Wooly balls

About a year ago, I switched from dryer sheets to wool dryer balls. My cat, Calvin, loves to find the wooly balls that make it out of the dryer after doing laundry. This Christmas, I found some wooly balls with jingle bells inside on Etsy. I thought they would be the perfect present for Calvin. I ordered them and both Calvin and Hobbes thoroughly enjoyed them. They liked them so much that, for the most part, the wooly jingle balls are destroyed. Two of them lost their jingles and all of them I've had to sew up some holes.

I found a tutorial for dryer wool balls so I thought I would give it a shot. I bought some yarn at Michael's and got to work. I used this tutorial at Home for Hire--DIY Wool Dryer Balls. I think I ended up using the same yarn for some of the balls.

So far, both cats seem to enjoy the homemade version. Mine are not as jingly as the ones I bought on Etsy. I may have to experiment with another way of including the jingle bells. The way I did these was to thread 3 bells on a piece of wool string. Then I wrapped wool around the set of bells to make the ball shape. I think some of the wool strands got inside the bells. It must interfere with the jingle. You can tell there is something inside because it makes a slight noise, but not quite what I was hoping for.

I made two sizes--small with bells inside and large like dryer balls. In this picture, Calvin is playing with the large one and the smaller one is sitting nearby.