How to Make a Pom Pom, Sort Of

We have room for growth in our instructional video skills.

Take a look, for example, at what happened in a convention hotel room in San Diego, when it seemed like a good idea to do a little how-to movie about making a pom pom.

There is a certain amount of quiet, subtle drama here, but really, we left out a lot of things.

Kind of basic: We don’t explain that we are demonstrating the proper use of the Clover Large Pom Pom Maker, 3 1/2″ model.

Here is one half of the Clover Large Pom Pom Maker.

No, this is not a 1990s-era birth control pill box. This is your ticket to the awesome fluffy pom pom of your dreams. People may try to talk you into using a fork, a tube of cardboard, a willing house pet’s foreleg, but trust us, this is a single-use appliance that earns it keep, every time.

The guide on the package comes in four languages, but there are three things to keep in mind beyond the basic instructions:

1) Remember the goal in pom pom making: to be rich, velvety, and dense. Like wall-to-wall carpet in spherical form.

2) To achieve denseness, you have to overload your Clover Pom Pom Maker with yarn. Go until you can’t really get more yarn onto the thing. Way beyond the Recommended Daily Allowance. Overinflate the tires. Anything less, and you’ll end up with a spindly, floppy pom pom.

3) Achieve velvetyness by trimming away more of the pom pom than feels necessary.

I would like to say that these are outtakes from our pompom instructional video, but the fact is that they are the only takes.

We’ll be back at some point with a really on-point pom pom video. Until then, all you really need to know is 1) overload and 2) overtrim.