Wet Wooly Goodness! A Wool Dryer Ball Tutorial.

What you'll need: Soap, old balls of wool yarn that have been sitting in your stash basket for eons, hot water,

some sort of mesh fabric to wrap the yarn in or old nylons, trays to keep the table dry and a wash board
(optional but much more fun!).

Begin by putting your wool ball into the nylon, making a tight net around  it .Tie a knot or use a rubber band to secure the ball tightly in the nylon. This will help the fibers rub together so that they stick to one another. Dunk the balls into hot water until they are completely wet all the way through. Get your ball nice and soapy! We used Dr. Bronner's Peppermint for these. Lily says it's toothpaste soap. :) 

Start soapin' those guys up until they are "fuzzy" with soap and then soap some more! Make some noises, take in the lovely smells and keep soapin'!

Your going to want to do this until you see the fibers start to stick to each other. 

Rinse those guys in hot water and then shock em' in cold water to shrink the fibers.

I repeat this process. Then we get them hot and soapy again! 

Don't forget to dump a bunch of water on to your Mama's  table and floor!

You've gotta make a mess!

If you don't make a mess, your not doin' it correctly! Now throw those guys into the washer! (No! Not the kids silly! The balls!) and then the dryer. (still inside the mesh.) 

Remove the balls from the dryer. You may want to repeat the the process  of washer or washer dryer over a few times until they are felted to your liking. I like to repeat 3 times.

Remove the balls from nylons/mesh.

Give them a quick snuggle!

Yes, we do have a few of these but we love them!

Today we decided to have a little fun and make a couple more wool dryer balls since mine are always disappearing into the rooms of little ones only making an appearance here and there when someone is playing with them. Clearly the children love them as much as I do. I love to add a few drops of lavender or rosemary essential oil to mine before putting them into the dryer. They make for excellent smelling naturally fresh laundry! I use that in combination with laundry detergent that we make at home! More affordable and does the job very nicely. Wool dryer balls will also help agitate your laundry inside the dryer making them dry faster which saves money! They are also better on Mama Earth than disposable fabric softener. We don't dry everything in the dryer, only our towels and jeans and heavy material.