The tall twisty bits are actually just giant herringbone stitches. Pick up an EVEN number of beads, we usually used 50, but it can be any number. One very helpful hint – to make things easier, make the two center beads easily identifiable. If you are using 50 total, that would be beads 25 and 26. We usually made them the same color, with 3 or 4 beads of another color on each side.
This is the first two “stacks” of our twisty section. You sew them exactly the same way you do the regular rows, they’re just very tall. See the flat blue-green beads between the yellowish ones in the middle of the loop at the bottom of the picture? That’s our center marker beads. (NOTE! on the other two loops shown below, we used the yellow ones as markers. Not really on purpose, but because I forgot what I had started in the heat of the photographic moment.)
Here we have finished all three stacks, and have done our step up row, just like we do at the end of all herringbone rows. Notice that we’re coming out the top of one of our center-of-the-stack marker beads. Pick up two more beads and go down through the other marker bead on the stack, just like a normal herringbone stitch.
Twist the stack you are working on (where your thread is coming out) two or three times, then twist the NEXT stack the same number of times in the same direction. Be careful to watch where everything is going, and keep them twisted. (It’s PERFECTLY legit to tape the suckers together in the correct positions if you feel the need or if they’re fighting it.) The picture above shows your needle going into the top of that next stack, ready to add two beads and go back down the next beed.
And this is where it gets even more fiddly. We’ve finished adding the two beads (next herringbone stitch) to the second loop, and we need to twist that third loop the same number of times and direction as the other two. Then we go up through the marker bead in the third loop, add two beads, and back down through the other marker bead.
Work your step-up by going through the top two beads in the top of the first stack (marker and one on top) and you have completed your first twisty!
Don’t worry if one stack is twisted more or less than the others, it won’t be noticeable. The important thing is that the herringbone tube after this returns to normal.
If you want to reinforce the twists, work another pass of thread through them while you’re weaving in your ends. Doing it now might make you crazy.