NEW FAVE: OLD NEEDLE THREADER

When Auntie Jewel died this spring, Mama and I inherited a lot of her sewing and craft things. Most of them were in a three-drawer chest, one of those new plastic ones, and Mama and I sat in her living room one afternoon, sorting through, dividing, talking about what we found and reminiscing. It was fun, in a rather sad way. We'd certainly rather have Auntie Jewel than her small treasures.

Anyway, I got, amongst many other things, 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 seeing what I was doing 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 vee



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!