I spent Saturday with my mother-in-law Bonney (who’s now on Twitter, you guys) at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. It was so nice to go to a fiber event just for fun!

We saw cotton-candy roving wool…

And the world’s saddest photo contest…

(Actually the photos were really good—it was just the display that broke my heart.)

And we saw a sock knitting machine at work! Of course the most interesting thing was the thing that I forgot to take a picture of, but it looked like this:

It’s made by the Erlbacher Gearhart Knitting Machine Company, which is based in Missouri. Jim from Good Karma Farm showed us how it works, and we were mesmerized. I actually saw more than one of these at the festival, so it must be a popular choice among serious sock makers.

There was a brief moment when I fantasized about using such a machine to crank out hundreds of mochis for my next installation. But that dream died when I reminded myself about all the shaping that I do, and the tiny scale that I prefer, not to mention the price of the machine. But if I ever need to make a boatload of giant snakes, I know just what to get!

If you haven’t seen one before, here’s a demo video of a vintage machine at work.

Are you sock knitters tempted?

Last weekend I was invited to give a talk at the NYC Pictoplasma festival, an event that brings together creators and lovers of character art for talks and screenings. It was seven hours packed with inspiration and adorable characters. I thought I’d share some of the love today!

Julia Pott lives in Brooklyn like me, and she creates animals with gorgeous detail and subtle personalities.

This is a short animation that she screened during her talk—it’s actually a bit unsettling, but also beautiful and mysterious, and it combines live-action footage with animation.

Random Acts – The Event from Julia Pott on Vimeo.

You can buy cards and prints and more starring Julia’s sweater-wearing characters from her Etsy shop.

Gemma Correll from England is another awesome lady making illustrations of animals, but hers are hilarious cartoony journal-like meditations on life.

She also has some awesome stuff available to buy, and I think we should all buy it.

Another person I was super-excited to meet was Sonni, an Argentina-born illustrator and animator who used to work for Friends With You (one of my favorite character art companies) and now lives in Brooklyn. I love his recent work, but my all-time favorite project of his has to be the Hello Kitty x Wish Come True toys that he designed while at Friends With You.

I wish these were still available, but I’m quite sure they’re hard to find now. But Sonni also has a couple of prints available from his website.

Other presenting artists, all of whose work I really admired, were Andy Rementer, David OReilly, Buff Monster, and Jason Freeny.

And here’s a photo of me giving my talk! (I was all nerves, but I think it went pretty well.)

(Thanks, Arkadium Art!)

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

It’s been another great year here in Mochimochi Land! If you can believe it, 2012 was the sixth year of this blog and the sixth year of Mochimochi knits. The time has gone so quickly!

I’d like to wrap up 2012 with a quick look back at some of my favorite happenings on the blog. Here we go!

**Favorite New Patterns**

Jumbo Gnome

After two-plus years of knitting teeny-tiny stuff, I was excited to try designing something with a little more heft. I just love how he turned out!

Plinky & Plunky

Knitting a piano had been a lofty dream of mine for a long time, so it felt like a real accomplishment to finally figure out how to get the design just right. Now my holy grail of knitting is a refrigerator. Maybe someday….

**Favorite Mochimochi Mods**

Soyaspade’s Flower and Buddy (modified from the Pocket Protectors pattern in Knitting Mochimochi)

This pair is an adorable mod with its elegant horticultural twists!

Zephrbabe’s Tiny Napoleon, modified from the Tiny Gnome pattern.

I’m in love with this little guy! This knitter added just the right details to make him unmistakably Napoleon.

**Favorite Crazy Fun Project**

Gnome Infestation!

I had way too much fun taking photos of the naughty gnomes who had moved into my apartment in the night…

**Favorite Animated GIF**

Free Unicorn Rides

This one was hard to choose (I’ve made over 20 GIFs this year), but I’m going with this one because it included the first scene change that I’ve done. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I think it made a coherent story, and I love it.

**Favorite Tiny Mochi**

Tiny Turtle

I didn’t make as many tiny mochis this year as I have in the past, but I know I’ll never be tired of them. This guy turned out pretty cute, and you can expect a pattern sometime in 2013!

**Favorite Cat Photo**

Happy Valenfeline’s Day!

I love how my boys snuggle up so close one minute and then are duking it out for the top of the scratching post the next.

**Favorite Interview**

Hine Mizushima

Hine has been a huge inspiration to me for a long time, and it was a pleasure to interview her and learn more about her story and her creative process.

**Favorite Random Cute Thing**

Sweet Dreams animation by Kirsten Lepore

I can only dream of making an animated short like this someday!

Those were just a few things I’m excited about as I look back on this year. But more than anything, getting to know all of you through your comments and tweets and photos of your own Mochimochi knits, and especially by meeting you at events throughout the year, is really the best part for me. Thank you for being there and helping to spread hand-knitted happiness throughout the world! See you in 2013…

Update: The attack was successful, and the scary mochis have taken over the Crown Publishing website!

Now that they have control over the publisher of Super-Scary Mochimochi, what will they do?? Our best guess is that they will insist on more Mochimochi books being published in the future…

See how it all went down on the Crown website!

I just got some intelligence on an eminent Mochimochi attack: the toys in Super-Scary Mochimochi are tired of being stuck in a book, and they’re plotting to take over their publisher Crown!

I’m trying to reason with them, but the tiny zombies are already on the march…

It’s all going down on Twitter on Monday, October 22nd. At this point, all we can do is watch the madness unfold, so follow @mochimochiland, @Crownpublishing, and #MochimochisAttack to monitor the events!