Inadvertent organizing

The last meeting of the local weaver's guild was on how to make wool dryer balls.  This is the very beautiful kit which was distributed to any member who wished to participate.  It made 2 dryer balls, one for the maker and the second for the guild sales stash.   Included were some shetland cross fibre for the centre, some lovely pastel rovings for the outside layers, and a felting needle to help hold wispy bits in place before washing.   Participants had to provide a nylon stocking or knee-high, a washer and a dryer for the felting procedure.

It was a fun and easy activity, which was perfect for our zoom meeting.   Photos of the results are starting to come in and they are very pretty.

The two at the bottom are made with the kit.  I had a bit of the pastel roving left, so I dug up some fibre and experimented.  I wasn't sure I had something suitable for the process.  I was right and the third dryer ball is squishy and square.  Not the solid ball that it was supposed to be!

I may have some other fibre to try with.  The best one, was the one I'd used a wool yarn core with.  I have lots of bits and pieces of handspun, too small for anything else, so I'll make a few more with a yarn core.

I'd made some before and used most of them for Xmas gifts.  They help speed up the drying time and soften clothing.  You need at least 3 of them and 5 is supposed to be better.   It only takes about 1 ounce of fibre (28 grams) for each one.

I've realized that I've gotten into a rather bad habit.  When I've purchased some needed yarn, craft or sewing supplies, I remove what I need right then and put it in the work space I'm using for that project.  Then if there are items left, I hang the bag on the back of the chair in my office/music space.   Today, I emptied all those bags. 

Most were recently purchased, so that's a good thing.  They were mainly weaving yarns.   There was also several pieces of interfacing for a project I was planning couple of summers ago, some supplies for a project a year before that and some seeds with an invoice dated 2017.  We're just ignoring that one!    However I found a bag with some sock yarn, which I'm pretty sure was there because I'd dug it out of my stash and then decided not to use it.  I also found 2 packed of my favourite sewing machine needles.   They are priced at $3.99 so I've no idea when I purchased them because they are now an unaffordable  $9.99 and have been that crazy price for at least 2 years.    So happy me for finding them, especially when I've got several big sewing projects planned.

There are currently no bags of goodies hanging from my chair, but there is a bin full of weaving yarns, all sorted and ready to use.

Blanket number 3 is off the loom, joined and hemmed.  I wet finished it in the washer like the others.  However, I was a little looser in my picks per inch, so it got a few more minutes in the washer to allow it to full up a bit more than the others.  This has made it a very soft and cuddly blanket.  The red has a bit more brown in it than the photo shoes and the pink is really more blue, fuchsia rather than just pink.  The colours work together quite nicely in real life.   The 4th blanket warp is half wound off.  I was going to shake things up and change up the pattern.  Then I realized the date.  There is no time to change the weave structure.  That warp needs to be wound off, the loom dressed and ready to go by tomorrow morning, if I want any hope at all of getting blanket number 4 under the tree in time.

Yesterday I had the joy of going to the dentist.  While I waited for the freezing to take hold, I started a new sock.  When they had to go back in to freeze it a second time, I knit some more.  By the 3rd attempt, I had a good start on my sock.  The 4th shot worked, but it was in the wrong place for the place they needed to work on.  So while my tooth didn't get any work done on it, my sock sure did. 

Sock yarn is misfit Kroy from the bargain bin. 
 It's lighter weight than normal Kroy.  It's a joy to work with and I sure wish all Kroy was this thin and nice to work with.  Usually it's much too thick for my liking.  Best yet, it was really, really on sale, for cheap!  





The freezing was finally coming out of my lower jaw, when my dh mentioned that he wondered what he could give his guys at work for Christmas.  Last year I wove scarves for him to give as presents.  Then he added that they needed to be done by tonight.  Yep, come up with handmade Christmas gifts in 24 hours.  Finally he told me that he had thought perhaps Dryer Balls would be a good gift.  Phew, I could do that.  So last night I wound off 6 core balls and felted them.  I hunted down a bunch of suitable rovings for the outer wraps.  First thing this morning, I wrapped the 6 cores and put them through as wash and dry cycle.  I did laundry as well as there is no use wasting the water or power use.  I needed to make sure they were large enough and dry enough before wrapping.   However they are about the size of tennis balls or a tad larger, so they are good to go.  Right now they are in front of the woodstove, drying thoroughly.  The bonus to all this is that absolutely all the laundry is washed!

Easy Peasy Dryer Balls

One of my kids asked me if I could make some wool dryer balls.   They're supposed to be environmentally friendly, shortening drying time by 30% - 50% and eliminating the need for fabric softener.   I don't use fabric softener anyway, but they didn't look very hard and it's not like I don't have the sorts of materials they might use on hand.   A quick interweb search showed tons of tutorials and yep, easy peasy to make as long as you have the right wool on hand.   Acrylic and superwash won't felt and for wool dryer balls, you definitely need felting to happen.

From searching for the workability and durability of wool dryer balls, I found out that you can use either yarn, roving or batt type preparations.  There were a few warnings out there that yarn balls don't felt completely and can start unrolling after a few months, requiring rewinding and felting.  I decided on a yarn core with a roving outer layer.  The yarn would make it easier to get a solid core while the roving should add durability. 

I dug through a box of scrap yarn and roving.  I found lots of bits from my first experiments with natural dyes which would make perfect cores.   I've all sorts of roving which is either in bits too small to make anything with, slightly compacted from sitting waiting for it's turn in the spinning queue or just stuff I don't really feel like working with right now.

It really didn't take long to wind 8 core balls.  I tried to keep them fairly round, neat and remembered to tuck in the ends to keep them from unwinding before the first felting could take place.  I realized that I'd need a nylon stocking /pantyhose leg before I could continue.  I don't wear those things normally, so I actually had to run out and find some, which were on sale for $1 a pair.  The idea is to stuff them in the pantyhose leg and tie them off, in order to keep each one separate and facilitate felting while keeping the ball from both unwinding and keeping it round.    I just tossed this in with a regular laundry load, but you could use wet, soapy water and do each ball by hand as well.
Don't use wool yarn to tie off between the dryer balls or it could felt and make it hard to remove.  I used white, cotton, butcher string.  Crochet cotton would work just fine as would knotting the pantyhose between each ball.  The latter might require cutting them out and I'm too cheap to use the pantyhose leg just once though.

I tossed the whole kit and kaboodle into the dryer after washing and the cores were adequately stuck together to start winding roving.  It took more than I'd expected but I also made fairly large balls.  The smallest is a bit larger than a tennis ball.  I'd wrapped them with enough roving to make them a good bit larger than my smallest desired circumference as I wasn't sure how much shrinkage I'd actually get in the felting process.   It shrank more than I'd hoped but not as much as I'd expected, so it was all good on that front.  I did a little bit of needle felting where the roving ended and any place where there were rough or loose spots.  It only took a few pokes here and there to needle felt the outer roving securely down.  I don't know if it really was necessary but I'd rather spend the two extra minutes to make sure than have them unravel during the washing process, or while one of my kids is doing laundry.  I stuffed them back in the stocking, tied them off and tossed them in with another load of laundry. 

Now I have another batch of cores ready to go but am now waiting on more laundry to need washing!  Since the first batch worked out so well, I figure that it will be a useful pressie for several of my kids.