How to Make a Fuzzy Ball Christmas Ornament

The kids and I made the cutest Christmas ornaments ever quite by accident:

I was attempting to make a wool dryer ball (which I did, and I'll show you how another time!). I didn't want to use wool roving, so I was instead using wool yarn. I made a giant pompom out of the yarn, and was about to stuff it into some old tights, tie it off, and toss it into the wash, but Syd got to it first and started playing with it.

I let her play while I worked on another, and she played with the wool yarn pompom so much that she unraveled all of the yarn strands and turned the pompom into a adorable, soft, fuzzywuzzy fuzz ball. We have a couple of these now sitting on random tables as fidgets, but the cutest couple I strung up on the tree as ornaments, and we adore them.

And here's how we made them!

You'll need some chunky yarn, 100% wool. Something like this wool yarn would work, although ours is this wool from We are Knitters.  

Make a giant pompom around your hand by holding the end of the chunky wool yarn between two of your fingers--

--then wrap the yarn loosely around your hand approximately 50 times:

Slip it off of your hand and use another piece of yarn to tie it off tightly in the middle:

Cut through the loops and you'll have yourself a giant wool yarn pompom!

The pompom would be super cute as a gift topper, but if you play with it a while, fidgeting it around in your hands (which won't be hard, as it feels super soft and awesome!), the yarn strands in your pompom will unravel, and now it will look like this:

Ugh, I love it so much!

To make your wool fuzzy ball into an ornament, thread a nice color of embroidery floss through that tie in the center--

--and tie it into a loop.

It's so pretty!!!

We're not really ornament buyers, and so although we've got a few store-bought ornaments on our tree, I do love that the vast majority of our ornaments are vintage ones from Mammaw and Pappaw's Christmas tree when I was a kid, and homemade ones from our years celebrating Christmas together as a family.

I'm really crushing my goal this year to have an ornament for every single branch of our Christmas tree!!!

My Latest: Wool, Chickens, Crayons, and our New House

I've been too busy these past two weeks! Kid activities, packing, etsy orders, mortgage paperwork, schoolwork, impromptu house showings--I am definitely feeling the stress. I've managed to keep the kids fed, learning their math, and on time to extracurriculars with the correct gear on (that last one JUST barely...), but in the rare times when I don't *have* to do something, I've found myself just sort of zoning out for a minute to rest my brain. Otherwise, even when I'm working on something else, my brain is doing stuff like trying to figure out where the record player cabinet will go in the new house, or the mint bed, or when we should go mattress shopping.

I was running in so many directions last week, in particular, that I didn't even think to show you the other writing that I've been doing, so this week you get a two-week update in my paid writing! It's kind of silly, too, because along with sales from my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, my outside writing is THE way that I earn the money that I use to buy birthday presents and pay for tennis lessons and field trips, etc., so failing to promote it is not in my best interests. The sites for which I write earn money from advertisements on the site, and the money that we writers earn is based on how many people have been exposed to those ads--i.e. pageviews. So if you like what I do and want to help me pay for postcards at Cahokia and the limestone carving class that Will wants to take, all you have to do is click through to read the following posts

a write-up of the felted wool egg cozies from So Jane

a round-up of felted wool sweater crafts

an essay about urban chickens

a round-up of upcycled projects for the home

and a tutorial for recycled crayons

We close on our new house at the end of the week, so we get to start moving this weekend! I'm hoping we can camp out on the floor of our new house one night, perhaps to go the drive-in, perhaps start getting some of the DIY projects going and schedule the work that we need to have others do for us. I'd like to get the kitchen stocked a bit so that I can feed the kids if we spend an afternoon there, and we have many, many plants languishing in temporary pots that would like to get settled into their new garden beds.

This time, I am going to be VERY thoughtful about where I put the mint, which we do rely on, but geez louise, not as much as it seems to think we do! How on earth do you keep mint from taking over every single other living non-mint piece of greenery, anyway?

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Mason Jars!

a felted wool sweater Mason jar cozy

and a review of Mason Jar Crafts, including this Mason jar lid photo frame

I've got it on my to-do list to make multiples of both of these items this week--the felted wool Mason jar cozies to put aside as Christmas gifts, and the Mason jar lid photo frames to put up in multiples on one wall in the hallway. 

And, quite unusually for me, I may actually get these projects done! I have been QUITE productive this week, sponsored in part by both children's absence at day camp every afternoon. The camp ran through the start date of our local public school system, which meant that we couldn't have our "Not the First Day of School" party this year (doughnuts and a movie), but since the girls happened to be outside skateboarding and biking in the street as the school bus drove by, I consider it a first day of school success, regardless.

Waldorf Doll Head Made Easier with Wool Yarn

I don't usually permit myself to get stressed out about the children's birthdays and the resultant parties--it's tacky, in my opinion, to play the put-upon drama queen about something that I, myself, chose to make a big deal out of--but nevertheless, this has been an unusually stressful week or so. The kiddos are again testing the boundaries with schoolwork, I haven't been feeling well (cancer or allergies?), most of the homeschool playdates and groups that make up my social network have been canceled because of this heat wave we've been having, my treadmill is busted, one of my best friends has the audacity to be planning an imminent move AWAY from me, the water heater is also busted, blah blah blah, which means that the fact that I do most of the kids' birthday prep and much of the party prep without assistance is, frankly, stressful this week.

And yes, I WOULD like some cheese with my whine. Brie, please, because since my treadmill is busted, I might as well give up entirely.

I've been making Willow a Waldorf doll, one that I needed to have finished for her by her birthday, and whose outfits I needed to sew up and photograph and review by this weekend for Crafting a Green World. I'm glad that I'm getting a Waldorf doll made for each of my daughters, since I've always wanted them to have one, but I'm also quite glad that after Willow's doll, my Waldorf dollmaking days will be over until I have grandchildren--I'm finding Waldorf dolls to be a fussy project, and the embroidery and hand-sewing are not my specialties.

Thank goodness this Waldorf doll has been a little simpler to make than the last one--between the two, I discovered this method of using wool yarn to form the doll's head, instead of wool roving, and it's a terrific trick!

I'm using stash wool yarn from Knit Picks

starting the ball

The ball of yarn should measure 10" circumference

 It was a GREAT tip, making the process of forming the doll's head so much less fussy and time-consuming. I also tried to tie the inner head strings using the same yarn, to make it sturdier than it was when I used thread--

--but that was a mistake. I'm using a light skin fabric to match my daughters' complexions that they inherited from their father (you can't tell from photos, but I'm darker than Matt is, especially in the summer), and of course the blue showed through.

I also shouldn't have wrapped the wool yarn ball quite as firmly as I did, because I don't think that I was able to get as much definition with the inner strings as I could with the roving, but I think it made up for it in the fact that the head itself is much firmer, and so I think it still looks better and has a more pleasing heft: 

Now, I don't want you to get me wrong with all the griping--yep, this doll project is fussy, and time-consuming, and challenging, but it IS do-able. In addition, a handmade Waldorf doll, even springing for a store-bought pattern and doll-full of wool roving, is vastly cheaper than a purchased one, and both my kiddos, even at the ripe old ages of six and (gasp!) eight, LOVE their dolls, which I honestly don't think they'd do if I'd simply handed them a store-bought one. So, make one! I've even got a Waldorf dolls and dollmaking pinboard that I'm still adding to, in direct contradiction to my claim that I'm not going to make another one for many, many years. 

Okay, now I'm off to start making Willow's treasure map brownie cake, and to see if she's still pitching a fit about her report on Indiana (in response to my insistence that several random facts strung together does NOT a report make), and to put the skull crayons in the oven to melt down, and to mow the lawn, and to find the face paint...

...or maybe I'll just take a shower, then get drunk and eat brownie batter.

Felted Wool Sweater Christmas Trees

New in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, one of our favorite handmade holiday decorations: felted wool sweater Christmas trees--

I use wool sweaters that I felt, and then I overdye them green--the color doesn't catch on all of the sweaters, but it catches enough that the trees all match, while retaining the obvious juxtaposition of different colors and patterns:

The day after Thanksgiving: that's the day that our own felted wool forest will come to life here at home!

Bugs...

Because I can't thoughtfully review a gorgeous-looking eco-friendly children's craft kit until my children have had the chance to see if they can wreck it, throw a fit over it, or use it to shoot their eyes out, I do occasionally get sent the odd freebie, such as this Artterro wool felt bug kit that I threw at Willow to see what she'd do with it.

Here's what she did, as a matter of fact:

Played with the wool felt shapes:

Hot glued some stuff together:

 
Did a little sewing:

Admired her work:

And did a little more sewing:

And yes, her fingernails are filthy. Finally had to trim them practically down to the nail bed to get them clean:

 
Cute as a bug?

 
Definitely nothing cuter than that bug-making baby!

You must now click yourself over to Crafting a Green World and enter the Artterro craft kit giveaway that I'm hosting. You can't win if you don't play!

Raw Wool, 1/4 Fleece

Guess what I bought at the Ann Arbor farmer's market yesterday?

It has grass and twigs in it, and smells like sheep. The girls and I are going to have a blast this summer.

Me! On the Web!

One of the things I did a few weeks ago that is pretty cool is enter into a consignment agreement with Handmade Collective, a new web shop. I think their site design is quite lovely, and my goal is to get more and better-quality publicity for my work than I've so far been able to manage myself. Etsy is a terrific way to sell online, and it's still my primary outlet, but it's easy to get lost in the huge masses of beautiful products at Etsy unless someone has conducted a pretty specific search or they're willing to do a lot of browsing. So Handmade Collective is kindly hosting one of my denim quilts, and I hope it sells.

Although I still haven't managed to find enough peace and sun to photograph and post my latest Etsy creations, the tie-dyed bibs I've been making a ton of and the tie-dyed quilt I'm pretty happy with since I learned how to use a bias tape maker for it, I did manage to find the sun and peace to at least photograph and upload/revise some listings for the felted wool pins I made last month and the essential oil soaps I posted a while ago with some then grumpy photos. I think these photos are much nicer: