I couldn't find hazelnuts, so I bought English walnuts and macadamia nuts. All of my macadamia nuts shattered when I tried to poke a needle through them, so ultimately all my strung up nuts were walnuts. Maybe in the future, I'll try pecans, but this time, just walnuts. The string is cotton crochet thread and the needle was a small rug needle with a big enough eye to get the string through it. Cotton works well and there is no danger of it melting or toxicity when you dip your nuts into the pot of molten grape sauce (as might be the case with synthetic thread/string). I knotted the far end, strung some of my walnuts up about 8 inches, then more nuts about the same length on the other end. I then knotted that end and cut the string next to the needle. So some of my walnuts were on both ends of the string with no nuts in the middle.