3/26/2002

After reading about and seeing some cool needles out there, I thought, "Hey, I could make some needles..." I figured I'd use dowels sanded down and some beads on the end. Then, serendipitously I went to the library and stumbled across Kids Knitting by Melanie Falick (Artisan Press, 1998). In it, she describes much the same process that not martha links to. It's so easy! Done in under an hour. I'm going to do this as a project with my knitting group this week.

First you chop the dowels to size -- I made them about 12" as the dowels were 3 feet long. I bought two sizes of dowels -- some approximately 5mm (size 8's) and some about 6mm (size 10's). Then sharpen them in the pencil sharpener until they're like dull pencils. After that, a bit of sanding with fine grit sandpaper.

To make the tops, I made little beads with fimo. (I was having such fun with the fimo, that I ended up making some buttons too. I'll get them up here eventually.) I gently poked the sticks into the beads and baked them for 20 minutes or so. After the baking, I let them cool a bit, slipped the beads off and applied some lemon oil to the needles. Then I superglued the beads on. Voila! I think I'll try to make some little heads for my next set.

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