Yarn Art

Last, but not the least tweak in the living room, and over in that back door corner is a little yarn art.  I’ve seen these made on Pinterest a hundred times but took a notes from Andrea at Harlow & Thistle to make my very own. 

For a little bit, I struggled with what to hang on that door.  Since it got painted white and kind of blends in with the wall, which is great, I still liked the idea of adding some sort of wreath or hanging decor.  It had to be fairly simple and I didn’t want anything floral.  I didn’t want to add any holes to the door so it also had to be something light enough to hang from one of these magnetic hooks*.

I know you can find this tutorial a thousand times over elsewhere, but hey, “Here I go again on my own...” 

On a trip to JoAnn fabrics, I picked up this metal ring and a skein of yarn.  I’m been having a yellow moment recently so that’s the direction I went.
I didn’t know how this was going to turn out – if I’d like it hanging on the door or not – so I made sure not to spend much.  The entire piece cost me about $6.50…and would’ve been less had I been able to log into my app to grab a coupon in-store.  (Four kids, one mom trying desperately to pull up that coupon, a line behind, and a waiting cashier…there’s no option but giving up.)

Next time (and there will be a next time), I’m going to grab one of my friend Marina’s gorgeous skiens to make one of these.  She dyes them herself and they’re all so good, I can’t pick a favorite.  Seriously, go check out her shop, Pineapple Yarn.

Next, I figured out how long I wanted the pieces of yarn to fall past the bottom of the ring and doubled that number since each piece would be folded in half.  I cut maybe 20 pieces at a time, attached them to the ring, and cut 20 more until I thought I had enough on the ring.

There was no concise measuring involved with my method.  I just used one cut strand as a guide along which I cut the rest.  Tip:  Make sure you don’t pull the strand of yarn you’re cutting too hard.  The yarn I used stretched a little so I found out that if I pulled it taut while cutting, I shrunk when cut.  Make sense?  Loosely hold the yarn while cutting.  :)

The next few pictures show how to attach the yarn to the ring.  I doubled them up to make my knots thicker but that’s totally  a personal preference call.  Using single strands will hide make the knots less visible whereas multiple strands will make them stand out more.

In words, fold a string (or two or more) in half, lay the fold over the ring, tuck the curve of the fold under the ring, and then grab the ends of the yarn and pull them through that curve.  Pull on the ends to tighten and move on to the next strand.

As you go, you’ll want to push your knots together at each end so everything sits nice and close on that ring.In the picture above, I pushed the right side in but not the left yet so you can kind of see how the knots of yarn have spaces in between them on the left.  It was helpful to hold the whole thing up to some closed curtains to see if I needed to close the gaps more or not.  If light showed through, I needed to push them together more.

The last thing I did is drench the yarn to straighten it out a bit.  Being all wrapped up on the skein made it a little wonky in places so I thought a little bath would help.  I don’t know if I really helped that much but either way…

I just held the entire ring full of yarn under the bath faucet, making sure to only water the yarn a few inches below the ring so that I didn’t get the metal wet (rust?  no thanks…) and waited until everything was nice and soaked before carrying it outside in a bucket where I swung it like a crazy ferris wheel a few times.  :)

I’m sure our neighbors think I’m a great, normal person.  ;)

Like I said, I don’t really know if it did that much because there are still some kinky pieces of yarn but hey, whatever…

The last thing I did was trim the ends.  You can go uniform with a straight across cut, you can go the V route, you can go curvy, diagonal…whatever you want.  I grabbed two chunks from each end…

pulled them together as one…

and cut’em off so they were the same length.  Inner hairstylist, coming out. 

Then I just gave the middle section a straight-across cut and that was it. 

Yarn art.  I wish I had more skills (like Marina!) in the knitting arena but alas, that $10 beginner’s knitting kit (Ha!  It’s still sold today*!) I bought for myself in college is still sitting at the bottom of my craft box. 

Someday, right? 

Until then, I’ll be making a few of these and I hope you will too!  I love how versatile they are!  Any room and any wall would love one!

Stay tuned because I’ve got all the pictures of how we’ve changed up the living room since we moved in coming your way next!

Have a great weekend!

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