UPDATE: We had so many great Tiny Squirrel captions that we picked three winners!
The requests have been coming in for years, and here he finally is: Tiny Squirrel!
What kind of squirrelly behavior does a tiny squirrel get up to in Mochimochi Land? Leave your caption in the comments, and we’ll pick our favorite one on Monday. The winner will get the soon-to-be-released Tiny Fall patterns for free! (And yes, Tiny Squirrel is included!)
It’s late September, the weather is becoming crisp, the light’s getting softer… it’s getting to be prime Boo knitting season! Really, Boo is a project that’s good for any weather, but his favorite time of the year is definitely fall, as shown by Amanda (who won our annual photo contest with this image a few years back)…
There are now more than 800 Boos on Ravelry—wow! Here’s a small sample of just how diverse this mochimochi species is…
Left to right, top to bottom: Boos by aranyita, PurpleIrisCrafts, CrochetAmy, iamkashi, Fios, kendraja, MissSophie, minkey, sleeplessnscandia, RueDeekins, okate, ImpEmberStar
I love how dramatically different everyone’s Boos are—just by choosing a fun texture or color combination of yarn, your Boo will look like no one else’s!
And of course some knitters have come up with more elaborate pattern modifications, of which my favorite is this beautiful wing designed by Carissa Browning (aka nosmallfeet on Ravelry).
Carissa was awesome enough to share her wing mod on her Ravelry project page, but I liked it so much that I asked her permission to include it in the official Boo pattern—and she said yes! I’m excited to be able to share her mod with even more people this way (with full credit going to Carissa, of course).
Have you knitted a Boo of your own lately? Please share your Boo on Ravelry and in our Mochimochi Flickr group!
I had the best time debuting my new book at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in NYC last week!
Thursday evening the Studio hosted me for a Super-Scary Mochimochi talk, in which I shared some of the inspiration behind the book and behind-the-scenes details from my favorite projects. It was so nice to get a warm welcome from the staff and a great crowd of toy knitters!
Before the talk we squeezed in a video interview with studio director Patty Lyons:
I think I’m gradually getting less nervous when you put me in front of a video camera… progress!
Then on Sunday I was back at the Studio to teach a zombie knitting class. Look at the adorable mix of scary zombies that we ended up with!
I love a class in which everyone can finish a project and take it home.
A bit thank-you to everyone at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio for a great event and class!
I just spent the last couple of weeks in Oklahoma, working with my book photographer Brandi Simons by day and hanging out with my parents and sister on nights and weekends. (Sometimes those spheres overlapped when we needed extra helping hands with photo shoots!)
On this trip my parents were eager to introduce me to their latest Netflix favorite: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which are brief, suspenseful dramas that aired on television in 1955 to 1957. My parents both remember watching the show when they were kids, so it has a high nostalgia factor for them. But the show really holds up as entertaining TV, and I found that it’s perfect to knit to!
Each episode is about the typical half-hour length, but there’s something about the pacing and the simple conceits of the stories that make them seem shorter than that. That’s not to say that they’re too simplistic—the acting is often brilliant, and the endings all contain wicked twists, which, while often predictable, are usually thoroughly satisfying.
A recent favorite of mine was the man who was suspected of murdering his wife. When he finds out that friends think he has killed her, and they reveal to him her many affairs at the same time, he basically shrugs and says to himself, “might as well murder her then!” And he does. It looses a little of its charm in my retelling, but like many episodes, it’s comedic and dark at the same time.
The single plot line, high-drama acting style, and limited number of characters make this show ideal for couch knitting, when I can’t always be looking at the TV. But it’s also entertaining enough that I would even—get this—watch it without knitting at the same time.
So that’s what I’ve been knitting to lately. What have YOU been knitting to (or stitching to, or otherwise crafting to)? Please share in the comments!
UPDATE: We’ve decided to extend our Maker Faire stay through Sunday, Sept 30, so you can find me and Mochimochi goodies in the BUST Craftacular area both days!
I’m excited to have a bunch more local events coming up this fall—the next one is the NYC Maker Faire coming up next weekend! On Saturday only (September 29th) I’ll be at the BUST Craftacular area with books and kits and a few hand knitted tiny mochis.
I’ll be sharing a table with the adorable hoodie designer Helene Park of Toasty Time. Please come by and say hi if you’ll be there! All info can be found at the Maker Faire website.
Thank you, everyone, for your happy comments and emails upon the launch of Super-Scary Mochimochi! I can’t believe that this is my third book of knitting patterns—how lucky am I that this is what I get to do?!
The book was really a team effort, involving everyone from my editor Betty Wong to my photographer Brandi Simons to the professor who let us have a photo shoot in this chemistry lab, Robert Sheaff. And a whole group of testers helped make sure the patterns were clear and usable—a vital element in the book’s success!
Thinking about the testers for this book reminds me of the fun monsters I saw from them when they were testing the “Mix n Match” section…
This part of the book includes five body shapes to choose from and a menu of deliciously weird body parts to cobble together any way you please. The guys above look something like this when you take them all apart.
When I was writing the book, I asked some of my testers to each knit one of these monsters. Because we were on a tight schedule, the simplest way to do it was to have them each knit one of the monsters I had made, putting the same parts together that I had, but I was still wowed to see the wildly different resulting monsters.
This is Marianne’s squash monster. He doesn’t want to be made into a pie!
Jenna’s colorful tall monster has a tattoo!
And Kelly made a cute and huggable robot monster.
I love how they’re all so different from the originals just by using different colors and eyes… imagine the possible combinations that will happen when knitters start mixing up body parts and inventing some of their own!
Thank you to Marianne, Jenna, Kelly, Denise, Jennifer, Jenny, Jessica, Joan, Kari, Kristen, Lisa, Marilyn, Mary, Marti, Rikke, and also Bonney for contributing their testing help for this book. It couldn’t have happened without you guys!
It’s chaos here today in Mochimochi Land, as Super-Scary Mochimochi has just been released and the tiny zombies are going wild!
No gnome is safe!
You can get your copy of Super-Scary Mochimochi, which is packed with 20+ patterns for the strangest and silliest knitted toys you’ve ever seen, from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, and in bookstores and local yarn stores across the US. Signed copies are also now available in the Mochimochi Shop (with international shipping).
And if you’re in the NYC area, please join me this Thursday for a talk and book signing at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio! (RSVP here.)
I can’t wait to see the monster mochi invasion!
Just added to the Mochimochi Shop: tiny clown, viking, and pirate kits!
Each kit comes with enough fingering-weight yarn (Cascade Heritage, a nice wool/nylon blend) and polyester stuffing to make 3 itty-bitty clowns, 2 teeny-tiny vikings, or 3 eensy-weensy pirates. They’re perfect for on-the-go knitting and make great gifts for fellow knitters.
And as with all orders of physical goods (books, kits, and original knits), these guys come with a freebie gnome button!
Right now I’m still out of town working with my photographer on a future book (!!!), so all orders of physical goods will be shipped on September 19th.