A swirl is one of the advanced temari stitches (patterns). This green and yellow temari ball is made using only swirls (find a complete tutorial on temarikai.com). I really enjoyed making this one: the way the swirls develop with each stitch is nearly magical.
One of my friends visited this website and asked, whether I make temari as cat toys. You can imagine what I answered knowing that each mari takes a couple of days of hard work and fine stitching 🙂 It is much more accurate to say that I use the cat to make a great background for my temaris.