Felt ball adventures

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We have spent time in our friend’s cabin in PEI the last two summers. There really is nothing quite like it and I’m not good enough of a writer to describe why. If you visit, no matter how much (or how little) you are in touch with your emotions or memories, one thing we will certainly have to agree on is that it is just so incredibly colourful. The spaces are always filled with rich, vibrant colours — no matter where you look. The bronzes of the beaches, the blues of the water and skies, the greens of the fields with freckles of purples. It’s the latter that really captivated me. 


With so much green, you can only expect there to be lot of sheep and hence lot of wool. Of course I couldn’t resist buying local wool and of course I ended up with 3 shades of green and 3 shades of purple. Pure wool in DK or maybe sport weight. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but it certainly wasn’t going to be a scarf or a sweater as the wool was quite thick and not terribly soft. 

Then I had an idea -- I was going to make a felted potholder for the cabin and its owners. Not just a knitted one, but wool-ball one. I saw them in gift shops and a tutorial was easy enough to find: this video was very useful. I rolled my balls to be about 1 inch in diameter and I must say that wasn't as annoying as I expected -- the wool being pure natural fibre, it stuck to itself very nicely, so ball rolling and weaving in the ends didn't take too long. I stuck the balls into my daughter's cotton tights (I separated them into groups of 3-4 with a knot) for a wash and dry cycle. 

Most of them came out beautifully, but there were a few that acquired undesired appendages, so I had to roll/wash/dry a few extras. This wasn't all a waste of time as I also realized that my first few balls were quite a bit smaller than my later ones, so I remade some to have more uniform sizes throughout. 


I arranged them into a hexagonal shape keeping the colours scattered throughout to be reminiscent of the landscape. Then I started sewing them together. Pro tip: each ball needs to be securely attached to all of its neighbours in order to be uniformly squished on all sides and not pop out from the bottom. I had to pull quite tight throughout, so I was happy that the yarn was nice and sturdy. I also had to rearrange a few balls to match the sizes of the decreasing number of available spots towards the end. 

And voila! Just in time for Christmas. 


Somewhere in the process I thought I would lose the hexagonal shape entirely but tilting your head about 30 degrees to the right, you can still see my original pattern of 4-5-6-6-5-4 rows of balls. 

My daughter declared that it's very cute. I agree.

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