this farm girl..

What's rollin' around in YOUR dryer?

This is what's in mine...

I found this big box or wool yarn outside on my door step one day when I got home from work. I was thrilled. Rae was so sweet and sent it to me to make dryer balls. My friend, Raychel, was starting cloth diapers and wanted some dryer balls to cut down on the time it took to dry all her newly acquired laundry. You need wool so that they felt well and don't fall apart when in use.

Here's how I did it...

Start by making small balls of yarn. The ones on the far left are done.

Done and ready to be felted. the first layer anyway.

Now, you get an old nylon sock and put one of the balls all the way at the end, tie a knot and do it all over again..

Like this... and then you'll have a string of yarn balls in nylon like sausage:)

all done and ready for a very hot wash cycle and then the dryer. This might need to be done a few times in a row.

They are now felted and ready for the second layer.

This is the second layer. I'm using this yarn on the top because it looked like it would felt really well, and it did!

The brown ones are ready to go into a nylon again and the little ones are still needing a second layer.

I took a picture of the finished project with my phone so it's not a great picture, but you get the idea:) They really felted well! And, I'm happy to report that they cut way down on the drying time of the cloth diapers! She had to dry them one and a half cycles and now they're dry after just one! So, it was worth it. Now, I'm making myself some. This yarn has gone a long ways, so I'm excited I get some too:)

Thank you, Rae! It was awesome to get to make a bunch of these and not have to buy yarn. You made our day! We are so excited. You might know you've grown up and are boring when you get excited about wool dryer balls that speed up drying and in turn lower electric bills:)