Arcade Mochi: Stars and Stripes

It’s been about two and a half months since my last update about my as-yet-unnamed arcade mochi, which seems to be a consistent interval with this epic project. But things are happening! We have colors!

It was only as I was photographing these bags of Cascade 220 that I realized how patriotic this arcade game might be. But I think the color ratios will be different enough, and I’ll probably throw in some yellow too. Choosing the final colors for this guy was a big holdup with the project—I want him to look just right if I’m going to knit the whole thing over again!

Before I go on, here’s a reminder of where I was with this project in November:

The finished prototype has been sitting on my desk ever since, just staring at me for two and a half months.

Aside from colors, the other big decision-making that I’ve had to do before moving forward was figuring out what kind of colorwork I wanted to integrate. There are just so many 8-bit possibilities! But (at least for now) I settled a single large star to go on the sides, plus maybe smaller stars on the top panel.

I used Illustrator to do all my colorwork “sketching,” then I knitted my first star swatch.

(Yes, the colors I used in Illustrator and the colors I used for the swatch and the colors I’m using for the final design are all different. Why make things simple when they can be complicated?)

My first star turned out a little too wide (stupid grids and my refusal to get the proportions of the squares right before beginning to knit), so here’s my second, slightly taller star swatch.

And now it’s time to start knitting what I hope will be the final toy. I’m feeling star-crazy, so I’m beginning with the panel that will make up the back and sides of the toy. Since I already made a full prototype, I know exactly how many stitches to cast on and how to shape the sides of the piece, and I can just concentrate on the color design at this point. I even stopped to take a pattern photo!

As I mentioned in my “shop talk” post from a couple weeks back, I usually knit things over again to take the technique photos for my patterns, but when I’m working on a project this large, I try to photograph crucial steps as I knit.

I still have far to go before finishing, but I finally feel like I have a clear direction with this project. I should probably stop making predictions about when the pattern will be ready, but it WILL be ready eventually, even if no one remembers arcade games by the time it’s finished.