Bone Knitting Needles

[Gran]

Bone knitting needles. Simple like that.

I don't recall if knitting needles are important in other productive chains other than clothing, I think not, so that wouldn't be a matter. Would greatly reduce the amount of wool piles in flockful but wood poor countries which are AUs away from wood rich but flockless lands.

[Piscator]

Since we have bone needles and bone crochet hooks, I see nothing that speaks against it. You would still need a (wooden) spindle though to make the wool yarn, so it wouldn't really be that helpful.

[Gran]

Well I just fail then. There isn't any chance of a bone spindle being implemented then, is there?

[nateflory]

Just off the top of my head, I've seen some pretty amazing drop-spindles made from iron and/or ceramic. One particularly lovely one was at a craft show, and had a large glazed ceramic whorl, with a thin, plain ceramic shaft. Seemed more ornamental, but they demonstrated using it at the faire.

Also, Romans and Egyptians used bone whorls apparently, from a quick google search, and also Glass, if a half-remembered visit to the Corning Museum of Glass correctly recalls.

Essentially a spindle is a stick-thing with a "flywheel" weight on the end to help it spin like a top and wrap fiber into yarn. Anything appropriately weighty would probably do the job? The only question then is for game-balance or resource approval, who knows better than I what can and can't be done in-game.

[Piscator]

Hmm... I considered introducing bone shafts a while ago (to make hammers etc. without wood). This might be another application. I have to look into it.

[SekoETC]

Oh, I was just thinking the other day that it would be cool if there was a hand-held spindle you could use on the deck while sailing, even if it only worked for wool. It's better to do something while sailing even if it was in an inefficient manner, and lonely sailors couldn't stay in a cabin, and even people with a crew might not want to.

[Piscator]

I think the spindle we have was supposed to be hand held, too, but it was introduced before portable machinery was technically possible. We could update that now.

[SekoETC]

But then people would be stealing them, and portable machines need to put down and picked up and that's inconvenient. Let the old ones remain unmovable and make a less efficient version for sailors and travelers.

[Piscator]

Okay, how about this?

We upgrade the existing spindles to spinning wheels and leave them the same in all but the name.

Then we reimplement the spindle (made from stone and a small shaft) as a portable machine with ~30-50% of the effectiveness of the spinning wheel.

After that we can implement the bone knitting neeedles.

[Gran]

Sounds like a deal. Delightfully good! or gr. Wunderbar! I expect that the others agree aswell.

[Pilot]

The drop spindle is now ready with the same 4 project options as the spindle. Being a portable machine, you have to use the same dynamics as buckets to work with it.

http://wiki.cantr.net/index.php/Drop_spindle

Enjoy!

[diurnal_lee]

Awesome! So then, are bone knitting needle accepted as well? Or do we want to leave the stitching options separated--wood for knitting and crochet, bone for crochet and sewing?

[Pilot]

Bone knitting needles are accepted and hopefully soon available

[Pilot]

Knitting needles made out of small bones are now in game.

http://wiki.cantr.net/index.php/Bone_knitting_needles