BEADED PONYTAILER

My mother had these really neat beaded ponytailers in her hair thingy stash when we were growing up. They were just little wooden beads threaded onto hat elastic, but they looked great. I could never work out how she'd made them either - there didn't seem to be a beginning or an end.

Today while threading beads onto hat elastic with Miss 6 & Miss 4 [we make bracelets and necklaces on hat elastic], I cut a length too short & Miss 4's bracelet ended up looking like it belonged on Miss 0. In an attempt to avoid the inevitable tears I said "Look, you've made a beautiful beaded hair elastic". That got me remembering Mum's hair thingys.

I've spent the last hour & a half playing with the beads & elastic [once all children were in bed] & after about 30 years wondering tonight I worked out how to do it.

Here's my first attempt:

Here it is on my finger [imagine my finger is a ponytail]:

And here is a larger one I haven't joined up yet:

It's actually simple threading, once you get started. Each bead needs the elastic threaded through it twice. I'd suggest using a single colour bead first, to get the hang of it, before trying a stripy one like my black & red - I pulled it apart a number of times before I got the stripes right!