To make these bags you want, as I say, one ball of brown silk, and one bunch of tiny yellow beads, and a pair of fine knitting-needles especially made for this work, and which are about as thick as a hat-pin.
To begin with, thread a needle (a bead needle or darner is best) with the end of your ball of silk, then pull out one little strand of beads and run the needle, darning fashion, into the thread on which the beads themselves are strung. Pull your silk out of the needle, leaving a tiny piece over where the silk and cotton are entwined. Slip the beads along, and you will find they go easily over the joined silk, and so pass, as it were, en masse on to the knitting silk.
According to the size of the purse or bag, whichever you desire to make, so cast on sufficient stitches for one side only, the bag being knitted quite flat, and sewn up the sides when finished.
Having cast on your stitches, knit one row plain and then one row in this manner—
Slip your needle into a stitch; push up a bead; knit the stitch, and so on to the end of the line.
Next row knit plain silk with no beads, as the beads are only wanted one side.
If you do this for about eight inches, for a small bag, and then halve it and sew it up, you can then mount it on a piece of brown silk to make it deeper.
Personally, I think they look much prettier when knitted on four needles; and a very pretty purse I made I knitted first of all to a depth of three inches in plain silk, and then four inches with the beads.
As I came to the bottom I narrowed off as for the toe of a sock, finishing to a point. This point I finished with a tassel of brown and yellow beads which matched the bag itself. With a crochet-hook, I made a tiny edge at the head of the bag, through which I passed a draw string of silk in ordinary chain-stitch, finished at each end with a tiny tassel.
