A Braille Knitting Needle Gauge for the Visually-Impaired

Bottom Line Up Front

I made and am selling a knitting needle gauge--that is, a gauge to measure the size of a knitting needle--that's labeled in braille and designed to be durable, accessible, and easy to use. If that's what you're here for, keep reading.

Introduction

One spring day a blind friend happened to bemoan the lack of knitting-needle gauges that are accessible to the visually-impaired. I immediately had an idea, and after a couple of questions, went off and designed one. The good news was, it worked, and she liked it. The bad news was, everyone else wanted braille on it. Well, I thought about things for a while, and after a week or two, hit upon two possible ways of making (reasonably) affordable gauges, in small quantities, with braille. One of them even, after some testing, works!

I know, it's not much of an origin story. If I was good at marketing I'd pad this out with a lot of sincere-sounding drivel about my lifelong drive to help people and tireless dedication to producing the best product on the market, or something, but I'm not. So, anyway, onto...

The Gauge

The important bits: It measures all US sizes of knitting needles from one to fifteen inclusive, including half-sizes. All whole hole sizes are labeled in braille; there wasn't room to label the half sizes as well, but they're placed in the logical spots. (I.e. the hole for a size 2.5 needle is between the size two and size three holes.) It's all-metal, including the braille. It's a round disc that measures sixty millimeters across. With the flexible plastic case it ships in, it weighs less than two ounces.

It's (hopefully) fairly intuitive to use. There's a single small notch in the outer rim of the gauge, which denotes the top. There are then eleven precision-machined holes around the outer edge of the disc, corresponding to the positions on a twelve-hour clock face; these measure needle sizes one through eleven. Each is permanently labeled in braille with the size. The holes for sizes thirteen and fifteen (there are no US sizes twelve or fourteen, don't ask me why) are near the center of the disc, but at the one and three o'clock position, where thirteen and fifteen are in twenty-four-hour time. These holes are also labeled in braille. In the appropriate spots, between the whole hole sizes but set back further from the edge, are the holes for the half-sizes: 1.5, 2.5, and 10.5; they're not labeled but their values are (hopefully) very apparent.

That's pretty much it, really. If you would like one, are in the USA, you can click this Paypal link right here to pay with Paypal, Venmo, or a credit or debit card; the price is fifteen US dollars, including postage.

Getting in Touch

If you need more than one, or would like shipping with a tracking number (two extra dollars on single orders), or are outside the USA, or have questions, feel free to contact me. I don't bite, honest! If you're on Mastodon or the Fediverse, you can message me as @tatiana@chitter.xyz . Note that I'm not really a social-media person, so I only check it maybe twice a day. You can also email me, at tatiana period sledge at Google's well-known five-letter email domain.

And that's all, as the song goes, I have to say about that.