Sunday, January 29, 2012

My Attempt

I can't knit or sew or do much of anything else right now but I can make balls of roving!  Here's my attempt at the felted wool dryer balls in the last post.

I started with a merino blend roving:

Added a teal shade of merino roving:

And here's the ball before it went into the stocking leg, shown here with a nickel so you can tell its size:

I washed several balls at the same time.  Since the stocking leg was long I figured I might as well do a bunch.  I washed them in a hot load with the red melton wool that I bought at Haberman's last week.  Uh-oh:

Yep, that red wool was bleeding like a stuffed pig.  Somehow I managed to slow down the water in this shot:


All's well that ends well.  None of the red dye transferred to the felted balls:

For comparison, here's the teal ball with the nickel on top of it again:

All in all, this was a very simple craft project.  Knowing how much roving is in my stash, I'd say there'll be more felted dryer ball projects in my future.  You should give them a try too.  I bet they'd make great cat toys, too.  They might even make nice sachets if you add some essential oils to them and place them in your dresser drawers.  Hmmmm.......new marketing ideas are popping up all over the place!

5 comments:

SusanQuilter said...

Nice job! Now what will you do with them?

Suzanne said...

Thanks! Most will be dryer balls. I'm thinking about turning some into cat toys -- want to be a tester?

SusanQuilter said...

OOOH, Iris would love one of those! Her fave toy is a knitting swatch I made!

Heather Woollove said...

Suzanne--Perhaps it's time to try making a hand-felted item?!? You could make small felted sheets using a sushi mat or rubber drawer liner and later, when you're feeling up to it, stitch them into small bags, phone cases, etc.

Suzanne said...

I'm going to give it a try Heather. Once I'm done with my therapy I hope to get back to doing fun things!