Adventures In Sable
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Sable. SABLE. S.A.B.L.E.
The fiber artists among my readers will know that SABLE stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. For you muggles (those who don’t knit or crochet), I will further explain that I myself have achieved SABLE. It’s exactly what it sounds like. My yarn stash has grown to such proportions that even if I knit or crochet for several hours every day for the rest of my life, I will never get through it all. Don’t judge me…especially you quilters. I know all about your fabric stash…
Making '“art” out of SABLE necessity…I love these bright little balls of yarn displayed in my cut glass cookie jar.
If one wants to back away from SABLE and reduce the stash to a more reasonable size, there are some things you can do. First, stop buying yarn. I know, it seems obvious (and it seems heresy to some, but desperate times call for desperate measures) but you’d be surprised at how often the obvious eludes us if someone doesn’t flat out say it. Second, find some way to use down your stash faster than you might otherwise do.
Almost the entirety of my stash is animal fiber, mostly wool. And mostly wool that has not been treated to make it safe to run through the washing machine. Which means if you introduce this wool to moisture, heat, and agitation, it felts. It shrinks down into a much thicker and more rigid fabric than you started with. This is a disadvantage for woolen sweaters, requiring that they be carefully hand washed in tepid water. But if I want to felt yarn for a project, then my stash is an excellent place to shop for wool.
These dryer balls can be purchased at a number of stores from $19-$28. We can do better!
And if you’d like to know about a really excellent felted project, then I’m here for you. Woolen dryer balls. You can buy them in the store, but they are ridiculously expensive. Why not shop in your own wool store stash and make them essentially for free? They are easy to make, very useful, and make excellent gifts. You just toss them in the dryer with your wet garments and run the machine as usual. The balls will make your laundry dry faster, and the wool soaks up some of the static. If you use static sheets in your dryer, the balls will not be a good replacement for those…the static sheets work better. But in conjunction with the balls, you’ll get static free dry laundry in less time than usual. And if you decide to be fancy (like me!) and sprinkle the balls with a few drops of lemon essential oil (or lime or grapefruit…any citrus oil, really), your laundry comes out smelling fresh. It doesn’t smell like lemon, really…just fresh. I get my oil from Doterra but you can also find it on Amazon.
I make the balls in sets of four, and it takes somewhere between 250 and 300 grams of wool to get the job done. You can use any weight of wool you like…I just happened to have this worsted weight wool lying around, so I used it.
I used a tennis ball to measure size, and started winding my yarn into a ball. When it got to the size of the tennis ball, I cut the yarn and tucked the end into the ball. Then, because I have OCD, I weighed the ball. It weighed 37 grams. I wound three more balls, each 37 grams. After that, there are lots of ways to do the felting, but I like the old-fashioned approach of boiling the yarn and then running it though the dryer. First, you have to wrap the yarn ball in some way. If you have an old pair of pantyhose around that you’d like to get rid of, you can use those. You’ll need both legs of the hose…just cut it off at the crotch. Set one leg aside for later, and then drop your balls into the other leg one at a time, tying a knot in between each ball and at the top when you’re done. You want the balls to be snugly confined. Since I didn’t have any pantyhose to spare, I just cut squares of muslin, wrapped each ball with one, and then tied the top and cut off the excess. I would not recommend cheesecloth for this…it’s too insubstantial and will either come apart during the felting process or sort of felt into the ball itself, becoming hard to pull free. Ask me how I know.
Next I brought a pot of water to boil. There needs to be enough water that when all four balls are rolling around in there, the water is deep enough to cover the balls completely. When the water was boiling, I set all four balls in with sufficient care to avoid splashing myself with scalding water. I let them simmer (stew? marinate? parboil?) for about an hour, then turned off the heat, and lifted the sopping balls onto a rack over a rimmed cutting board to cool off for about half an hour. You want the balls to cool enough that you can squeeze the remaining water out of them without burning yourself. Once I’d squeezed out all the water I could, I put them in the dryer on the hottest setting and let it run. I estimate I ran them for at least four hours. You’ll know when they’re done (for this part of the process) when they have shrunk and hardened and seem mostly dry.
Now...it has to be done all over again.
First, cut the balls out of their muslin (or nylon) prison. Then wrap them each again with more of the yarn until you have a ball that is now slightly bigger than your tennis ball. I wound mine until they each weighed 70 grams. Love that digital food scale. Then wrap in muslin (or the other leg of the pantyhose) and boil them for another hour, cool off, squeeze out the water, and throw them in the dryer again. This time, you need to be sure that they are completely dry. You don’t want your balls to mold while they are sitting around waiting to be used. This will likely take four to six hours in the dryer. If they still feel even slightly damp, keep running them.
In the interests of full disclosure, I feel I should mention that this is not the part of the project to undertake when anyone in your house is trying to sleep. This is noisy. It will definitely wake the baby. And annoy the cats. The balls make quite a racket as they bounce around in the dryer and only get louder as they felt down and get harder. When the balls are smaller and hard and feel dry, take them out of their encasing and do a little test to make sure they are really dry. Pop them in a ziplock bag and leave them in a warmish place for a few hours. If there is any moisture left in them, you will see condensation inside the bag. Throw them back in the dryer if necessary. A caveat: avoid using very brightly colored yarn for this project (particularly reds and blues) as the dye might seep out of the yarn a little. I once had to wipe red dye off the inside of my dryer. Once the balls were felted, no more dye leaked; I tested the balls on a load of white towels to be sure.
I might have made more than one set of felted dryer balls. But then, I am trying to whittle down a rather large stash. These sets (each accompanied by a bottle of lemon essential oil) will all be gifts for various lucky folks. I am totally ready for Christmas! Well, mostly ready. Somewhat ready.
