THE SIENCE OF A POM POM AND THE PAIN OF CRAFTING

As I only had about three hundred other things to do I decided to make us some pom poms the other night, I had had some yarn waiting for this moment for some time. (How annoyig of a person does that not sound like? "I have lots of things to do, but I feel like making pom poms! Tralalala!")

But as it was propably twenty five years ago since I last made such I needed to consult google before getting started. If you suddenly get a pom-pom urge, here's how to:

You need to cut two circles with holes in the middle (like a donut) out of cardboard (or, I even saw they had ready made plastic pom pom rings on the hobby department in the big store but hey, come on...) - I cut up an old cat food box. I made a couple of sizes.

Then you spin your thread, you can use many at once, round both cardboard donuts, cut the threads up in between the donuts, put a string in and tie firmly before removing the cardboard. Zippa-dee-doodah, ze pom pom is ready!

As soon as I started cutting the cardboard I remember how much I actually hate crafting. Or not hate, but how much it frustrates me. It's messy, and if the result does not look pro-made, which it seldom does as I don't craft often enough, I get pissed off. I thought spinning the thread around and around would perhaps be meditative or so (as much meditative something can get with a baby, two very intense cats and two older boys with their computer games at home can get) but it was in fact not. And nowhere on the world wide consulting web did anyone say how long you should cut your threads or what would be the best way to spin them in order not to get all messed and knotted up or take forever to spin. Really, was this as annoyig when I was five years old?

I noticed that buy cutting away part of the circle spinning was faster and I was able to spin'em straight from the roll clew. But then the pom poms went bazookas when cut up and turned out all miffo as they wouldn't stay together long enough for me to tie them tight.

But shame on the ones with hundreds (alright, tens)  of meters of yarn to go who gives up! I went trough the pain of cutting some more cardboard and realized the best way was just to cut the donut open, not remove a slice, and tilt the pieces a bit so the ring could be fastened to a whole circle again for the cutting up phase. Pompom science here. Perhaps that's the way we did our pompelipoms when I was a kid too; maybe this is the way to go, but ze interwebz failed to tell me. Well now you now.

Then they started turning out al righ and fastt: pom poms, yeah!

When a lot of time had passed by I had a hellofalotta pompoms and it looked like a kindergarten class on a sugar rush had been all over the place.

But yeah, all the pom poms. They'd look good in a christmas tree for example, hanging one by one. Or as a garland. But I wanted to make a wreath out of mine. I know there are ready-made different wreath-bases to buy, but I would never come up with the idea to actually go somewhere to buy one. Instead I had to go the experimenting way, which obviously would not turn out as fancy as would I have had one of those making-life-easier-ready-made-base ones. I fastened mine on a ring cut out of cardboard, or thick paper actually; the only thing big and thick enough I could find after a bit of annoying searching time was a piece from a goodie bag I'd received.

I tied my poms to the ring I'd cut out, then glued a second paper ring onto that, and finished off with a bit of mexican oilcloth to make the wreath a bit sturdier. And to look nice on the backside. Which no one of course will ever see.


And ta-fucking-da, there it is on the door! Would make any mother-of-the-eight-year old who made it proud. Where that the case. I can say Dag made it. A total prodigy.

So much text about fluffy yarn balls. No but really, it turned out rather cute. And who doesn't love pom poms after all? Plus believe it or not, afterwards I even made some more of those as it was going fast and easy it almost was terapeutic rollig all that yarn after all.

Now I just need to invite some people over to admire that wreath while waiting for me to open the door (must linger a bit hehe); we live on the top floor with only two neighbors. So no one will really see it. But thank god for the internet, right?!