So, my sweetie, who knows me well, was watching the World Baseball Classic and notices that many of the Korean baseball players are wearing string necklaces, some of which look braided (see left). Are they braided? Are they fabric tubes? Are they something else? Why are the players wearing them? Are Korean men in general wearing them these days? Are Koreans in general wearing them? Is it some sort of modernized tradition (pretty sure they didn’t have those plastic clasps until recently, relatively speaking)?
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=29&sid=143036
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/mPK_j5RnIMi/World+Baseball+Classic+Tokyo+Day+5/LMyQh3wd2vu/Kim+Hyun+Soo
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/mPK_j5RnIMi/World+Baseball+Classic+Tokyo+Day+5/yhuOntPINrp/Lim+Chang-yong

I started by binding the tassel neck with a thin black cord. Then after I finished the black version with a beaded tassel neck I decided that the grey version needed more “bling”. To contrast with the randomly beaded neck, plus because I had already put an orderly black whipping on the grey tassel neck, I decided an orderly, lightly beaded design was the way to go. Starting with a round of beads (3 black, 1 silver) around the top and bottom of the existing whipping, I also added a smattering of silver beads to the whipping itself.

The black beads were too small, the clear beads were too big, but I think the iridescent blue beads were just right. Having finished the grey with black, I thought there’s no reason I can’t use different beads on each side. The visual crossover is quite minimal. That said, when it was time to bead the neck of the tassel, I wanted to use both bead colours. I like random, so I would stab the needle into either bead colour to pick up a selection of beads and then pick a random direction to sew it down. If beads wanted to sit funny or bulge, I would go back and tack them down to the tassel bundle which also helped to reinforce the binding effect of the randomly beaded neck.

The “back” side (see right) is the first side I worked on. I think the bead placement is sometimes sub-optimal. On the “front” side (see left), I made sure to sew the beads higher up on the cords so that they couldn’t roll under and hide. I also pulled the cords very tight which ended up covering more of the centre bead with cord, after all that time I spent looking for a knot with a nice big centre hole to showcase the beads.

Even so, I’m pleased with the results (it’s certainly a successful proof of concept work). Now it just needs a tassel and it’s done.

Having finished the grey knot off with little black beads I knew I wanted bigger beads (if the package had sizes I would tell you what they are, but there’s no label and I can’t really guess). I started with the clear and they’re actually a smidge on the large side. They work nicely with the knot itself giving a kind of dew drop effect, but they crowd the middle, overly obscuring the middle stone.