reusable knitting

In Goodnight Moon, our two little kittens are puppeted by wires attached through their bodies and up the the Old Lady's knitting needles, disguised as yarn. 

Because of the alternate use for the knitting needles, I couldn't have the Old Lady actually knitting. Too much was going on onstage, the knitting needed to be removable and real knitting would have quickly become a quickly unraveling mess.

Instead, I knitted a short length of...whatever this is supposed to be the start of, and knotted it off as if I was finishing. As I was tying off each loop I inserted one of these small rubber rings (found in the jewelry section of Michaels).

The rings allow the Old Lady to pretty convincingly approximate knitting by working the rings along the needles and transferring them back and forth from one needle to the other.

This trick was especially appropriate for this show, but I think with a few alterations it might be a trick I come back to often when an actor needs to be knitting on stage. Especially an actor who didn't already know how to knit, would be freed from thinking about her hands and allowed to concentrate on the scene.