A Blog Post! About Yarn Ball Ornaments!

This is how my November is going:

First I had nothing exciting to write about. Nor did I have anything boring to write about. I had nothing. 

Then I had too much to write about, and did not want to write about it, and didn't have the time anyway.

A week ago, I found myself needing a lot of time lying on back, letting a wound heal. I don't deal well with laying around. So I decided to try a project I wanted to do last year, but ran out of time:

Ornaments for my Christmas tree!

I found this idea from an awesome blogger and artist, Rachel. You should go check out her artwork now. Anyway, she makes all sorts of handmade ornaments, as you can see here. Last year, I made a few of her Christmas tree cones, but I don't follow directions well, and ended up with the wrong kind of yarn.

My tiny Christmas tree forest. 

Here are Rachel's trees.  Way awesome. I hope to add to my little forest this year. If I get sick of balls.

So this year I thought I would give balls a chance, instead of cones. (hee, hee). I was very much inspired by again, her ball shaped ornaments. And this time I was going to buy COTTON yarn, not acrylic. I already had the balls from last year.

And after the yarn and the balls, all you need is Elmer's glue and some straight pins. I went to two local art stores. Both sadly had a poor showing of cotton in the yarn department. Then I went to the BIGGEST art store around these parts, and was overwhelmed by the choices in cotton yarn. I mean, how many shades of grey did I really need? All of them, obviously. But I held back.

I barely held back.

And then the yarn wrapping began! First, I made the loop for hanging on the tree. I tried out twine first and did not like it. I liked simple yarn for the loop. I pinned the knot to the styrofoam ball, frayed the ends, and wrapped the yarn on top. If I make more ornaments I will add a picture of that process.

First I made little balls:

Then I made some bigger balls:

Then I made some really big balls. I think I will stick with smaller ones from now on:

The red and white ball was an experiment that didn't really end up how I wanted it to.

Then I decided I wanted to make a wreath out of yarn wrapped balls. So, instead of wrapping the yarn around a knot, I wrapped it around a pin:

I chose red, teal (or maybe sky blue?), lime green and dark green for my wreath.

I plan to be done wrapping that damn wreath by December 24th. Balls are more fun than wreath wrapping, fyi.

I can't wait to see how my tree looks with the yarn balls!

Hope everyone is having a nice start to their holidays.