Pearl

A ten cent giveaway that makes tips all night.

What it is

A little pearl poodle, twisted out of a strand of beads the way you would twist a balloon animal. Three twists and it stands up on its own.

I have been handing these out at tables for twenty five years and they are still the thing people keep. Children take them home. Parents put them on a shelf. And more than once I have watched a table decide what to tip me while one of them was sitting on the tablecloth.

It came from Bob Knigge, a close-up man and a friend of mine, who wrote it up in a pamphlet and then in his lecture notes around 1996. It has been copied plenty of times since without his name on it, so his name is on mine.

Why it earns its place in your pocket

It costs about a dime. Beads come by the yard at any fabric shop or on Amazon, and a roll makes around sixty of them.

You make it in front of them. That is the whole thing. It is not a trick you finish and put away, it is three twists while you are talking, and at the end there is a little dog on the table that was not there before.

And it gives you somewhere to go. I tell them she does three tricks. Tell her to stay, and she does not move. She sits. She plays dead. If there is more than one child at the table I put spots on them with a Sharpie so nobody argues about whose is whose, and the mothers love that more than the magic.

What you get

A finished sample poodle so you can see exactly what you are making, and about five feet of beads, which is roughly eight more.

Plus the full instructions, the lines I use while I am twisting, and where to buy the beads by the roll once you run out. And you will run out. That is rather the point.

Shipping is $7 flat, however much you order. Pearl and The Squeaker are add-ons, so put them in with a trick.

Everything goes out by USPS, usually within a day or two of your order.