14 February 2018

Valentine's Day Crafts, or a bunny for your honey

Happy - hoppy? - Valentine's Day.

So, Valentine's Day is approaching and I have leftover red wool yarn. What to do? Make a pom pom of course!

The new toy in my studio is a set of Clover pom pom makers. As you can see the language on the packaging is Japanese and my Japanese is non-existent; however, Youtube is filled with tutorials on making pom poms with this gadget.

Lamb's Pride yarn, Clover pom pom maker set.

Ready to cut yarn.

Sharp scissors needed to cut through all the wraps.

The only tricky bit is tying the pom pom - red yarn is looped around that grove you see in the image above to tie the pom pom strands in place.  Once wrapped around the groove, the two ends of the red yarn are pulled tight as can be and knotted several times.  It is difficult to pull the yarn tight enough to hold all the strands of the pom pom securely in place. I think old reliable waxed dental floss might be the way to go - it doesn't slip during tying, and is virtually unbreakable.  I will try dental floss with my next batch of pom poms, then overwrap with a matching yarn tie.

Two halves of the pom pom maker pulled apart - voila!

The bunny template is from https://mrprintables.com/pom-pom-animals-valentines-cards/ .  This site is affiliated with https://pommaker.com/. Their "donut" pom maker is cute but I found it harder to use than the Clover model. Could just be me. 

I printed the  bunny and bear templates onto card stock, being sure to print in "landscape" mode after enlarging the templates to "100%" in the top menu.

Bunny and bear templates.

Bear and tulips.