After 4 months of work, I’m launching a store, selling hand-made knitting needles. The idea came to me when I was perusing knitting magazines in search of nice-looking needles to give as gifts. A few pairs came very close to what I wanted – wooden needles with fancy metal, glass, or carved wood tops – but they were not quite what I had in mind. Then I read a number of blogs where people described how they made their own needles using wooden dowels, baked sculpey, and even acorns. Inspired, I decided to make my own too.

I had the perfect source for the tops of the needles: a glass artist friend of mine agreed to create a number of different colored glass tops for my needles on his torch. Deciding on the colors turned out to be really hard: when you’re presented with a few dozen choices of glass that can be combined in so many ways it’s nearly impossible to narrow your choices down to 5-6 basic color combinations and patterns. I finally picked my favorite styles and moved on to experimenting with making my own needle bodies out of various hardwood dowels. I found that for the right amount of slipperiness regular pre-fabricated bamboo needles worked best. It was just a matter of disassembling them and attaching the glass tops before the new needles were ready. And they looked awesome!

I set up the store using Google Checkout, which works admirably for small online stores. It puts customers who already use Checkout just a few clicks away from purchasing the needles.

I’ll be happy to hear your comments on what you think about the needles. Can’t find the exact needles you’re looking for? Please let me know and I may be able to add them to the store in the future.