Stormy Sunday. During a brief afternoon lull of windy sunshine we managed a barbecue, during which ash blew over the burgers (they were still yummy); Dolly Parton had a huff over a piece of bacon and managed to get trapped in the garden behind ours again – during the “rescue” (reaching through the bushes and lifting her over some bird netting) she scratched my hand a lot; and the wind blew the kitchen door shut on my little finger (ow). Aah, the joys of a British “summer”!

Anyway, the storm was perfect for some last-minute craft using stuff I (and probably you) have lying around…

  

I love making pompoms, mainly for Christmas garlands, so I was very happy when I found this awesome idea for making pompom flowers, literally just with pompoms made from old wool and twigs from the garden:

https://www.kollabora.com/projects/pom-pom-flowers

To make the pompoms, all you need is any old wool and a pair of scissors:

Wrap the wool around two, three or four fingers (depending on the size of pompom you want), and once thick enough, cut off the loose end of the wool.

Take a short length of spare wool and tie securely and tightly around the middle of the wool bundle.

Cut the all of the loops, then fluff your pompom.

Trim off any straggly ends, et voila!

Add your twigs and arrange in the jar:

I decided I’d like a “base” for my flowers to sit, and this tutorial for origami stars looked liked fun: http://www.minnamayblog.com/2012/06/origami-stars-tutorial.html. A word of caution – it does take a while to get the hang of looping the strip of paper through the “ribbon” loop – but persevere, because this is key to making a neat star. I kept the slightly wobbly ones too, because after all, nothing in life is perfect :). I just kept on making them till I filled the jar to a depth that looked OK.

Here’s the end result, what do you think?