Popcorn Ponies

The traditional method of popcorn ponies is to wind figure-eights around two poles, tying them off every ten or fifteen winds, until they are long and thick.  My brother made me a tool that let me do all the winding and then sew up the middle, but the length and thickness was pretty limited.

Then someone said that they just stuck a couple of knitting needles in a ball of yarn and went for it.  Well, except for The Enormous Ball of Brown, I don't ever have a ball of yarn handy.

This is a styrofoam disk, with a piece of pegboard on top, with a piece of closed-cell foam on top of that.  Not particularly sturdy, but functional.  My popcorns got skinnier as they approached the ends of the knitting needles, probably because I wound the figure-eights too tight.

This is better, but still somewhat less sturdy than desired.  I can make really really really long popcorn strings. 

Still working on the tying-down-every-ten winds.  When I sew them on the sewing machine, they don't pull out the way they can when they are just tied periodically...but this apparatus is not sewing-machine friendly.