Moving the needle

And a teensy little giveaway!

Hi friends! Do you believe inanimate items have a soul? In Japan, Hari-Kuyo, the Buddhist and Shinto festival of broken sewing needles is held every winter. People bring their old needles to the temple, where they’re honored for their service and placed in a soft block of tofu for safe disposal. I imagine this ceremony encourages gratitude for this small but essential tool.

When you think about it, it doesn’t get much more utilitarian and mundane than a needle. It’s just a piece of metal with a hole at one end and a point at the other. But as a recent discussion on a slow stitching Facebook group proves, they’re not so simple.

Size of the eye? Straight or tapered? Sharp point or blunt? Chenille or sashiko? Everyone weighed in with an opinion on which needles were best. When someone mentioned Pony Black needles with white eyes, I was curious.

I ordered a pack from The Silver Needle in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (The shop had great customer service by the way. They added a small package of jelly beans and a flyer with information on the broken needle festival to my order.)

Here’s my quick take on the Pony Black (could a needle have a cooler name?) The pack included six needles size 18 to 26.

Side note: The Land of Needles is apparently upside-down world because the larger the number, the smaller the needle. (If you want even more mind-bending math, head over to this article that clearly demonstrates that needle numbering is just bananas.)

Back to that bad boy Pony Black…

The five larger needles all had oversized eyes that were, in fact, very easy to thread. The jury is still out with me on whether the white eye made any difference. The first thing I noticed was the needle’s significant girth. These guys are chonky. Doing a running stitch through a three-layer fabric-and-batting sandwich was a workout, even with the needle’s sharp point. The size 26 (which is the smallest, remember?) made for much smoother stitching.

The Pony Black needle is a smooth operator, but this one is way too short for running stitch.

I really appreciated the rounded eye-end of the needle, which made it very comfortable to push the needle with my fingertip. The big drawback? This needle is very short. Take a look at how it compares with a long quilting pin and the kind of needle I use most often.

Here’s a plus: When you drop a black needle with a white eye on the floor, it’s much easier than a silver needle to find before you step on it!

The upshot and a giveaway!

If I’m going to stitch with heavier weight thread or yarn on a looser weave backing, I would reach for the larger Pony Black needles. In the meantime, I’ll keep the petite size 26 close for times when I’m not doing long running stitches.

Along with the pack of needles, I ordered one of these needle threaders.

Y’all know I’m on a personal quest to make threading needles easier. Well, the folks at the Silver Needle sent me five of these threaders which do work quite well.

So, if you’re a subscriber and you live in the U.S., I’d like to share the love — especially since I’ve recently reached an amazing (to me) total of 120 subscribers! Dude!

Just leave a comment below and I’ll pick two people at random to receive a threader in the mail.

Another kind of needles

I’m blaming my daughter, who was home for the holidays and wanted to start a knitting project. My mom was in town, too, and it was really special seeing Grandma giving my daughter a lesson. Of course, I started craving something soft and yummy to work on, especially as our winter days just kept getting more and more wintry.

It’s been a while since I knitted, so I don’t know what possessed me to choose a lace-weight mohair yarn. But it’s just a tiny scarf…. How hard could it be to whip it up with this yarn that’s the weight of a spider web?

Sigh. Maybe my scarf will look like this one day. If you’re more adept at knitting than I am, you might love this free scarflette pattern from Fairmount Fibers.

Wouldn’t you know, I made some fatal mistake in row 100-something, and now I’m ripping it all out. The scarf should be finished just as the heat of summer rolls in to Ohio.

Obviously, it’s time to go back to slow stitching.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget to comment above, and happy stitching, friends!

—Janice