DIY yarn pompom ornaments

with only 3 days until Christmas, I figured I better post this tutorial. in early November I stumbled across a trove of artificial trees at our local hardware store. I lucked out that the tiniest tree was only $8 US and I happened to have some spare cash from subbing that week. the decorations they had for sale were... not to my taste, shall we say? so I decided to stick with the thrifty theme and make my own ornaments. 

the idea for yarn pompoms came from this tiny pompom curtain tutorial [it's in French.]

I wasn't entirely confident that I would be successful. so, I picked yarn colors I felt I could use for other projects [what projects exactly I have no idea.] I also didn't want to have the obvious red and green color scheme. Husband likes to have a tree that doesn't look too... planned. and I of course want to plan everything down the position of the last branch.

I started by making a pompom on a fork, like in the tutorial above and elsewhere on the internet. I was frustrated because it seemed too small and it was difficult to slide the yarn off the fork. so I dug around in my kitchen drawer and realized that my potato masher would be just the right size I wanted. you just have to be sure to wrap around an even number of... prongs? loops? squiggles? whatever they are... so you can slide the bundle off at the end.

1. wrap the yarn into a bundle around your potato masher [or fork] a good 30 to 40 times.
2. tie some yarn loosely around to hold the bundle together and slip off the masher.
3. tighten the yarn as much as you can and knot securely. tie the ends off to make a look to hang.
4. cut the loops around the bundle to open up your pompom. trim if needed.

and that's that. you have a yarn pompom, with a convenient loop to use it as an ornament! I repeated the process using different yarn color combinations to make an army of little pompoms for my tree. if you use only one color at a time, just wrap it twice as much so the pom pom is still full and fluffy.

we have also added a few other interesting ornaments to our tree, including dinosaurs and a lion... but that's another story. [which does not involve a potato masher.]