Reconnecting with craft, delivering cheer with pompoms

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/10/2022 (1390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the height of the pandemic, many people took up hobbies with all their Found Time. Some people got extremely into puzzles — I bought a stylized Golden Girls puzzle that sits, unopened, on my bookshelf. Some people got into needlepoint or weaving.

I low-key got into making wreaths, by which I mean glue-gunning cute craft-store things onto a wreath frame. It was spring 2021, and I wanted to buy a cute Easter wreath for my front door — the kind of cheery job I would have gravitated toward as a kid, with bunnies and chicks and pastel eggs, to bring a modicum of joy to my life.

I was unhappy with the choices available, so I decided to make my own. How hard could it be? I loaded up on craft supplies — including tiny chicks wearing Easter bonnets and bunnies made out of pompoms. The result was pretty cute, but it wasn’t quite… right. It looked too sparse or something.

In December, I had a proper wreath-making lesson from my mom, who is the craftiest person I know. She has always made things, just like her mom always made things. Halloween costumes. Decorations. Dried flower arrangements. Crafts of all kinds. Both used to hit the craft-show circuit in the 1990s. My childhood was awash in woodworking projects and dried flowers and acrylic paints.

My mom has chronic health challenges, but making wreaths was something we could do together, even if she was in bed. She had made bags full of pompoms to keep her hands busy and working. She had covered a bunch of wooden wreath frames with wool — which looked beautiful unadorned, too — and had been collecting accoutrements to go on them: ornaments and garlands and those tiny, flocked sparkly trees meant for train villages.

I didn’t yet have the ability, as she does, to see these objects differently, to see the parts and not the sum. Garlands can be cut up. Hooks can be pulled out. Trees can be removed from their wooden bases. You can think outside the frame. My mom served as art director, while I hunched over my project with a hot glue gun, swearing and sustaining second-degree burns.

(Truth be told, though, I love a glue gun. I am a menace with a glue gun. There is something truly zen about affixing objects to other objects. I also like the burny way they smell.)

My mom taught me the ways of wreath making, which is all about layering — which, it turns out, was what was off about my first attempt. She taught me how to create visual interest and fullness by mixing different sizes, textures and materials.

I mostly went by feel; I didn’t pre-plan my arrangement. I ran ideas past her; she made suggestions. “Use these trees,” she said, handing me a small, glitter-shedding forest. I raised an eyebrow. “These won’t work,” I told her. Of course, they worked.

I had discovered my Pandy Craft — something I could do with my hands that wasn’t doom-scrolling or working or binge-watching, and resulted in something tangible.

The result was so freaking cute, I immediately hung it on my door and, more importantly, posted it to Instagram. “Do I make wreaths now!?” I asked in the caption. “You definitely make wreaths now,” a friend responded. But then I didn’t make another one until this week.

It’s been a scary and stressful few weeks in my corner of the world. Without getting too into the weeds about it, because this is her story, not just mine: my mom ended up in the ICU on a ventilator with incredibly severe pneumonia as well as COVID-19, because that’s still ripping through the community. She is off the vent now, thankfully, but has been in the hospital for three weeks.

I dealt with this by going to her house of worship: the craft store. I grabbed a couple of wreath frames and wandered around, assessing objects, thinking like my mom might. This string of cute ghosts can be repurposed. So can that shiny garland of orange, black and silver balls. I wandered the pompom aisle, grabbing large ones and small ones and spiky glitter ones. (Texture! Layering!)

And then, on Monday morning, I sat down with a cup of coffee and got to work on a Halloween wreath, gluing (and swearing). I burned myself, of course. I now have a blister between my finger and the nail, which is among the worst places to have a blister. (I was going to say it was the worst place to have a blister, but no, there are objectively worse places to have a blister.)

My mom wasn’t sitting beside me, but she may as well have been. She was subliminally guiding me. A large black pom should go here. Fix this bad break with some glitz. Hmmm, do a hit of orange there. Finish off the sides with pompoms.

It was nice to get absorbed in a project that wasn’t at a computer, that wasn’t writing, that wasn’t worrying. It was nice to reconnect to an activity that brought me sanity during a different hard time, and did so again during this hard time.

Retreating into my wreath-making, I lost track of time. It was just me and my glue gun and my mom’s voice in my head.

Not to brag, but the end result is another absolute banger — so much so that I briefly lost my mind and considered starting up an Etsy side hustle.

I bought enough stuff to make another Halloween wreath, which I hope to make with my mom directing me in person. Because we still can. Because she is still here.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca