Saturday, September 2, 2006

Saturday, Part 2

As mentioned in this morning's post (see below), Sean the WoolGatherer is in big trouble. I not only put aside my knitting to try making a dorodango, but I actually tried three! I figured I'd probably screw one up (which I did), so I'd wanted another one (or in this case two) as a back-up. So I spent most of the afternoon in the yard with a shovel and a bucket, digging up dirt, making mud and forming it into balls. Why, you might reasonably ask? Well, when I first read about them on Sean's site, it reminded me of something I would have done as a kid. I had a great friend growing up named Julie. She lived across the street from me and we both loved trying fun stuff like this. Kind of like when we used to take hammers, pulverize different color stones and make face paint by adding water to the dust! If we had heard of dorodango as a kid, we would have certainly spent days on end making them. So it was just fun to feel like a kid again, sitting out in the yard with a pan of dry dirt, rubbing it into the surface of a ball of mud! And I did have a lot of fun doing it.

As for the pictures...the first shot shows three of them in progress. The one on the left is two steps into the process, the one in the middle was one step further, and the one on the right was one step further yet. The one on the right is also the one that I screwed up during the second to last step of the process. While lightly polishing the surface a huge crack started and then it split in half. I guess I was rubbing too hard...argh! But the other two have successfully made it through that step and are just awaiting the final "capsule" which I'll do tomorrow. After that is done, they'll have a lot more shine and will gain even more over the two following days. Or so the instructions say! I'll post more pictures as they progress.

So now I'm off to do a few errands, then back to work on the knitting for sure! Oh and Sean, you're off the hook...but only because I had so much fun!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you totally did it! Amazing. Now I suppose I'll have to try one at some point.

Glad I'm off the hook!

Anonymous said...

Ken,
These are awesome! I went to the site to see them, and yours look just like them! Very, very cool! And good for you for gettin' down in the dirt and trying it! I'm very impressed!

Charles said...

I never seen does before!!!Do think that it's mud ball? It looks like mad out wood!!! mayBe carpeter made it? You did it great job!!! It looks just like that pic!!!wowo

Anonymous said...

this is freakin awesome and fascinating to read about and i so want to play. in florida we only have sand, what do i do??? meh! i must figure that one out. i looked up state soils from the dorodango link and florida's is apparently called myakka, which is.... 4 layers of sand. (sigh) i'm going to have to go to dirt depot or something. ;) looking forward to more pics!

Rosemary Q said...

Great postt thanks