I'm not normally a bright-color kind of girl. Earth tones have pretty much always been my thing, and I gravitate toward them naturally. But at this time of year in Wisconsin, there just isn't much color... ANYWHERE. Snow, snow, snow. And not the fluffy sparkly magical kind of snow that blankets everything like marshmallow fluff and is fun to look at. Nope. This time of year, we've got grimy, sludgy grey piles of snow mixed with salt, dirt, and things we probably don't want to think about. It can get downright depressing!
In the spirit of livening things up and giving the house a fresher, more joyful appearance, I decided to act on an idea I got the other day. One of the gals on the Two Peas message board mentioned that she organized her knitting needles by putting them in vases, which I thought was ingenious. Then I thought, why not take in one step further, and top those needles with stray balls of stash yarn?
Here's what I came up with last weekend- my tribute to the Allium flower, which I love.
I am so delighted to have finally found a use for that scrumptious bright blue Berroco Plush yarn! It was an impulse buy on sale, two years ago. (Like I said, I'm more of an earth tones gal) so it's been sitting in my stash trunk all lonesome in the dark. This is a much better use for it!
Soon I was raiding my stash to find bright cheerful colors and great textures. Next came the orange "poppies". (and to think that I had been kicking myself for impulse-buying ORANGE yarn..!)
And at that point, it was becoming an addiction, and I dug deep to find this coveted stash of retired Sirdar yarn to make these pussy willow inspired Big Boys. (Aha! Earth tones!) -To give you an idea of how huge these guys are, the sculpture in the background is nearly two feet tall...
There you have it. Silly puffball flowers that I stayed up to make until 1am last weekend. They make me so happy. And they are ridiculously simple to make. I was going to type up a little tutorial, but I don't think it's necessary- these are super easy-peasy. Materials I used were styrofoam balls to save on my stash, wooden skewers, tape, liquid stitch (or any craft glue that dries clear) and yarn. I thought that chunky, fluzzy yarns like Sirdar snowflake and Berroco Plush were the most charming, but any ole yarn'll do. Just wrap the yarn around a styro ball, secure the end w/ a skewer, and wrap the skewer with a contrasting color. I just taped the yarns at the bottom of the skewer, but if I were making them for someone, I'd use a craft glue. To create varying lengths, I taped skewers (and parts of skewers) together.
If you hop on the yarn-puffball-flower bandwagon, I'd really like to see what you come up with!
Serious warning- they really are really addicting. Really...
