Felt, it's what's for dinner

Biscuit would only eat cottage cheese for dinner so we switched to crafting. After an excellent session of coloring using a great colored pencil roll from Sarah P Dot, we moved on to...felting!

I had never tried felting and on a whim bought a felt ball kit from WoolandHandcrafts.etsy.com. I've since learned from fellow Sac Craft Mafia member Kaytea that there is a great, local source for wool at a shop in Sacramento but I can't recall the name. That was useful, eh? If you're local it's next to Fox and Goose.

Anyway, since playing in bubbles is one of Biscuit's favorite things to do, felting seemed the perfect craft.

I wanted a candy cane ball so I wrapped red roving around the white innards.

Then, as instructed, we put the ball in a pair of sacrificed pantyhose and started to "gently" massage it in hot, soapy water.  Oh wait, toddlers don't do "gentle."

This was interesting for about 5 minutes.

Then she got much more interested in the bubbles and putting them in her hair.

Yeah, really into the bubbles--note the increasing collection of wet tea towels. Meanwhile, mom was busy felting the wool in between photos.

Once the balls were sufficiently felted, we rinsed them in non-soapy water (aka the bath).

I'm not sure if these will be ornaments or pin cushions but they sure are fun to throw at each other around the house. Also, instead of candy canes, they kind of look like bloodshot eyeballs so I wouldn't suggest the red on white combo.

This was a very fun project. If I were doing it again with Biscuit I would have done the "gentle" part in the pantyhose without her and used her 5 minute attention span on the more vigorous felting after removing from the pantyhose. We have some lumpy balls here (ha, ha, ha)

In unrelated news, I created a clothespin doll tutorial over at Instructables.

Comments

[farfromca]

Looks like a fun, messy project. Wish I had the patience to do that with the little man. :)

[Richelle F]

Yah, Thanks for the clothes pin doll pattern stuff. It looks really fun!