Patience and Pom-poms

When I tell people that I like knitting and crocheting, they often respond by saying how they admire my patience and that their lack of it prevents them from doing needlework themselves. That always makes me feel slightly ashamed because I really don't have a lot of patience. It's one of the things I do have to work on as there's nothing worse than being impatient with small children. But it's really driving me nuts when I have to wait for my three year old son to put on his shoes, come inside, brush his teeth... especially when  I'm already pressed for time. Only that showing my impatience is making it worse and might even culminate in a tantrum. 

But doing crafts requires a different kind of patience I think. You're not waiting for someone else to do something, you're doing a task over and over again until you finished something. I obviously do have some patience for this, but regrettably not that much either. That's the reason why I'm always starting new projects without finishing the current ones. It's very exciting to start something new and it can be exhilarating to finish a project, but the middle part is often boring. Or meditative, depending what mood you're in. 

Anyways, sometimes you just really want to finish something, be it because you're impatient or just running out of time. And here is where the pom-poms come in. Being that time of the year again, I'm crocheting a few wooly hats for several small members of the family. And I just love a nice pom-pom. They aren't exactly hard to make but they do require a few tools and some fiddling around. As I don't have a pom-pom-maker ( until recently I didn't even know they existed), what I usually do is cut two rings out of carton and wind lengths of yarn around them. Not too hard or complicated but here is a way of doing it much quicker and nearly as neat. All you need is wool and scissors.

Hold the end of the wool in your hand and start wrapping it around your fingers. For a small pom-pom wrap it around two or three fingers. I wanted mine to be big so I used four fingers.

Keep wrapping the yarn around until the desired thickness. Cut the yarn.

Remove the bunch of yarn from your fingers and tie a length of yarn tightly around the middle. 

Cut open the loops of yarn on both sides.

Your pom-pom will be a bit scraggly looking, so trim the ends all around until you get a  nice round shape.

And your pom-pom is finished and ready for sewing onto a wooly hat.

Here is one I've made for Enda's hat: