Needle Earring

As the needle in your sewing machine becomes dull, you're supposed to replace it, and I try to do so after every project or two. So I’ve already thrown away used needles a few times. But a couple of weeks ago I was about to throw one away when I stopped and actually looked at it; it had a nice shape to it and I thought I could use it for something. The eye of the needle could be used to attach it to something and I realized that I could easily create an earring with it.

To connect the needle to a jump ring, I decided on using metal wire to thread through the eye of the needle; it’s a fairly small hole so I used a 32 gauge wire to fit through it. I cut a piece of wire about four inches in length and thread it through the eye of the needle. With the needle about two inches into the wire, I looped the wire around it to stabilize it and then created two loops that could be used to connect it to a jump ring. Then I wrapped each of the wire ends entirely around the needle and I pressed down the wire ends so they wouldn’t stick out. Finally, I connected the needle’s loop to a jump ring, and connected that to an earring hook and was finished.

I used more wire than truly necessary to secure the loop, but I was also trying to make sure that the sharp point of the needle was underneath the loops of wire. The earring is simple as-is, but I think it could be interesting to add some other elements to it (like beads or charms). But overall I think it’s a nice earring and a good reuse of something I would’ve otherwise thrown away.

Knit Mode

Last year when I impulsively bought a pair of knitting needles and a ball of yarn, I wasn’t sure if I would like knitting. While I was curious about knitting, I had never done it before so I didn’t know if it was a hobby that would last. I didn’t want to invest a lot of money on supplies that I wasn’t sure I would ever use, so I wanted to start out slow. Thus, every time I needed a different pair of needles to match the thickness of the yarn I had, I would buy my needles individually (which is fine in the short term, but not so great in the long term).

I finally decided that I just needed to get a set of knitting needles because it would be cheaper overall and would give me more sizes to work with. Working with just a couple of needle sizes is very limiting; I like to look over knitting books and find cute projects that I want to try, but as I didn’t have many of the needles sizes it sort of put a damper on things. Now that I have a knitting needle set, I feel more motivated to try different projects and use different types of yarn.

The individual needles I had been using were aluminum but my new set of knitting needles are wood, and I have to say I think I prefer the wood. It’s really not surprising since I love wood items in general, so naturally I would like the look and feel of my new wooden needles; they feel light and have a warmth and softness about them that I appreciate. My new set has needles from sizes 0-15; I’m not sure that I’ll use all of the sizes, but it’s nice to have them just in case I need them.

Lately I’ve been in knit mode, mostly doing so in the evenings when I can half-watch semi-interesting television shows, and I’ve broken in one pair of new wooden needles working on my first non-scarf project. It’s time consuming for me to knit anything, but one of the things I appreciate about knitting is that you can knit for an extended period of time or just for a few minutes—every row counts. And it’s pretty satisfying to see the knitted piece you’re working on get longer and longer as you get closer to finishing.