A Lame Pincushion Tutorial

Because I was raised by a couple who were kids through the Great Depression, and because an inch of wool yarn is as precious to me right now as a gallon of basic unleaded, I have been hording snippits of yarn leftover from my French Market Bag and from my Fuzzy Feet bender at the beginning of the year.

Hey, that was all one sentence. So sorry.

With that tangle of yarn, I made a pincushion. A small, nondescript, fairly lame pincushion.

And here's how I did it, so you can do it, too.

First, I tied all the pieces together, end after end, using a basic overhand knot with the two pieces of yarn held parallel to begin with. (Sorry, I don't have a picture of this, but below is the result.)



I don't know how long the chain became--again, sorry. But then I wadded up the mess like so:



And stuffed it into the toe of a mateless airline sock I've kept since 1991, using a rubber band the mailman discarded on my front porch because he can't be troubled with reusing these slender guts from rubber trees:



Do airlines even distribute onboard socks anymore? I got my pair while on a flight to England.

Anyway, I swished the sock around in a container full of hot water for, oh, a couple minutes. Then I took out the shrinking ball and rolled it between my hands for a little while longer (less than a minute, probably). Which produced this:



Although it appears to be a mighty marble, it's an inch in diameter. Maybe a skosh more. (I guess, for a marble, that's pretty big.) It could be considered more of a cat toy, though. I know my cat has considered it as such.

When it's dry, I'll stash it in my sewing box. If the cat doesn't steal it first.