Hooking for Good – Poms Away!

This week’s giveaway was from an amazing artist: Heather Saulsbury of the Creatively Happy blog and podcast (please check out both!) I figured it was only fitting for my donation this week to an art project, so of course I was reminded of my promise to Christen Mattix.  She is knitting a blue yarn line to the sea from a park bench on the street.  It’s part performance art, part yarnbombing, all amazing.  Anyway, on one of her posts about what should happen when the line finally hits the water, I commented:

Friend, I am many things, but I am not a liar.  Scratch that, I totally lie all the time.  No, not all the time.  Like, what would you say is an acceptable percentage?  All right already, let’s just say I made the pom-poms and get on with it, eh?

My mom taught me before to make pom-poms with two cardboard discs, but I totally forgot how (even though I blogged about it).  This video by Bernat Yarn is amazing, except that it mentions a template that I don’t have – I just used a duct tape roll for the outer circle and a scotch tape roll for the inner circle. If you watch the video for 1 minute and then say I got it, ya don’t.  Watch the whole thing or you’ll totally miss the ingenious tips about cutting (not that I did that).

Is there anything better than cutting into a pom-pom and watching all the tiny strings break away?

Man, I really used that template up.

For the smaller pom-poms, I used the fork-method and some really aggressive trimming. You can google the technique, or check out the book Pom-Poms, which is where I learned it. The boys helped me with this a little bit, but they don’t quite have the hand-eye coordination for tiny, perfect movements yet and their forks looked like they had been attacked by rebellious blue spaghetti.

So, if you didn’t make a blood oath to Christen, you’re probably wondering how else to use a pom-pom for good?

• I attended a class with author Leanne Prain, and she said pom-poms are the perfect way to get a kid started on yarnbombing.  I trust her because she did, like, write the book on it.
• Have a friend who is stretched a little too thin? What about making her a pom-pom wreath or garland and leaving it on her porch?  Or maybe the two of you could make the same thing for a local senior center/classroom/new local business…whatever!
• Knit the Bridge (which just won a Mayor’s Award – congratulations!) is starting on a new project called Pop des Fleurs that will require a LOT of handmade flowers for the testing and installation phases.  Check out their “puff flower” tutorial here.
• Pom-pom hats are totally in right now, and that might come in handy next week…

And after you’re done with all that making, you deserve a little reward!  So our randomly selected winner for today is:

Congratulations to Carina, who just happens to be the awesome crocheter and knitter behind the blog Häkelmonster!  I hope you enjoy Heather’s prize-pack of awesomeness!

Bye,
Jenny Brown