords were then counted off in groups of sixteen ends. No pattern was knotted in the centers of the diamonds in the first row, so the pattern in that row is a series of chevrons.
Back in the before times one thing we did a fair amount of was camping. The best part of camping was always the campfire. Getting the fire lit though could be a problem- hence the need for fire starters. I could always buy fire starters but we always have dryer lint, have a back stock of candles from dead Nancy & we usually buy eggs in cardboard cartons. In my area (the 716) I can find eggs in cardboard cartons at Aldi, Lexington Co-op & and Whole Foods. (Just a reminder that if you have Amazon Prime you can often get further discounts at Whole Foods. Try it for a 30-Day Free Trial).
If for whatever reason you don’t have candles you can always find some at Dollar Tree or buy Gulf Wax via Amazon.
It is important that when you melt the wax you do it in a double boiler. You could buy a new double boiler (but seriously, don’t buy a new one just for wax melting) or you could jerry-rig what I did- which was use an old pot and a coffee pot I snagged at a thrift store. Be aware that once you use the pots for wax melting to *not* use them for food.
Back in March/ April (before it hit 94º in July, in the 716) I was up in the attic doing some purging of stuff (mainly #deadnancystuff). I found an envelope of these pretties. I don’t know if they came like this, were part of cards that someone (#deadBeatrice maybe) cut off of vintage cards? I figured hey why not scan them and hopefully my dear readers can find uses for these pretties. (and I would love to see photos of your creations).
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