Juggling balls and restocking the shop

Now that most of the Christmas crafting is done, I'm starting to pay attention to my poor neglected Etsy shop again. My stock there has been dwindling down, and it is time to do something about that. So today I started taking photographs of some of the juggling balls sets that I had lying around. They had been in a little craft store, but unfortunately it was a victim of the struggling economy and closed its doors earlier this year. So I had some back stock.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118381201/juggling-balls-in-green-blue-and-yellow

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118383303/juggling-balls-in-green-purple-yellow

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118383887/juggling-balls-in-red-green-and-white

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118384637/juggling-balls-in-blue-and-yellow-wool While I was updating, I got a request for a custom set of juggling balls, in blues and greens. I figured while I was at it, I'd make up a whole batch of a half dozen sets in some of the more popular color patterns. So, before dinner I spent awhile wrapping golf balls in wool roving.

After dinner, I rolled up my sleeves and got into the physical part of the process. I coat my hands with a drop of the dish soap, pick up one of the proto-balls, and soak the bundle under some hot running tap water. Then I toss the ball back and forth between my hands, rolling it around and around, until the wool shrinks down and velcros itself together. Once I had them all well felted, I threw the whole lot into the dryer to tumble around for a final hardened finish. Man, that many golf balls in the dryer are loud!

I'll be taking more pictures and getting these up in the shop over the next few days. Time to re-stock!

Wet felted juggling balls

I'm making juggling balls tonight. This is a great way to recycle used golf balls! I wrap the golf ball in three light layers of wool roving, and then add wisps of various colors of roving on the surface as decoration.

I love the transformation that wool goes through on its way to becoming felt! Magic indeed. On the left in the above picture, you see the golf ball wrapped in the roving, just before the felting process.

I've wet down the middle ball with hot, soapy water. I've started gently tossing it back from hand to hand, to create a kind of skin on the ball. Felt happens when wool fibers are exposed to water and agitation, and microscopic scales on the fibers kind of velcro themselves to each other. Heat and soap help the process along.

The ball on the right has been rolled around between my hands for awhile. The fibers have locked together, and shrunk down tight around the golf ball. From here, I toss the juggling balls into my clothes dryer. They thump around and make a gawd-awful racket, but the heat and agitation finishes the process of hardening the felt.

The finished balls end up looking like this:

The golf ball core gives these juggling balls a nice weight and solidity for throwing. The felt coat gives the balls a nice bit of grip, so they don't slide out of your hands quite as easily. My juggler friends give these a thumbs up.

The magic of wet felting

The weather is just about perfect here in Arizona, so I've been taking the opportunity this week to play in the back yard with hot soapy water and wool roving. That's right--it is felting time! Wool felt is made by taking a mound of soft fluffy roving, and dunking it in hot soapy water. Then you rub it and beat it and throw it around, agitating the dickens out of it until the fibers velcro together and it shrinks down into a strong, durable fabric. And I do mean shrink! Just for fun, I took some before and after shots of this week's projects.

A couple of days were spent making sets of juggling balls. These are made by wet felting wool down around a golf ball core. The golf balls give them a good weight for throwing and catching, and the seamless wool coat gives the balls a bit of texture, so they're less likely to slip out of your hands. With these, I wet felt the balls by hand until I get a good shape, and then toss them in the dryer to finish hardening. Let me tell you, a dozen golf balls bouncing around in the dryer makes a gawd-awful racket, even if they are coated with wool!











The rest of my felting time this week was spent making pocket camera cases. I posted a tutorial on how to do these awhile back, at http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2009/08/tutorial-felt-camera-case.html . The one that I made for that tutorial has been living in my front pocket on a daily basis for several years now, and is still going strong. Real felt is not that flimsy craft stuff you used in kindergarten--this stuff wears like iron! The only real result of being in my pocket that long is that the felt has continued to compress down, molding itself to the shape of my camera and becoming an even denser material.

Here's before and after shots of a couple of the camera cases I made this week. It really feels like pure magic. Abracadabra, add some elbow grease, and you have an amazing transformation.










































And for fun, here's a couple of group pictures of the projects. The juggling balls are already up in the Etsy shop, and the camera (or cell phone, or Ipod, etc) cases will be joining them soon.

A bit of this, a bit of that...

It has been kind a scattered couple of days here in the studio. I've had family members home sick, and I've had a touch of it myself, so time (and brain power) to focus on any one thing has been kind of hard to come by. But I took measurements for an over armor tunic that one of the local SCA fighters has commissioned. I scrubbed down another gourd, with the intent of turning this one into a candle holder. And I made up a set of felted juggling balls, to fill a request. The lady in question wanted a set of four balls instead of the set of three that I usually make. I was more than happy to put it together for her. In fact, here's a picture of the set in process.

Hmmmm...Can you tell which ball still needs the most felting work?