Santa brought me one of the needle twisters from Needlepoint Tool Time this year. When I opened the package and discovered how it works, I laughed out loud. It is the very clever product of legendary German engineering.
As you'll see in the video below, the tactile rubberish cover pulls off (pull straight up), then you unscrew the base as if you were using a tube of lipstick. The bottom which holds the magnet, rises, allowing any needles inside to come up and then fan out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8xwTmSuKk
The entire twister is around 4 inches long, with 3 inches of space to hold needles, so you can keep quite long needles inside. Of course they will become magnetized which might be a problem for you, and you won't know what size a needle you are choosing unless you have a needle sizer of some sort to compare them to. This may or may not matter to you but if you are gifting a Twister to a friend, I suggest you give a Needle Index book to them as well. This is a nifty little book sold by the Quail Valley Chapter of EGA in California as a fund raiser. It stores and identifies needles by size and gives guidelines for what thread they work well with. (Last I heard Needle Works in Austin, Texas might have copies.)
http://www.needlenthread.com/2011/10/which-needle.html
As far as I know, the Twister is only available from Needlepoint Tool Time (although some folks say Amazon has them). The instructions are in German, French, Italian, etc., not English, so be prepared to demonstrate how it works if this is a gift for a friend.
http://www.needlepointtooltime.com/product/Twister
By the way, there are a ton of ways to store your needles. Here's Mary's Pincushion of Despair.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2014/12/embroidery-needle-organization.html
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright December 25, 2014 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.
