I was browsing through some old posts on Homestead Lady, which I have discovered through the weekly Homestead Barn Hop, and one Homestead Lady post links to this post over at Green Eggs and Goats on how to make your own knitting needles.
I kid you not.
Image shamelessly stolen from Green Eggs and Goats
This has utterly blown my mind. Making my own clothes, spinning my own yarn, preparing my own fibres, even making my own drop spindle - all things I had thought of and researched, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be possible to make my own knitting needles.
These also look really easy and super cheap! I can't wait until the next time I need a pair of needles so I have an excuse to try this. And you get nice wooden ones too - I always get metal because they're cheaper but they are so heavily they often fall out of my work and that is deeply frustrating.
Yay for the internet. I wonder what I will discover next?
At the Steiner school that my children attended and I worked briefly, the children make their own knitting needles as a precursor to learning to knit. The are each given two pieces of dowel which they sharpen to a point on the concrete paths around the classroom. They sand the dowel all over and then seal with beeswax. And glue a gum nut on the end to stop the stitches falling off. It's a great activity in so many ways... will development, anticipation and perserverence instead of instant gratification, but also an opportunity to work with wood.
ReplyDeleteThat's a brilliant suggestion! Such a good lesson in patience, in one small success enabling the next one... Might be an idea to get my little-ish cousins into knitting... Ooh you've got me thinking now!
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