Hasta La Ideas

pimg alt=”needle.jpg” src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/needle.jpg” width=”468″ height=”229″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pemGuest post by Scott Christensen./em/p

pWhat invention could be more straightforward than a needle? Maybe a hammer (stick with a rock attached) or a knife (sharp rock or bone). Ancient tools get a long time to evolve during which they generally improve and bugs work themselves out. Gimmicks get adopted and abandoned. Forms become simpler./p

pThe common hand sewing needle would seem to be fully evolved from the thorn or fish bone that it started as. But one bug remains. bOlder eyes have difficulty seeing well enough to thread a needle./b Cave men and women never lived to be old enough to have this problem. But Pam Turner did. The first time inventor from Minnesota had secretly laughed when her mother had trouble threading a needle in her middle years. But when she found herself struggling with same problem, she did that cool thing inventors do; she asked why. And she fixed it. After millennia of existence as a pokey thing with a hole in it, the hand sewing needle has now evolved into a pokey thing with an ingenious thread-by-feel side-opening slot./p

pMs. Turner’s operation is totally home-grown DIY invention. She began prototyping and sharpening all the needles herself. She buys machine time by the hour from a shop that has theprecision equipment to cut the unique slot that makes theneedlework./p

pThe Spiral Eye side threading needlesI ordered arrived in the mail a couple days after ordering them online from the inventors a href=”http://www.spiraleyeneedles.com/”website/a. They’re small, so the packaging is minimal: a greeting card. Each needle is pushed into a small felt dot stuck to a business card which is slipped into a small plastic sleeve inside the card.She designed all this herself, though she considers herself an inventor more than a designer. (The website could use some help.)br /
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