A Cozy Christmas Wall Hanging (and Epic Pompom Fail)

Hanging this cozy DIY Christmas wall hanging with care,
I step back to critique. It needs pompoms! Then I discover how not to make them.

This morning I fixed my husband’s sandwich, walked him to the door, and then waved him good-bye. He is away to work, and knowing him, he has his day planned out. The chances are high that it will work the way he has it planned.

Until he gets home.

Because there’s something about this house that looks a lot like this calendar page…

Andy, our hyper little furball, appeared to feel the same way as the calendar dog this morning. He kept peering up at me and around me as if to find something he thought should be there, but somehow, wasn’t.

Maybe he was looking for yesterday.

The same way I am.

Where did it go?

We were humming along, my daughter-in-law and her littles, having a grand old time cutting and sewing and making Christmas dresses for them all, when suddenly, the day was over. And we were far from done.

Twenty-six or more undone things from The List are staring me in the face this morning.

I’m blaming the pompoms.

There was this Christmas decor project I made for our cozy buffalo check and sweater knit Christmas, and hung on the wall with a little triumphant smile. Or maybe, a huge, gloating grin.

One project to cross off the list!

Then, I looked at it again, and realized it wasn’t quite right.

It needed pompoms hanging from the corner.

I’m sure no one else tries re-inventing the wheel with quite the same talent as a certain person I know.

Look for a tutorial? Google some easily found instructions?

Nope. I was going by memory. I had watched my mother and grandmother make pompoms, and the good old ways are good enough for me!

I went about wrapping yarn and tying and cutting and trimming.  I have to admit, things were humming along nicely. Until a little memory niggled at me and said, “Didn’t they used to steam the yarn ball to fluff it out? That sounds like a good old-fashioned trick that I can wow the modern world with.”

Umm. No.

First of all, while dangling a pompom over the boiling pot of water, I dropped him.  I couldn’t even look, politely averting my eyes until he dried a little. He looked like he deserved a decent burial in a special box. No one could leave anything in such misery, so I tried CPR, with lots of TLC, STAT, and he survived. He’ll never be the same, but he forgave me, and joined his luckier buddy on the wall hanging in the end.

Two Lessons to take away from my Epic Pompom Fail:

1. Modern yarn is not created equal to 1950s yarn. I was using some sweet Bernat Softee Chunky red yarn, and softy doesn’t cut it. I should have had some wool yarn with a serious twist to it, that would have responded to steaming without getting softer and unraveling. That old yarn might have unraveled, but it would also have “felted” and created a beautiful, melted together in a pretty way, ball. I don’t pretend to know a lot about old yarn and felting, but that is what I gathered when I tried to discover what went wrong.
2. Don’t try something you’ve never done before without deep and intense scientific research. BEFOREHAND. Don’t take shortcuts because the calendar should say it’s Christmas, and you still haven’t torn off the October page. Your pompoms will thank you. Your husband will thank you. Your house will thank you, because there won’t be bits and fuzzes of red yarn all over that got trimmed in the pompom triage intervention. My biggest g’little did her best. Her little 6 year old muscles wielded that heavy vacuum head, until she came to me demanding that I remove the head, because she couldn’t, and she needed to vacuum some fuzzy stuff from off the table.  She was totally disgusted by fuzz on the table. When I suggested in time-starved desperation that she could swipe the fuzz onto the floor, and vacuum it up from there, she looked at me as if I had suggested she throw food on the floor.

The End

In the evening, relaxing in my recliner while wrapped in a cozy Christmas throw, reading and dozing and gathering wool, I saw this:

It’s going to be a cozy Christmas after all.

If you want to make this Christmas wall-hanging with pompoms

please don’t let my experiences scare you, because they really are easy. If you follow directions.

Here are some pompom tips you can try:

1. There’s no tried and true brand of yarn for pompoms. Softer yarn makes it easier to get a nice round fluffy look, but even the saver yarns work. When you make a pompom from a cheaper yarn, you can brush it out when it’s finished. The more you brush (try not to brush with heavy strokes), the fluffier your pompom will be.
2. Trim your pompoms. Give them a good haircut, to shape and shorten straggly ends. Keep the finished size in mind when you form the pompom, and make them bigger than you want the end result to be. Finish brushing before you complete the trimming.
3. A pompom maker creates the best results, but you can also cut two equal “donuts” of cardboard to use as a maker.
4. The more yarn you wrap on the maker, the fluffier and fuller your finished yarn ball will be.
5. This tutorial post has detailed directions if you need more words and pictures.
6. Try this easy yarn project in the place of the cozy wall hanging.

Enjoy creating pompoms for your cozy Christmas wall hanging.

And please share this post to Pinterest if you’re not doing the Christmas things yet.