Taking it further .../Selbstgemachte Stricknadeln

As I've been knitting a lot with my Chinese chopsticks lately - they have a very handy length for the knitting I'm doing right now and are comfortable to knit with - I thought I would like to present them once more ...

This time I've taken it a bit further - and I still find it to be a very easy and useful way to recycle your Asian take-away cutlery !

Using a normal pencil sharpener and a fine grain sand paper, you can turn your chopsticks into a pair of knitting needles (mine are about 5 mm). This time, I used some felt-tip pens to colour them, drawing the pattern with a waterproof overhead pen, then covering them with a thin coat of transparent varnish. As my varnish was water-based, the colours were a bit blurred - which resulted in a very handsome patina, all by itself!

I made a set of five very short double pointed needles too - using them as a stitch holder when knitting braids or other patterns where you need to 'park' the stitches in between -



and another set of five double pointed needles, for socks or hats knitted with medium thick yarn - this time I didn't colour them, just polished them with a bit of a wax candle to get them real smooth.



The smaller sized set above is made out of five wooden barbeque sticks - mine are 3,5 mm, which means they are perfect for normal sock yarn!

The effort of making these is almost zero, you can colour them any way you like to - and they would make a nice treat or present with a matching strand of yarn too, wouldn't they? And they are recycled!

(German summary: Weil ich so gerne damit stricke, zeige ich nochmals meine selbstgemachten Stricknadeln aus chinesischen Eßstäbchen (5 mm) und Grillspießchen (3,5 mm) - mit einem normalen Bleistiftspitzer und einem feinen Schleifpapier kann man sie ganz einfach so formen, wie man sie braucht! Am Ende bemalt man sie dann noch mit Filzstiften und etwas farblosen Lack - oder poliert sie nur mit einem Stück Kerzenwachs!)