Pretty knitting needles

Here's a little project I worked on last night. At my First Fridays booth, I want to offer little kits with knitting needles, a little yarn, and some very basic knitting instructions. These would be for little or no cost, just to encourage people to try knitting. I wanted to keep the cost low, so buying needles was out of the question. I saw instructions for making them out of chopsticks at Hankering for Yarn. Instead of chopsticks, I bought wooden dowels and cut them to size; sharpened one end in a pencil sharpener; sanded them to just the right shape with fine sandpaper; and glued a bead on the other end. I also read someplace else to rub them with wax paper to smooth them, so I did that. I keep obsessing about the shape of the point and trying to get them perfect, but I try to remind myself that I learned to knit on two pencils - it will be all right! I love the look of them, so soft and natural. I think I'll have to keep a set.

By the way, the table they are sitting on is the "shell table". If my house was on fire, my family was safe, and I could run back and get one thing, this would probably be it. The table itself was rescued from a dumpster when we lived in Florida. Eventually the middle part of the table came out, so we replaced it with a thinner piece of wood. That made a perfect spot to put shells gathered on Lizi's first trip to the beach. About 3/4 of the way through the project, we ran out of shells and had to beg some from my friend Melanie in Florida. The shells are attached with mastic, like tile, with grout in between. Lizi must have been about the age Lydia is now when she helped me with it. That's a lot of memories for one little table.