"Just Enough" Teething Necklace

I love clothes.  But I love accessories even more.  Most people might be sickened by my collection of scarves, belts, shoes, headbands, broaches, earrings, watches, rings, bracelets.... My primary accessory weakness is necklaces.  I have a massive jewelry chest full to the brim with necklaces.  I can't emphasize how much a love them.

And... Little J loves them too.  He enjoys playing with the chains and beads while he has his bottle, but the second that bottle pops out of his mouth, the pearls pop in.  He desperately wants to gnaw on my jewelry.  Especially these:

 

I love browsing etsy.com for handmade baby items and I stumbled upon a wonderful idea... Teething Necklaces!  They are designed to serve the exact purpose that I was hoping for: Interesting for the babe to look at AND safe for him to chew on!

I would love to shell out a bunch of money to buy something fancy that somebody else hand made, but I'd usually rather try my hand at making the same thing myself.  The problem with this project is that these necklaces.....

this one is from this etsy shop

are SUPER DUPER FANCY.  Waaaaaaaay beyond my crocheting expertise, and I don't have a whole lot of time for practicing this art.  I do, however, have a stash of natural (unfinished) wooden beads and a ton of yarn.  So that's where I started.

This was extremely simple to assemble.  I literally just snipped a length of yarn that would fit over my head and strung the beads on (using a crochet hook since I couldn't locate my yarn needle).  I tied really humongous knots on either side of the row of beads, so they can't slip off and be accidentally swallowed.

Once I adorned my neck with this bad boy, Little J's eyes lit up.

He reached out from Jared's arms and stuck the beads directly into his toothless mouth.  Perfect!

I hope to someday hone my crocheting skills and create something much prettier (like this), but until then we will settle for simplicity.  Like so many things in life, sometimes the bare essentials really are just enough.