gramophone needles and blobs of wax

Today, as I was showing a group of women some French knitting that my mother did when she was a child, one lady told me that her mother had made her a French knitting dolly from a cotton reel into which she had hammered gramophone needles instead of nails, each needle dabbed with a blob of wax over the end.

Every time I share sewing experiences with women who grew up during wartime, I am told of experiences that prove necessity to be the mother of invention, and my own creativity feels challenged, in a positive way. Today's shared memory of French knitting, put me in mind of the early pins that were headed with a seed or blob of sealing wax. For pins as we know them with proper pin heads have only been manufactured since 1840. There is an interesting article online about the history of pin making:-

https://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/webdocs/lb_2010_15.pdf