On pins and needles
No-one likes to find pins in random places they shouldn’t be.
A good reason to always wear shoes.
But then there are the pincushions that seem to accumulate.
The red tomato with its tiny strawberry filled with sand to sharpen and remove rust from needles is the type I grew up with. Then there is the small black velvet one sewn carefully around the head of my grandmother’s vintage shuttle sewing machine.
I keep most of my pins in tins–and a magnetic holder from Harbor Freight. But I do enjoy the fancy pincushions too.
The blue one was made for my by my dear friend for Christmas;
the green one was during a summer retreat and I filled it to the top with sand. You can’t see my thimbles hiding in the center.
This square one was given to me in church by a friend who found it among her things when moving…her husband had died and she was moving to smaller living quarters.
And this is a half doll I made by felting some wool roving around the empty plastic cone formerly holding thread. I don’t use it much–it seems to collect dust better than pins or needles but the pins don’t get lost in the interior.
I also have a couple of felted wool balls I pin to design boards when I am at a workshop or retreat where it seems I am jumping up and down every few minutes to pin or replace something. Figuring out a way to put that magnetic holder on the wall would be ideal but I’ll have to think on that problem for awhile.
Sylvia Weir Art 