Pompom The Sky

Back in March I was working on a project that involved making lots of pompoms. It was so much fun! I love making pompoms, they are just so joyful, and making those made me think "I should do a pompom-themed project, but what??"

I'd also been vaguely thinking about maybe knitting another Sky Blanket (with a square knitted each day to represent the colours of the sky, inspired by / based on Lea Redmond's awesome Sky Scarf project) because it was such an enjoyable project to do, I'd loved the process of recording each day's weather and I was really curious to see how different the colours would turn out a second time round.

But, you know, knitting another blanket is a big project and I've already got a quilt I need to finish and a whole bunch of other WIPs that need to be knitted and sewn... so maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to get started on another big crafty commitment right now. And maybe I'd get bored making the same project all over again (especially when it came to sewing all those squares together, which I found it hard to motivate myself to do the first time round).

And then I had a brainwave - I should make sky pompoms!

Test pompoms in sky colours

Pompoms are pretty quick and easy to make, especially now I've got myself a fancy pompom maker...

... so I shouldn't have a problem keeping up with a pompom-a-day schedule. Making sky pompoms will also be a fun way to do a second sky project but avoid getting bored because pompoms are pretty different to blanket squares, are they not?

Plus one of the slightly frustrating things about the sky blanket project was that you're using two strands of yarn per square so the number of colour combinations you can choose to represent the sky is strictly limited.

The finished blanket looks great (well, I think so!) but this did make it difficult to choose the day's colours (especially on those typically English days where the sky is blue but it's also cloudy and it's maybe been raining but just starting to clear up but over there are some more rain clouds looming - so many different colours happening!) and a series of totally different-looking skies ended up being represented by the same colour combos.

I will be making my pompoms with SIX strands of yarn, so I'll be able to create lots of different colour combinations. I'm going to be using the same yarn as before - Stylecraft Special DK in Silver, Grey, Aster, Cloud Blue and White.

Because I'm much too impatient to wait until the start of 2015, this time round I'll be recording the skies in a year of my life instead of a calendar year. I've got a few ideas brewing for what I'm going to do with the finished pompoms but it's a secret for the moment (mostly because I need to test out my ideas to see if they will actually work!).

I'll let you know as soon as I've decided and I will, of course, keep you updated on my pompom-ing!