Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Recycled Crafts Contributor, Anitra from the blog “Coffee Pot People”.

Several years ago, I inherited a small treasure-trove of craft items, including two little plastic doo-hickies that purported to be needle threaders. I looked at the odd little gizmo and thought, What in the world? How could that possibly thread a needle?

But I decided to actually read the directions, and give it a shot.

Let me explain first that my eyes aren’t the greatest. My usual method of threading a needle is to hold it up and look for the eye. Sometimes I can see it, so I do the threading like anyone else would. Other times, it just looks like a bit of featureless wire, but I know there’s an eye there somewhere, so I just start poking the thread at the place where the eye should be. If I think the thread has made it through, I try moving it from side to side, and if it won’t jiggle sideways, I know the needle is threaded. It’s a bit trying, this non-visual trial and error. Finding a “machine” that would take actually being able to see well out of the equation would be a Very Good Thing.

So here’s the gizmo:

Am I the only one who’s never seen one of these before?

Lay the thread across the V.

Drop the needle in the chimney.

You don’t have to worry about which direction the needle’s eye is facing. The threader turns it, if necessary.

Press down on the little paddle.

If you look closely, you can see thread and a fine wire poking out now, above the paddle. The thread I used was rather thick, so the wire shredded it just a bit where it pushed it through, but I just cut that part off later.

Pull the thread through.

Release the paddle, and grab the thread, pulling it through until the free end comes through the hole in the gizmo.

Lift the threaded needle out.

The “chimney” of the needle threader is slotted at the back, so when you lift the needle out, the thread comes with it, and you’re holding a threaded needle in your hand.

Is that the coolest thing, or what? It is, hands down and eyes closed, my new favorite tool.

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about favorite tools this month, trying to choose, if I had to, which tool tops the rest. I’m enthralled right now with paper punches… My spot welder is a true treasure…The laminator is useful in so many ways….

Then it hit me: The one tool that is absolutely essential, completely ubiquitous (sorry—it’s just such a fun word!), and so basic to our lives that it’s virtually invisible is…

SCISSORS!

Scissors rule. Scissors for paper, for fabric, for tin, for food, for hair, and nails. Scissors for clipping the stems of flowers, or shaping hedges. Scissors with straight-edged blades, or pinked, or fancifully shaped. More types of scissors than you can shake a project at.

I gave six pair with fancy edges to my granddaughters. I keep a folding pair in my purse. There are scissors in every room of my house except the living room. A quick walk through my daughter’s home showed me three pairs, without even opening a drawer. My husband is remarkably unhappy if he cannot readily find a pair. Our children get their own when they’re kindergartners, or younger, and use them throughout their lives.

I wouldn’t recommend hugging them, but have you treasured your scissors today? I do believe they are part of the very fabric of the Universe. Where would we be without them?