Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
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Knit-related CnS: Fimo/dowel knitting needles
Katie and I made these yesterday. The long 8's (actually 7s, oops) are for me, as are the bundle of 10 1/2 DPNs, the really short 11s are for Katie, and the 10 1/2 straights are for her prolifically knitting teacher.
Ack, will try to get a closeup of the bead in a bit. Must get dishes done before it's bus time, LOL.
We bought hardwood dowels at the hardware store, cut them with snips, sharpened them in a pencil sharpener (the 7s required some whittling too) then sanded with 200 grit, then 400 grit paper, then rubbed wax paper on them to smooth them. Made Fimo beads, put them on, they wanted to pop off so we baked them separately and then glued them on top of the needles. It was fun and easy. We are planning to make more, both double pointed and straight. It's hard to find some of the proper in between sizes though because dowels only come in certain thicknesses.
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Those came out beautiful! I've tried making them before, but I just can't seem to get them smooth enough. I can't wait until you post close-ups of the beads.
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Deb
proud mami to Nicolas (6)
and Maya (2)
I can't ask for more
Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
Posts: 12,995
Trying needle closeup. It came out blurry. I am going to try taking another pic. The swirls are very crisp and I wrote the sizes with a very fine scrapbooking pen.
As for smoothness, we actually need to work on that more! Lots of 400 grit paper and wax paper. I have also seen people rub them with caranuba wax. I am going to get 600 and 800 paper tomorrow and hopefully get them smoother. They aren't terrible but do snag on certain yarns.
We've made them by sanding with fine grit paper and rubbing bowling alley wax into them (not sure why DH had that on hand, hmm). Also we got little wood balls and other shapes like thread spools from the craft store to glue on. We found Michael's had a good selection of dowel sizes and toppers.
I'd love to try the fimo though, they come out so pretty!
__________________ ~Heather
Mama to my two sweet boys Carter (10!) and Owen (3),
and my sweet girl Leah Charlotte, born 12/10/03
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