1562 Commotion when a needle is lost. This tool was precious. "Until far on in the sixteenth century, there was not a needle to be had but of foreign manufacture" (Stone 1840)

"A lytle thing with an hole in the end, as bright as any syller,
Small, longe, sharpe at the poynt, and straight as any pyller."
(Gammer Gurton's Needle)

"In all ages woman may lament the ungallant silence of the historian" 

The art of needle-work from the earliest ages : including some notices of the ancient historical tapestries by Mrs Elizabeth Stone, edited by Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton, Countess of Wilton. London: Henry Colburn 1840. ix and 405 pages. 1841 edition available at Project Gutenberg