DIY Pom Pom Pillow

I’ve been making so many pom poms lately! This time on a pillow.

I saved a picture of this pillow from Living with punks ages ago on my DIY board on Pinterest and finally decided to do something like it.

I’m not much of a sewer, so instead I crocheted the pillow. I used the same pattern I’ve used for the bows in my wreaths, just on a larger scale. I also decided to sew the pom poms more tightly onto the pillow than in the original. It just seemed like a sturdier option.

I just love how it looks. I used a wool yarn and the combination of white crochet and pom poms makes it look so wintery and cosy.

DIY Crochet Snow Lantern

We live in an apartment so we don’t have a yard, just a balcony. So, I had this amazing (in my opinion, of course) idea that I’d make a snow lantern, like the once we used to make when we were little, only instead of snow I’d use yarn and polyfill and then I could keep it inside! Using a led light of course, this thing would catch fire like nobody’s business.

Crocheting the balls was the fun part, just make a basic amigurumi ball in the size you want. Trying to assemble it or even trying to pile it for a second, so I could see how it was coming together and estimate how many more I still needed to make, was the part where the balls kept rolling on every direction and I lost my temper. Whew. But I managed it! And I think it looks so nice. I like how it is minimalistic and even quite sophisticated as far as Christmas decorations go, but also cosy and fun. I can see myself pulling this out every winter for next 50 years, without it looking tacky.

I sewed all the balls together, and it is really sturdy. I could throw it across the room and not do it any damage. But if I were to do it again… I’d use a glue gun. And just try to control my throwing impulses. Also, I love crocheting, but definitely the easier route would have been just wrapping Styrofoam balls with yarn and gluing them together. Ah well, all that ends well!

Happy Independence Day!

Today is the independence day here in Finland and, being on a bit of a wreath kick, I decided to make an (independence) wreath for our door.

I was inspired by this tutorial on Bleubird blog. For colours I chose three different shades of blue and two different shades of white. I didn’t have a wreath base, so just cut two rounds from a pizza box and wrapped them with blue yarn to make the base more sturdy. Once I had a mound of pom-poms and was running out of yarn, I started to tie them onto the base. Then realized that I didn’t have enough and had to make some more. The wreath takes a huge amount of pom-poms, but they are so much fun to make, I didn’t mind.

I’m already thinking about other colour combinations to try. White and different shades of red, with a green bow. Or all white with a red bow.

I know that in some countries independence day is a huge party with fireworks and stuff, but we are just going to burn candles, eat cream cake, visit the graveyard and watch the president’s independence day reception.

Happy independence day!

Yarn Ampersand

I know ampersands are a bit in at the moment, but I wanted to do a yarn covered something. I couldn’t really figure out a letter I’d want to look at and an ampersand seemed nicely ambiguous.

The pictures don’t really show the true colour, which is a much deeper mint.

A mini-tutorial:

I first free-handed the shape onto paper and then traced it onto cardboard.

I covered the ends and the overlapping parts with yarn first and taped it in place. Then I just started to wrap the yarn over the other parts and took care to cover all the tape and endings.

From the front.

And here is the back. You could make it equally petty on both sides, but I didn’t think that necessary. I’ll either hang it up on the wall or put it in the bookcase. And hope no-one picks it up…

The wrapping isn’t perfect, but I don’t mind handmade things to look handmade.

It worked better than I thought and I’m very happy with it!