Jay, an illustrator in the art department, gave me a Ziploc of lint balls. He found them when cleaning out his dryer. They're astonishingly round and smooth; some even look like polished rocks. (Why is lint always gray?)
Viewing this as a design challenge, I decided to make a necklace. I found some leftover Lucite beads as well as a couple of wood and glass beads. After arranging and rearranging the beads on my design board, I finally committed. My biggest challenge: stringing the lint balls so they didn't implode. It took me longer than expected to poke the needle through each one. But I'm proud to say that I used all but three of the lint balls: one fell apart around the needle, and I wasn't convinced that two others — brown and crackly — were actually lint. And I didn't want to wreck the integrity of the design.
Here's Jay holding the necklace. I gave him some organic yarn samples, which he may try to tumble around some kind of core. Because we don't want to wait years for the next batch of felted beads.
Have you tried this at home?