In response to her questions, though, and no offence to the lady with the gardening question – this one is just quicker and easier to answer and doesn’t need photos or soil or suchlike – here goes :
Bra balls are pretty much what you thought they were. They are essentially two plastic balls inside one another. The outer one opens up, you insert your bra, put the smaller call inside the cups, shove the straps inside the holes on the inside ball, close it up and there you go. It helps stop the cups getting squished in the washing machine (I have a wool cycle) and helps stop the fabric snagging on anything that might be floating about in the wash. It also, as you have seen, works pretty well for blocking children’s hats. I was going to stuff the thing with plastic bags, but I think this method provides better overall ventilation for quick and even drying.
The ball ring (and for a moment when I read your comment I had to do a double take as I had a senile moment and couldn’t think of ANYTHING that you could be talking about, then I thought that maybe you and Nico were getting bored and looking for something to spice up your “private time”, but then, thankfully, the penny dropped and I realised what you were on about) was also concerning me as far as overall wool weight goes. So – I weighed the ring on my diet scale – just short of 5g. Then I weighed an untouched ball (with ring inside) – ball is labelled as 50g – just over 55g. Not exactly conclusive – I could always take both items to the post office and use their scale but as I normally get there at the busiest times I don’t think it would go down to well.
I did manage to make a complete child’s hat with one full ball – very little left over – actually hardly any as I knit the tail thing until I had just about enough to darn in an end – which isn’t bad, is it? It is still posing on the bra ball but now with a bow not a tail. I think it’s quite cute and not too OVERTLY “baby girl pink””.
I am knitting an adult size hat with the other two balls, with Jackie hoping that I will use very little of the stuff as she wants something made from the leftovers. If I do run out and she asks nicely maybe I’ll buy another ball just for her.
I have finished things:
