Question

[hummingwolf]

Rummaging around in my desk looking for something else, I found a bunch of solid wooden cylinders, the diameter of an ordinary pencil and very slightly more than five inches long. What are they?

Edit: Okay, I have dowels! Now, why are there dowels in my desk drawer? How have I not noticed them before? Why are they there? Have they been here all along, or did some dowel gnomes sneak into my room distributing dowels? Now that I've found them in my desk, might I find them in other places as well?

Comments

[bunney.livejournal.com]

Chopsticks?

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Nope. Cylinders, not pointed, and as wide as a No. 2 pencil. I thought at first that they were new pencils, but they haven't got any graphite in them.

[hai-kah-uhk.livejournal.com]

Dowels? (Rhymes with towels but not as soft. My father kept a box of dowels in the basement and I was fascinated with them. I never touched them or played with them; I only looked at them every now and then and thought to myself "dowels!" I guess I just liked the word. Still do.)

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Dowels! Yes, I do believe they are dowels. I wonder why they were in my desk?

[hai-kah-uhk.livejournal.com]

Did you at any time have a craft kit or did you ever plan to make something? Or maybe you took them because they were lying around being available and you figured you'd have a use for them someday? Maybe you thought they were pencils then too? Or... um... geez, I don't know. I honestly wasn't there at the time.

Maybe they're spare dowels in case the desk needs to be repaired. Kind of like spare buttons in the pocket of a new jacket.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

I don't remember ever having a craft kit, but now that you mention crafts, I realize that the answer to the "why?" questions is probably "Because my parents were packrats."

[mystified13.livejournal.com]

Ha Ha! I was going to say they were "dowels", too. They probably are spare parts to a piece of furniture you have, maybe even your desk.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any way these dowels would be useful in my desk, but they could have come from some other furniture, possibly furniture in some other house. They probably were things my parents saved on the theory that they would be useful somehow, someday... which doesn't explain how they ended up in my desk. Maybe I just grabbed them one day before I moved, didn't look at them very carefully and mistook them for pencils.

[windsparrow.livejournal.com]

I could send you some variegated yarn and you could make god's eyes with them.

http://www.make-stuff.com/recycling/gods_eye.html

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thanks for the offer, but they take up less room as they are now!

[unwilly.livejournal.com]

I use dowels either in weapon building or cake making.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

That comment really is a good demonstration of your sheer coolness.

[unwilly.livejournal.com]

Heh.

It really does say something about me.

Violently full of cake, I suppose.