Those who know my family well know that my husband is anti-doctor. He's got to be knocking on death's door in order to even consider it. Which, obviously, isn't the best. So I started thinking of ways that I could care for him at home that wouldn't require him going to the doctor. It was around that time that I was introduced to essential oils and began dabbling to see if I could find things to help him. I now don't go a single day without using oils and they have helped us both in numerous ways!!
Switching over to chemical free products is not a one-and-done deal. Especially if you're like me and don't like to waste money! So it has been a continuous process, one thing at a time. And one thing we hadn't yet switched over was dryer sheets. We were still using chemical death sheets from the grocery store (kidding- kind of). And I had remembered seeing something about dryer balls made from wool (which we all know I have a large supply of ;) ) and I thought well, now is as good a time as any! So...here we go!
Step One
You want to make sure that you have 100% wool (you'll see why later). What you are doing is "felting" the wool. Have you ever washed your favorite wool sweater and accidentally dried it? That's exactly what we're doing here!!
Step Two
Wind your wool into a ball. You can start by wrapping your index and middle finger and just going from there until you have a ball. You will want this ball to be larger than you think it should be. It will shrink, that's the point! So make sure that if you think it's big enough, you make it a little bigger!
Step Three
- not pictured
Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of this step. Perhaps because my hands were wet and covered in soap lol. Anyway, once you create your ball, you will turn your sink to the hottest water you can stand. Soak the ball until it is sopping wet and wring it out a little. Take dish soap, and saturate the ball until it is a soppy, soapy mess. You will work on shaping the ball into a circle.
Step Four
Find a pair of pantyhose or knee highs that you don't need anymore. I rip mine more often than I care to share, so that wasn't hard for me ;) . You are now going to place your soapy ball into the knee high. Tie a knot just above it, making sure it is snug and won't move.
Step Five
Repeat the above process for as many dryer balls as you can fit. Remember to tie a knot above each ball to secure them.
Step Six
You will then place your stocking filled with dryer balls in the dryer on the highest heat setting. After about 5 minutes, the dryer balls should still be damp, but no longer soaking wet. You will want to remove them from the stockings now. If you don't, they will felt through the stocking and it will be very hard to remove. Once you've removed them from the stocking, you can toss them right back into the dryer to finish out the cycle.
The Finished Product
Now, add a few drops of your favorite essential oil and pop these into your dryer for fresh, chemical free clothing! You can add safety pins as I did above to prevent static electricity!
Remember when I said make sure you use 100% wool? Well as you can see the beige finished dryer balls weren't felted very well. They stayed together, fortunately, but they definitely weren't a good finished product. I had some 100% wool roving (very colorful lol) laying around and so I added another layer on top of the beige ones and ended up with the above. When you are making these, you can get creative with the center. You can just begin winding them around your fingers which works perfectly well, or you can begin with a ball of yarn to create a core, or what I did with a couple sets was use large wooden beads and wind my wool roving around those. The possibilities are endless!
Stay Knot Sew Fancy,
Cryssi
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