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  Rocky-Brook Needles

Benefits Of The Wooden Needle

     Beside the fact they are very environmentally friendly, they are also extremely light weight yet very strong because of the high tensile strength of the wood we use.  We choose wood that has a tight straight grain in order to provide the most strength possible to the needle.  Unlike metal or plastic needles, they are warm to the touch and do not draw the heat from the hands and fingers into the needles.  This fact makes them ideal for people affected by arthritis.  The hand rubbed wax finish allows the yarn to glide smoothly on the needle yet provides a comfortable grip for the user.  They do not make a "clicking" sound when they are used as some other needles do.  Some metal and plastic needles have a lacquer finish that will wear away in time.  The wax finish on a wooden needle is easy to maintain by rubbing a new coat of wax on or by simply rubbing the needle with a piece of waxed paper.  They are perfect for use with wool yarn.  What could be better than two natural products being used together?  Of course, they work just as well with synthetic fibres.

     Wood is a renewable resource and the production of our needles does not add to the growing amount of waste being dumped in our landfill sites.  We only purchase our rough material from mills that guarantee for every tree they take, they replace it with a new one.  At one time the wooden needle was the only kind of needle available.  Only recently are people starting to realize that it is still the best.  As with most other things in life we grab on to something new and support it until we realize what we had was really better in the first place.

A Word About Bamboo

      Bamboo is not wood.  It is actually a fast growing grass.  Some species of bamboo can grow up to ten inches in a twenty-four hour period.  That's mighty fast compared to how long it takes for a hardwood tree to grow.  This is one of the main reasons bamboo needles are relatively inexpensive.  While bamboo is environmentally friendly and does provide strength in some applications, it does have at least one disadvantage when used to make knitting needles.  If you were to look at a piece of bamboo under a microscope you would see it is made up of strands of extremely straight, thin fibres about the size of a human hair.  As the tip of the needle wears the ends of the fibres become exposed and turn into very sharp little splinters.  As a wooden needle tip wears it actually gets smoother and will not splinter.