more wire votives

I somehow wound up in the craft store last night and couldn't resist trying the wire votive candle holders again, with a few changes. I finished one during several intermittent moments of free time while I was at work today. Here is my votive candle holder, enjoying some Power-flavored Vitamin water at my desk.

This time I used 26 gauge wire, which was much better than knitting with 24 gauge. It took less than 24 yards of wire to make 2 votive holders. I used about 150 beads for each votive, and for this set I tried using several different sizes of beads. I like the look better, but stringing them is a little more time consuming for me because I have issues and I had to make sure that the beads would be perfectly random. (That oxymoron makes complete sense to some of you and you KNOW it.) To seam the ends together, I just did some kind of makeshift seam with the tail of the wire. Nothing fancy. It's not going anywhere, anyway. I thought I might get the willies from knitting the wire on metal needles, but it was fine. And the needles were unaffected by the wire. No scratches or anything.

Knitting with wire is a bit hurty on the hands, but not too, too bad. Although it did mangle my fingernails a little. I can see myself knitting a couple sets of these as Christmas gifts, but only because each votive is so small. You know when you start that the end is in sight! And they only take an hour (for Kelly) or so (for me). As with the first votive sleeves I made, I was skeptical about how it looked until the very end. I think you have to mentally prepare for the thing to be a bit on the unattractive side until all's said and done. I'm actually starting to like knitting these little guys. I don't love it, but it's nice to have a quick and mindless project to pick up every now and then. And they're cute! Ok, just a couple more votives and then it's straight back to working on dad's sweater!