Life in the Oak Tree

We made copy-cat wikki stix yesterday. My 7 year old loves them and used them to make all sorts of things as well as using them to tie up his little action figures, spiderman style. They're a little expensive to buy for something so simple and something that gets gross enough for me to want to throw away. So, I found a way to make them. Since we also have a heap of children, in addition to our 6, to get Christmas gifts for, I thought this might be a fun thing to make and give as gifts. We made 230 some of these things which are 100% cotton yard, about 8 inches long, covered with wax.

Here's how we did it:

Supplies: yarn (100% cotton is best), paraffin wax, wax ring of toilet sealant, wax paper

In a double broiler or a pot with a bowl inside it, melt 1/4 cup of paraffin wax (gulf wax from wal-mart, about $2.50 for 1lb) and one wax toilet ring. Ew! Those can be found in the plumbing section of wal-mart for around $1.50. For stirring, I wanted to use something that I didn't have to clean later for stirring so used a broken dowel rod I had on hand.

We didn't want to get our hands or any other thing that we might ever want to use again in the wax (lest it be too difficult to clean it up... I'm a little on the lazy side and I'd rather avoid the work, thanks.) so we decided to put the string on a wire. When I went to the garage to find a wire, there, on the floor was a croquet wire. So, we looped the yard onto the wire and dipped it in for a few seconds and then pulled it out. It's good to let the excess drip off for a bit. Here we have 5 long pieces looped onto the wire. We did up to 20 some at a time.

Going in:

Coming out:

We then laid the yarn on the wax paper (working on not dripping since I didn't want to have to clean it up!) to cool off. After I slid the yarn off the wire, I cut off the loops which had been on the wire and did not get dipped in the wax. This resulted in strips taht were about 8 inches long.

Here they are before the loops were cut off: