Tuesday 23 July 2013

Our Hacky Sack Story

The other day while experimenting with different "no seam" crochet techniques I ended up with adorable little balls.   We stuffed them with a variety of fillings to make hacky sacks and fidget toys.   


 The main objective with the hacky sack is to toss it around on the top of your feet and to not let it touch the ground but we tend to use all of our body parts...OUCH!   We discovered popcorn kernels are a friendlier weight, however, they eventually absorb moisture so for a longer lasting sack we filled them with acrylic beads from the craft store. 

After a morning of cleaning up messy moon dough I put a small amount into one of the balls,  Moon dough is NOT fun to be hit with either so instead of a hacky sack it is now the ingredient of our D.I.Y. Sensory Fidget Toys.  Perfect for stopping my two kids one year apart in age from squeezing the life out of each other.  Moon dough is pricey so we started hand making our own with this awesome recipe.  


Sack Pattern
(4 mm hook) Ch 2.
Rnd 1: Work 6 sc in first chain. Mark first st for beg of rnd; move marker up each rnd.
Rnd 2: Work 2 sc in each sc around – 12 sc.
Rnd 3: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next sc; repeat from * around – 18 sc.
Rnd 4: *2 sc in next sc, sc in each of next 2 sc; repeat from * around – 24 sc.
Rnd 5: *2 sc in next sc, sc in each of next 3 sc; repeat from * around – 30 sc.
Rnds 6-8: Sc in each sc around.
Rnd 9: *Sc2tog, sc in each of next 3 sc; repeat from * around – 24 sts.
Rnd 10: *Sc2tog, sc in each of next 2 sc; repeat from * around – 18 sts.
Rnd 11: *Sc2tog, sc in next sc; repeat from * around – 12 sts.
Stuff firmly 3/4 of the ball with moon dough or kernels wrapped up tightly in layers of nylon hose or a balloon..
Rnd 12: Sc2tog around – 6 sts.
Fasten off.

Round 6 to 8 can be increased or decreased to make the balls any size.  We increased the pattern to for juggling balls and weighted them with a 1:4 ratio of poly fill and acrylic beads.



We added yarn hair and googly eyes to this Fidget Critter!

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