10 Alternative Purposes for Dryer Lint

Ha! I lied, I only have one.

 Some very dear friends of mine loaned me a sewing machine a few weeks ago and they also gave me this adorable book about making sock animals for my birthday!

Adorable.

Obviously, I had to try this out. I picked up some super cheap socks from the thrift store and decided that a fish would be my very first project. (Cause the book says it's one of the easiest.) I got right to work, making my own fish shape and cutting it out of a sock; trying to figure out how on earth you're suppose to feed a stretchy sock through a sewing machine at all. That part was pretty hilarious. I would just put the pedal down and let it run until it choked up/tried to go over an edge then I would stop it, lift the needle, turn the sock, and let it go some more. That poor sock. Then I realized I hadn't left a big enough for turning it right side out and stuffing it! But I worked through all that, did a little bit of hand sewing where I apparently managed to miss sewing on the sock at *all*, and finally had a whole (funny looking) fish.  I stepped back to look at it and thought to myself, "Huh... I thought this would be fluffier. Oh wait." You have to stuff these things! Duh. I however, am not a sewer, and I don't remember the last time I had stuffing materials.

Something you might need to know about me is that I am a flash-in-the-pan crafter. I do things a few times to see if I like it, and then something new pops up that piques my curiosity so off I go to try that out. So I knew that it was vitally important to finish this project once I had started it; who can tell how long it will take me to get back around to things once they go in the "to-do" bin upstairs!

  So I raced upstairs (quietly, or course, because Addie was napping) and dug through all my bins of craft supplies on the off chance that I had stashed some stuffing of Mom's. (Love you, momma!) No such luck though. What I did find was a bit of fluff that I had saved from when I was doing the initial cleaning washes for Addie's cloth diapers and, to borrow from Despicable Me, "Light-bulb...".  I didn't have enough of that fluff to stuff a whole fish but (!) my washer and dryer are in the basement and there is no trash can down there so I've just been cleaning the dryer lint trap off into a plastic bag. Score! So I brought up the bag of dryer lint and I was back in business. (Now, I do not recommend this method if you have dust allergies, that would just be mean-spirited.) It was pretty short work, although I was amazed at how much the dryer lint packed down. And here is the end result!

At this point we just call it Fish. Addie loves it though! 

I know, the tail looks *so* weird. That's what happens when you try to use a stretchy sock, and you stuff the fish with dryer lint.

Still pretty cute.

And yes, that is a hair sticking out from underneath the button. I took this picture before I spent 20 minutes pulling all the stray hairs out of the fish. (Bet you've never seen a hairy fish before!) All in all I think it was fairly successful and I will definitely try again, with a less stretchy sock, once I have some real stuffing.

Happy Saturday to y'all!
~Noble