So, I recently saw this tutorial pimped on the Craftzine blog for making felted balls, mainly to use in your dryer instead of dryer sheets. I thought, “Hey, this sounds simple enough! And fun!” (Which is almost always the beginning of something bad. Things to note here are that I have never felted anything, ever. So I picked up some undyed, natural-colored alpaca roving from the local yarn store, used odds and ends of yarn I had laying around, and got to work. So everything went well, up until I pulled the pantyhose full of balls of joy out of the washer.
One of the balls had burst open, and the yarn ball and roving going everywhere, creating a big mass of yarn similar to a … I’m not even sure what. In any case, it was very interesting to my cat.
When I got to the fateful unveiling of the felted dryer balls of glory, they ended up looking more or less like they ought to. Except I really wish I had (a) picked a different color roving, or (b) made them larger. With them gathered on the floor, they appeared to me to look like a gathering of goat testicles.
I was going for the natural look, but I think it was clearly too natural. In any case, the cats loved them. Which is a good thing. However…..
…. Most of this story happened about two weeks ago. Today, when I was wrapping presents, I went to inspect the bag of the dryer balls that I had doused with catnip, to have them heavily saturated with the ‘nip by the time I went to wrap them. Only to find that there was MOLD growing in the bag. I hesitated to show the mold catastrophe, but it is clearly just one more step fail tacked on to the ball explosion and hairy goat testicles.
My boyfriend said, “How could they get moldy??” The answer being: I probably did not let them dry out sufficiently before I packed them into the ziplock bag with oxygen and organic matter (catnip).
Unfortunately, I am not deterred, and today received a large 8 oz box of assorted roving to try all over again. This time I think I’m going to make them significantly bigger – so at least I don’t think of testicles every time I see them.
Bwah ha ha ha!! That is hilarious. I love how many fails within fails you experienced…
This reminds me that I had a felted acorn fail. Even after all these months on this site, I just tossed them into the trash the other day w/out photographic evidence. Bad, bad, craftfailer!
hahahahah too natural hahahahahahaha
really funny, but poor kitty!
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DRYER BALLS OF GLORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I literally laughed out loud. (I wish I could say I literally laughed my ass off.)
Heather, I threw away my glittered candleholder fail. DANG it.
Mary, it’s hard to get in the habit of keeping your craft fails long enough to photograph, isn’t it?
I’m thinking impacted intestines? not that I know anything about that really, but they definitely have some kind of organ-ish look to them, as you say. I’m impressed you would try again. go for it, the cats will be happy.
This was the most artful use of the phrase “a gathering of goat testicles” I’ve ever seen… then again, I don’t think I’ve ever seen those words in that order before today!
I thought they kind of resembled shaved Tribbles m’self.
I actually DID wet my pants on this one!
We made felted beads out of alpaca wool a while back. We dyed them with Kool-Aid to get bright colors (horrible, horrible smell). They came out kind of disturbing, little balls of hair – but we turned them into bracelets anyway. I wonder if sheep’s wool wouldn’t be better?
So funny! I have created things also that haven’t done so well. I raise goats too! lol Better luck next project.
I wasn’t going to comment, but it seems like I’m not the only one laughing out loud at this one.
I guess it’s time I added another fail of my own here….
Good thing I did my Kegels. Otherwise, I’d have wet may pants reading this, for sure. Gathering of goat testicles…
My advice is not to dye the balls if there is any chance of the dye bleeding. I’ve made these before and they can be a little tricky. Sometimes they need multiple washes or an extra run through the drier. You were off to a very good start! You can either use pre-dyed wool to start with or wool yarn. I recommend the wool yarn. I made some felt covered soap. It doesn’t stain my skin when the color runs but I would worry about a load of white clothes.
Also, watch you kitty with the wool balls if you make them again. Some cats like to eat wool and that’s not healthy. I had need felted a ball with cat nip in the center and the cats shredded up the ball to get to the nip. I was afraid they would ingest the polyfibre so I scrapped the idea.
Those do look kinda gross LOL I actually use wool yarn (make sure it’s 100% wool that felts – not the wash & wear type) and then do them in stages. Small ball wrapped in stocking, washed AND dried. Then do the next layer of yarn wrapping – wash & dry. Repeat until they’re the size you want and with each layer felted, you don’t have to worry about them unraveling. Oh and it seems only the dryer part actually felts the wet yarn. Good luck with your next attempt!
maybe the catnip wasn’t dry. usually hair doesn’t get moldy so it must have been the catnip. Try again with everything dry…