When the ever-inspirational Diane at Crafty Pod posted about making a washer & yarn pendant I was totally excited.  I already had a ton of washers in my craft supply stash because I used them as bases to weight my owl and bad egg stuffies.

Instead of wrapping the washer, I crocheted around it.  I could have made more stitches more to cover the sides of the washer, but I like the metal peeking out between the crochet cotton.

After the first row around the washer, I crocheted a row of [single crochet, chain one] in the top of the first row.  After I was done, I added the beads.

In the picture above, it is attached to a spool knit rope, which would work for a choker or longer necklace.  The washer's weight makes the crocheted washer a perfect pendant.  I think it would also work great as a large button, brooch, or (heavy) barrette.

Someday I'm going to make a trek over to the hardware store and search for other things I could crochet or sew around.  I bet there are a million-and-one awesome projects hiding in there!

*** Start Edit *** I put the beads on before I did the spool knitting ... as inspired by this post by Diane of Crafty Pod.  My beads have way-huge holes, so I used a needle to thread them  *** End Edit ***

Here is my spool knitter with just four, closely arranged nails.  This produces a tightly woven tube that, as Andrew noticed, closely resembles a shoelace. In the piece above, I placed a bead in every third "stitch."

I'm using size 3 crochet cotton in black and red glass beads that are painted silver on the inside.  The beads seem to glow, like little red LED lights.

For this piece, I put a bead in every other "stitch."  As you can probably see, the fabric of a spool knit tube kind of twists around subtly.

I'm going to make the top one into a bracelet ... once I get a clasp. :)

If you are interested in more about spool knitting, definitely check out this great blog by Marian, Spool Knitter.  She has all kinds of great info and vintage spool knitters.