I'm a big fan of lanyards on my smaller knives. And if you're looking for a good looking metal lanyard bead, I'd recommend ArielSalaverris here on BF, he makes a variety of great lanyard beads - I have one of his regular oval 1010/1070 damascus beads on my Satin/Tigerhide Game Warden, a geometric trapazoid 1010/1070 damascus bead on my Satin/Black Paper SAR-3, a heat-colored oval 1010/1070 damascus bead on my Culti, and his brass/copper mokume beads on my Satin/Green Linen and Satin/Snakeskin LE GWs. I believe he also does lanyard beads out of micarta and out of staghorn. The loop in the tapered leather strip is just big enough to slip in my little finger when drawing the blade from its leather sheath, and allows me release the knife from my hand when I need to catch or grab something or to climb without dropping or losing the knife, just a quick flip of the wrist and the handle returns to my hand again.
Sorry for all the words, but without any available pictures I had to get descriptive.