Bored? Need something to do? Make some pompoms! Grab some yarn and just go to town. But first, I will show you how to make a pompom the easy way. It doesn’t matter what you use them for or if you just want to make some small bundles of yarn. Think smarter, not harder. Things you will need: Lots of yarn, scissors, tape (maybe?), your fingers, and a pompom maker.

1. First, you need to make a pompom maker. Grab some leftover cardboard and cut a small square with a little notch out of it. Depending on how large you make the square, your pompom will be bigger or smaller. Use some masking tape or duct tape to wrap around the cardboard to help prevent or help with bending as you make the pompom. Make it look like this:

2. Measure out some yarn. You’ll need a surprisingly large amount of yarn to make a full pompom. This step will depend on what size of pompom you want to make and it will take practice to carefully judge the amount of yarn. It will also depend on what kind of yarn you choose to make your pompom with.

3. Wrap it around the pompom maker with the notch held sideways. This is self-explanatory. I hope you don’t get lost here. If not, here’s a picture:

4. Tie it off. Slide a larger piece of yarn into the notch behind the wrapped up yarn. Use the notch to wrap your strip of yarn around the bundle and tie it off with whatever knot you want to use.

5. Cut the ends. Slide one of the scissor blades between the bundle of yarn and the cardboard maker and cut the ends. Do this to both sides

6. Slide it off and fluff it. Toss it back and forth in your hands gently and shake it gently to fluff it up. If you shake it, make sure you hold it by the two ends of the string you used to tie the pompom together. Now, you have a perfect pompom just like the cover photo.

7. Trim it up. If you want a uniform pompom, trim up the tie strings ends and the rest of the pompom. If you want to use those strings to tie the pompom onto something, don’t trim those up just yet. They’ll give you something to hold onto when you do tie the pompom on something.

If you followed the directions, you should have a good pompom! Do whatever you want with it. Tie it onto a hat or prank someone with them somehow. You’ll figure it out. However, if you return here next week, I’ll show you how to make a rug out of the pompoms you just made.