Let's Make....Yarn Art!

Aka, My 70's are Showing.

Aka, My Genes are Showing.

Aka, Let's Use Stuff I Bought For Other Projects But Didn't Use, Can't Return, and Feel Guilty for Not Using.

Aka, Let's Avoid Doing Any Other Project Around the House and Make Yarn Art!

Nah, it wasn't really an avoidance tactic.  Some days I just, yeah, feel like working on something different.

Granted.  That, yes, does preclude many other maybe more pressing projects from getting done and/or started and/or wrapped up. Hey, what can I say.

Groovy!

So right!  Yarn art!  Or Fiber Art.  Or Faux Macrame, if you will even.

My first intention with this project was to make something to hang up in the ol' depressing back stair area but as I was going along, I thought of a slew of other places I'd rather hang it and opted to rethink the tentative vision I had for the back stair.  Currently the finished product is in the master bedroom and depending on Mike, we'll see how long it lasts there.  (He's uh, not the biggest fan of the 70's aesthetic.)

Anywhooo.

My supplies were as follows:

• various colors of yarn (brown, oatmeal-y, gray, off-white)
• 30" piece of conduit
• jute twine
• two 3" foam balls

Foam balls mysteriously absent for photo day.

Total cost:  for me today, free.  Or pre-paid maybe is more apt.  I had all the stuff already.

Yes, thanks to stuff I bought but hadn't used for the DIY rug but also thanks to the yarn my sister in law had sent me.  I attempted to learn knitting in a how-did-I-not-learn-this-while-doing-props kind of way but after one scarf Mike doesn't wear and one hat, I lapsed.

But this project, it only took a couple a' hours and is plenty simple to make.

It all kinda started when I was in the basement, passing through, and saw the leftover piece of conduit laying about from the pallet wood blinds.  Hey, psst, wrap me up in some yarn and call me art!

I started by cutting a looong piece of twine and threading it through the conduit.  Tie it to a nut or something semi-weighty to help get the twine through easily.  I cut it extra long in case I wanted to change how high or low it would hang.

For ease of process, I popped a lil' nail in the wall and hung it up.  The walls in the basement are hardly precious to me -- I have so much patching, sanding, and painting to do, what's one more itty nail hole?!

Next, the yarn.  And guess what?  I had no plan.  Shocker, right?  I just kinda went with it, cutting unmeasured lengths of yarn, making a larks head knot over the conduit, then a regular plain old knot under it to keep the yarn from loosening.

How I worked out the "pattern" of colors?  Randomly.  Ugh, I know, so not helpful!  But for every strand of color I put on one side, I put one on the other side, stepped back and watched how it developed.

Yeah, see?  Tons of patching, sanding, painting of the walls to do.  Why was I not working on that, you ask?

Once I got the whole piece of conduit covered, I did some macrame knot research.  Now, this should have come naturally, I should have inherently already known the knots as my Grandma was a prolific macrame person.

That's the one piece I have of hers.  I thought I had more but it appears I do not.  It could use a cleaning but I'm so paranoid about ruining it -- I'll look into it though.

Right, so internet research on knots.  Again, I thought maybe it was in my genes, and even as a person of the theater, I should have a healthy grasp of knots.  Not.  Nope, do not.  They perplex my addled brain.  So I went for some basic stuff as that's all my basic mind can handle.

I pretty much stuck with square knots.

Um, all right, not the best at knots, ok?

The yarn itself isn't terribly weighty, in the sense of gravitational pull and I found that the more knots I made going down, the more askew the yarn went.  Nice thing about this is if you leave the knots looser, you can undo something if it's not working for you.

To give the thing more of a dimensional 70's punch, I dug up some three inch foam balls I had camping out from some unknown way distant past project and decided to wrap them in the twine, bring that fiber-y natural twine element back in for added texture.  I drilled holes through the middles first.

Yes, I know, I need to make the lighting more photo-friendly in the basement.

Thankfully, and in this particular case only, my hot glue gun is on its dying last legs as it wasn't super hot -- the foam ball stayed intact as well as my finger tips.  Normally, and generally, hot glue melts foam faster than you can pick up a stick to shake it at.

So twirl twirl twirl, hot glue, twirl and the foam balls are covered.  I cut a long piece of twine, pulled it through with a loop at one end...

...and made the same larks head knot on the conduit, letting the ball hang.  I tied a thick double knot under the ball to, ya know, keep it on there.

Once I had the second ball on, I grabbed a sharp pair of scissors and gave the bottom a somewhat uneven even-ish triangular trim, dipping lowest to 36" in the middle.  Heh, this is definitely a project for those who enjoy the imperfect-ness of it all.  ;)

First I tried hanging it up over the headboard but there was too much competition between the two for attention so I moved it to the wall opposite.

And there it is!

Wow does it look super uneven at the bottom in this photo.  Heh, I will be rechecking that....

Easy breezy fiber yarn art with a 70's kick!

Stay tuned....another Variety Pack Day will be upon us shortly!

Oh hey, and by the way, I did it.  I recycled the bag of 339 or so paint chips.  Uh huh!  I am mighty not-hoarder!