Play.Knit.Create.
Betsy Hershberg
HAND KNIT FIBER
JEWELRY WITH BEADS
The beads are knit in, not sewn on. Every bead goes into the fabric as I make it, on needles, one stitch at a time.
SECOND IMPRESSIONS
Fringeworthy
Myra
Matrix
Mirror Mirror
Juried into shows at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian and the Society of Arts and Crafts. Represented by Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia. Author of Betsy Beads, more than 15,000 copies sold.
PIECE OF THE MONTH
Twilight
GO BIG
A wide rectangle of bead-knit stockinette, every bead on the purl side. And what does stockinette want to do? Curl.
Closing the tube was the hard part. I lost count of my attempts, but I am stubborn, and what came out of it is a graft where the beads from the cast-on and bound-off rows are drawn together by the grafting stitches, like the teeth of a zipper. I call it the Zipper Graft, and I have used it in four designs since.
THE GRAFT,
CLOSE UP
ABOUT
I came to this at fifty-two, after five other careers and no art school.
Betsy Hershberg
Actress and singer, scuba instructor,
health care consultant, voiceover work,
and full-time mother of two - still my
favorite job. Knitting was there the whole
time. Beads arrived in 2002.
I am strongly left-brained, which is not what
most people expect. Every design starts as
one small swatch, and I change one thing at a
time until it is worth making.
Now.New.Next
WRITING HERE SINCE
2012
LATEST ENTRY
July 2026
“How DID you make that?”
I get asked that a lot. I have been writing the answers down for fourteen years — how a piece came together, and the ones that hit a wall first.
Confessions of a Left-brained Knitter
Five technique sections and seven essays, more than 15,000 copies sold. The print run is finished, but the PDF is available here.
Talk to me!
Questions about how something was made, a piece you have seen somewhere, materials, the book, an exhibition invitation, a commission - all of it reaches me at the same place, and I answer all of it myself.
