Elmo & Cookie Monster Pom Pom

These pom poms make such cute gifts, especially for kids. You can even make Christmas tree ornaments out of it. I made these Sesame Street characters : Elmo and Cookie Monster pom poms as a birthday favor for my son's friends at daycare. I came across these pom poms on this site, and thought this was the most adorable pom poms ever. And as luck would have it, my son's 2nd Birthday party was Sesame Street themed, so these were just perfect.

As this was my first time making any pom poms, I used this tutorial to learn the basics. For these pom poms, I used 4 fingers to roll the yarn to get the appropriate diameter. 

The most difficult part was trimming it. Once I started cutting, it was hard to know when to stop, and most of the times, at the end of trimming, I did not have a round pom pom. So this technique of trimming will come very handy. 

  

For Elmo's eyes I used googly eyes which are available at any craft store. The nose is a readymade orange pom pom, as I was not very successful in making such a small pom pom out of wool. The mouth is cut out of felt. 

Initally, to paste eyes, nose and mouth, I used 'All purpose glue', but it did not work well on 'not so thick/even' pom poms. Even the ones on which I thought it stuck good, my son took less than a second to rip the eyes off. So I had to come up with another alternative which would survive toddlers hands: hot glue it was, and it worked like a charm. 

I attached a keychain to it which made it easy for kids' little hands to hold it. You can tie a ribbon to make an ornament out of it.

After 15 pom poms and stiff hands, I thought no more pom poms for a while. But other day, Kabir saw some orange yarn in my stash and asked if it was for 'Zoe' - an orange character from Sesame Street.  :-)