Pompom Monster Tutorial

This is my pompom monster for a project I am doing for a presentation in my son's kindergarten class in April. His teacher does an "enfant vedette" project where one child is highlighted for the week and one of the child's parents comes in for an hour and talks about their job or hobby so I will talk about knitting and my yarn shop and make these pompom monsters with the kids as the activity I will do with them. It's a cute and fun project to do with the kids. This was my trial monster to see how much yarn I need I prepare for each kid in Mackenzie's class. He has 18 classmates.

To make the pompom I used this free printable PDF from Mias Craft Ideas. I chose the size I wanted and I cut out the shape and traced it on cardboard from an empty cereal box (you need to make 2 of them to hold together when wrapping the yarn). Then I used a worsted weight yarn and wrapped the pompom tool. I cut around the edge of the yarn to release the strands & then I took a string and tied the pompom together. To see how that is done, you can watch this youtube video. I did trim a bit of the pieces afterwards (like a haircut) to make the monster even. Then I used my handy glue gun and glued on 2 google eyes & voila! A cute/adorable pompom monster!

 

(Side view of my monster)

Boomslang

I knit up Boomslang (free download on Ravelry) in less than a month. While it’s a mindless knit, there are a LOT of stitches. I casted on 300 stitches instead of the 220 the pattern recommends and I find it just right. Any less amount of stitches and it probably would choke me. I used 1.3 balls of Drops Baby Merino in black (21) and I used 1.5 balls of Drops Baby Merino in red (16). The extra red is because I finished it off with the red as well as started it with red. The pattern is just a simple knit 6 rows, purl 6 rows. I read on Ravelry that some knitters wrapped & turned to knit the purl section, but I don’t mind purling, so I did the purl rows as is. I knit this up on US 4 - 3.5 mm needles. I love how reversible it is, and I loved working with the baby merino yarn. I would definitely knit this pattern again, however the next one would be black and a variegated yarn, instead of 2 solids. I think the black would make a variegated yarn pop.

Owl Strap Covers

I knit up these adorable Owl Strap Covers for my friend’s new baby’s baby bucket car seat (Baby in yesterday’s post). I used up 32g of di.Ve' Torgnon Ombra yarn (approximately 57 yards of yarn). The pattern is: Strap Covers- Owl Keep You Safe by Melissa Schaschwary. It’s a very quick knit and makes a very cute gift. You can see my project on ravelry here. I made bobbles for the first time, you use them to close the strap around the car seat strap! Very neat. I used DMC floss to do the embroider of the owl’s feature (eyes, nose/mouth, feet).

Girlie Twist Hat

I recently knit up Twist Hat by Melissa J. Goodale for a precious baby girl. A good friend of mine had a 28 and a half weeker, who is doing extremely well and should be coming home from the hospital soon. i used .29 of a skein of Katia Candy on 2.75mm needles. The pattern actually changes to a larger needle after the ribbing but because I was making it a preemie size, I kept it to the smaller needles and it worked out perfectly. You can see more details on ravelry here.