Good news!!
I was looking through my kitchen cabinets for a candle holder thing and I saw wooden skewers!! SU has always teased me and told me that I should just use skewers for my needles. I thought he was nuts. We have two big packages and the bigger size is a perfect size 4!! The best part is that one end is already sharpened and pointed
I don't have a good pencil sharpener so I'm just using a sharp pocket knife and they're coming along quite nicely.
Let's see...this pair of 4's I'm working on probably cost me 5 cents at the most! And with all the dowels I got I have tons of sizes to make now. Yay!!