How to make a yarn pumpkin

WARNING - if you have cats this might not be the best project for you as you may never see it again.

Seriously it's a ball of yarn and a pipe cleaner. If you haven't tried - cats love pipe cleaners. Ours steal them all the time and then I find 4 of them in their food bowl. I'm not sure why but they always end up there.

I saw this cute idea idea to make yarn apples on Make and Takes and thought it would fun to use this idea to make pumpkins. I found in the clearance bins at Walmart for $1 a ball of this beautiful orange yarn. They have a great tutorial over at Make and Takes but here is the condensed version with less photos :)

Start with a piece of cardboard about 2-3" wide and fold in the middle. Then start wrapping the yarn around it until it looks full. Then cut a pipe cleaner in half and feed it through where the cardboard was folded and pull it up and twist together.

Then slide it off the cardboard and shape into a circle. You will have to tuck some ends in to make it look round. Then if you want add another piece of pipe cleaner to make little vines off the stem. I just wrapped them around a pencil to get there shape.
Lilo made it for Dad's office at work. I was thinking it would be cute to make some for our dinning room table but then realized that with the cats that wouldn't last. But they were quick and easy so maybe we'll make them for Lilo's class.