Have You Made Yarn Dryer Balls?

 Update: Making these with more expensive yarn that supposedly had longer fibers did not eliminate the pilling at all.  I tried removing the pills as they formed on the balls, but they came back quickly.  I tried not taking the pills off which worked for a time.  At about the nine-month mark, however, the pills started coming off and sticking to my clothes.   What a pain having to pick these off a load of laundry!  Had I not been doing the "de-pilling" early on, that would probably have happened sooner. I don't think these are work the expense, time, and effort in the long run. 

You know the ones that you make from rolling a ball of wool yarn and felting it in the washer and dryer? I did and I like them because they:

•  Really do eliminate static cling--unless you really over-dry the clothing
•  Keep the wrinkling down
•  Save money.  (There is the initial cost of the yarn, but these have got to last a really long time.  What can happen to them?  With dryer sheets you have the ongoing expense and contribute to the "we are making too much garbage" problem.)
• Make less noise than the rubber balls.  The rubber dryer balls you find in the detergent section made too much noise for me.  Five minutes and they hit the garbage can. These yarn balls make some noise, but it's well within my range of acceptable.

The one downside for me can be seen in this photo.  They pilled. 

I was expecting to have this gorgeous bowl of felted yarn balls on my dryer--decorative AND useful.  These stay in the dryer instead.  It could be the yarn I used which was the only fully wool one available at Joann's.  After this happened, I read up on wool yarn and found that some wool yarns are made from shorter fibers.  Shorter fiber wool yarn may pill. Supposedly this stops after a while.  I've been picking the pilled material off these balls for a month, but they continue to form new ones.  All things considered, this is a small downside.

Some people said the balls decreased their drying time.  I have not found this to be true for me at all. I found no change at all for anything from lightweight items to towels.

After seeing another blog post with this bowl of pristine felted yarn balls, though, I have dryer ball envy.  I'm going to try this again.  I LOVED that bowl of beautiful felted yarn balls in muted matching hues!  I've been looking online for wool with longer fibers that doesn't cost a fortune.  Turns out wool yarn is not cheap!  I'm also going to try rolling the yarn more loosely.  I didn't roll my yarn tight, but it was definitely not loose at all.  Now I'm wondering if the looser rolling might increase felting and cause the balls to be even less noisy.     I'll let you know.