We’ve had an email from Julie:

What can I do with old sewing pins? After years of faithful service, they’re all really blunt or really bent or both (since one leads to the other). I know they’re tiny but what can I do with them?

Most pins I’ve come across are made from steel so could probably be recycled with your normal metal recycling. It’s such a tiny amount of metal though, it hardly seems worth the bother but it’s still better than them sitting in a landfill dump somewhere.

As for reuses, blunt dressmakers pins with plastic heads could be chopped down (with wirecutters) and used instead of push pins on a notice board. I also imagine they could be used in costume jewellery making – any specific ideas?

Any other uses?

(Photo by drniels)

A few weeks ago, someone emailed me to ask for creative ways to re-use old shopping bags. I directed her to the shopping bags post we did last year and told her about my experience of knitting some flimsy bags into a heavy-duty shopping bag: I used large gauge needles and it was surprisingly easy and fun – until I accidentally leaned on one of the (plastic) needles and snapped it clean in half.

Recalling the story and my clumsiness made me realise I still have the odd knitting needles kicking about in my craft box and I wondered, as I frequently do, “how can I reuse or recycle that?”

I could keep it in my stash to use as a spare in the future but I hope I won’t repeat my snap-happy snapping again so won’t need a spare. My needle stash is already quite sizeable (thanks to eBay and raiding my mum’s old needle collection) for the amount of knitting that I do and keeping spares might make it quickly spin out of control.

But what else can I do with the odd ones? Or what about the couple of bent ones I’ve got a little over-eager about a scarf? Some of them are grey plastic while the bent ones are usually grey-painted metal.

(Photo by n0nnahs)