I stumbled across Sensations Pomp Yarn and love how incredibly soft it was. It felt like minky fabric. I was dreaming of nice soft pillows for our couch. The difficulty was figuring how to cast on with this yarn. There weren't any instructions in the store and I couldn't find anything online. This yarn is not like Red Heart's Pomp a Doodle because the pom poms are small and so is the thread between each one. I favor crochet and tried a hundred different ways to crochet with this yarn and tried a hundred different hooks. It was not working.
(ignore the pillows in the middle~I made them last year and they have been very loved & slightly abused by boys who like to have pillow fights~ahem~namely my dear son and dear husband~the oversized third child)
I finally read somewhere on the Joanns forums that you could only use the knit stitch with this yarn and had to use the thumb method of casting on. I tried this with the smallest knitting needles I has but they were still to large so back to the store I went and purchased a very small set of bamboo knitting needles. Then the fun part began. I was able to cast on a decent row of stitches with a neat row of pompoms.
With each new cast on it became easier. The key was knitting every row and using the small size needles. This makes a super soft double sided pattern. I would have loved to be able to stick a pillow form between those two sides but you can't.
Once I had knitted the four pillow fronts I pulled out the sewing machine to start putting some backs on them and fill them with pillow forms. But I ran into a big snag. YOU CANNOT USE A SEWING MACHINE. The little pompoms got caught in the bobbin and there was a lot of sweating, hand wringing and tears as I tried to get this off the machine. I have a Brother Embroidery machine. The needle was stuck in the fabric and every time I tried to bring it up the machine beeped a warning. It was wracking my nerves. I thought this machine was going to bust and I would never have another as nice as this one.
I tried putting the feed dogs down and gently working the fabric out but it was not budging. I finally looked at some of the maintenance photos and figured out that I would need to take apart half of this machine to safely remove the fabric. I tell you I was nervous and scared.
I did not want to send this baby to the sewing machine hospital. I was able to remove the front plate and the bobbin. Then I removed the bobbin holder inside the machine. I could then see exactly where this pompom was stuck. By gently pulling and unwrapping it I managed to get it free. I was elated. This minor episode nearly gave me a heart attack. All I could envision was the needle breaking off, falling into the machine and wrecking it.
So now I had to sew each one of these by hand. Not so bad except that your fingers get a little numb and I was already shaky from the crazy sewing machine episode. Then I gave the machine some loving, a little cleaning and then tried sewing various stitches on normal fabric to make sure it was still working. Thankfully, it is.
The pillows were a little plain so I added some rosettes. Each was made with some bits of trim that were leftovers a friend gave me.
This one is my absolute favorite.
Isn't it gorgeous?
