New year... New Christmas decorations?!

Well here we are on the first post on my new blog. It's telling that I have started with something small and that I will likely make and then put away for almost a whole year. But then planning has never been my forte!

And so with that, the tale of how I chose to do this began. And as for most crafts projects these days, it started with observing the tutorial on pinterest. I am not going to say which one, as there are a hundred and one tutorials on this one (actually a quick googling suggests about 431,100 results!) so you can find your own if you really need to. My Christmas tree was fairly sparse this year, as the cat does tend to climb it, and has spent two years systematically smashing all the baubles that I used to have, so I thught I might try colonising it again with slightly fewer breakables.

So what am I making? Mini pom-pom Christmas baubles!

There's the ingredients list. But I think it's only fair to point out that in this case, it's sadly not the wine I am using, but the very thin wire mesh that is wrapped around the bottle. 

So for the process, it's simply wrap yarn around the tines of the fork, tie off and then cut down the loops on either side. That's how to do it according to every single tutorial out there. But what I didn't find was, how many times to wrap it round in order to get a sensible shaped pom-pom. The first one I did was a bit like a bad hair cut; short on the side, long on the top and bottom. So I tried again, I thought maybe I hadn't wrapped enough, so off I went again, far more loops this time. And yes, whilst the pom-pom was bigger, it was still naff. Cursing the beautiful photos on pinterest that had brought me this far, I tried less wraps and actually it didn't look too bad. Nothing like the pictures I had seen, but far closer than any so far.

So here are the first three in action. They had a bit of attention (I rolled them between the palms of my hands in order to try and round them) but you can see the first two are far wonkier than the third. So lesson is learnt. Mini pom-poms must stay mini.

Finally I clipped off stretches of the wine wire in order to wrap around the centre of the pom-pom and affix to the tree. Simple. Once you know how anyway.

So here is one on the tree. Delightful red yarn from who knows where getting used up slightly. Although if we're honest, it's just being moved from a box in my craft cupboard to a box in the attic for the next eleven months!