Tiddly Pom Pom Pom

Crafters amongst you will recognise this scenario...

...the messy wool stash, a mix of odds and sods of balls and bits of balls accumulated over many years of knitting malarkey. I learned to knit when I was about nine or ten years old. I have clear memories of taking my knitting to primary school with me and sitting on a playground wall practising my skills, avoiding all other primary school playtime nonsense like playing stupid games or standing around gossiping. The seeds of introversion were sown early for me. 

I also grew up with lessons of frugality because we didn’t have a lot of money and certainly materials for crafting, like wool, fabrics, embroidery threads, fancy paper, glitter and the like, were luxuries and so I learnt to squirrel away every scrap that wasn’t used in a sort of ‘Hunger Games For The Creative Mind’ kind of way. 

However, now I am a financially solvent, mortgage free adult and arts and crafts are a very important part of my new life now I am no longer a TEACHER, I have gathered quite a lot of woolly oddments and the stash needed serious addressing. Something useful and beautiful, then, in the spirit of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement? 

Pompoms! (Apparently, it is ‘pomPON’ but I’m not having that. Once a pompomee, always a pompomee.) 

I bought these just before Christmas. They have been a revelation in the making of pompoms...

...having been raised on the ‘two circles of cardboard’ method. Pompom making time with these little beauties is halved, nay quartered even, and I became a pompom whizz over the next three days. I used a mix of the peach, pink and green sizes as the blue makes mahoosive pompoms, like as-big-as-your-head-size. As I pompommed, I attached each to a piece of tapestry fabric, which had been loitering in my craft supplies for so long I can’t even remember the reason for its purchase...

I attached them in a random way, just playing around with various colours and the three sizes. I attached them without planning mostly because Bambino is a notorious pompom thief and although I am much calmer now I am no longer a teacher, I still have some limitations to my patience re: cat running off with pompoms. Speed, then, was of the essence.

And finally, a pompom rug was born! And my wool stash was seriously depleted.

I think there must be nigh on 150 pompoms. It is beautifully deep and tactile, gorgeous to sink cold toeses into and wriggle around. Could it be a piece of 3D wall art, maybe? It’s heavy but infinitely huggable. The wools remind me of the other things I made with them - baby clothes, toys, jumpers. It’s a memories rug.

I am left with a quandary though. I had two wool stash boxes. Those two boxes are looking very sparse. And as any crafter knows, a sparse stash box is a sad stash box. Do I need to go wool shopping, maybe? Hmmmmm....