Snowing Pom Poms

As usual I am in denial about how quickly Christmas comes and leave it too late to make all the lovely handmade Christmas decorations and things that I think about all year. Once again, I thought about starting to make an advent calendar on 29th November. Definitely not enough time to do it nicely so another year goes by with no daily December treats. I have been doing a few bits though.

When I thought about making this curtain of pom pom snow balls, I looked at my wool stash and decided that what would be really nice was a really fluffy white mohair type yarn. But I didn't have any. The next day I was in my local charity shop and there by the counter was a basket of wool with several balls of fluffy white yarn. I LOVE IT when that happens. So I bought one and got started.

I have a really cool little pom pom maker that my friend Annie got me from Japan, it makes it so much easier. The pom poms are about 4-5cm diameter, so quite small. I got through the one ball of yarn pretty quickly and it only made about 40 pom poms so I headed back to the charity shop and bought another ball. This time I mixed it with some yarn from my stash. This made making the pom poms take half the time and you get twice as many. In the end I made over 100.

Once I had used all the yarn and had a basket full, I put the project on hold for a few days. Threading the pom poms onto monofilament when there's a 10 month old on the loose is a nightmare. It just gets tangled up and is impossible to undo.

In the meantime I took some of the pom poms and glued them on to some nice long skinny twigs that I had picked up in the forest a while ago for making pom pom flowers that I had seen on Pinterest.

Then my husband picked up some holly branches to add to the display and I think it was just what it needed.

Once we put our tree up, I thought I better actually get on with stringing up the rest of the pom poms. I used invisible thread which is so fine it's like using hair. I tied pom poms at 15-25cm intervals on long lengths of thread, laying them out in a line so not to get them too tangled up. Then tied them to the curtain rail and secure with masking tape. They hang about 150cm long, just out of toddler reach.

I am really pleased with them. We have a bay window so the pom poms hang a distance from the window, creating a lovely curtain of snow across the room.