I got the most fun mail the other day! Madeline shares my passion for knitted tiny stuff, and she was sweet enough to send me a tiny knitted pumpkin of her own design.
I love it!
The inspiration for the pumpkin came from Madeline’s workplace—she manages the store housed in the giant pumpkin that you see in the photos.
Madeline referred to her package as “fan mail,” so I guess this is my first-ever fan mail—thrilling! Thank you, Madeline!
I have new glasses! I wear glasses pretty much every day, and I buy new ones infrequently, so it’s a big deal. I think the style of the dark blue frames is somewhere between librarian and superheroine.
Since my camera is also in the picture, I thought I’d mention that I LOVE this camera. It’s a Canon PowerShot Elph that I’ve used for everything over the past few years. I takes most of my blog pics, it goes with me on vacation, and I even used it to take all of the technique photos in Knitting Mochimochi. I got a more professional SLR camera earlier this year, but this point-and-shoot is still my go-to camera for most things.
This car is frequently parked on my street and gets lots of attention from passersby.
As the Xed out rodents symbol indicates, it’s owned by someone with a business trapping animals. I have to assume this is a pretty effective marketing campaign, if only for the surrounding neighborhood.
Every time my mother-in-law Bonney visits us, she insists that this car should make an appearance on my blog. Since it’s her birthday today, she gets her wish!
Remember the Hokusai bunnies by Kozyndan that I posted during Bunny Week a few months back? I just saw on the Munky King website that it will soon be available in vinyl form!
So cool.
Speaking of Bunny Week, it’s about time we did another themed week on the Mochimochi Blog. Any ideas?
I am in love with this necklace that my friend Audrey custom made for me.
I just said “make me a necklace,” and she came back with about seven sketches for me to choose from. She is awesome! The finished piece is way cooler than I even expected, and I’ve been wearing it constantly for the past month or so.
Audrey has a few other pieces in her Etsy shop, Shock and Awe Metalwerx. My favorite of her current listings are these carved wood earrings, which I would probably be wearing right now if I my ears were pierced.
June was such a whirlwind month, what with returning from the UK the day before the release of my book, and so I’m only now sorting through all the photos from my trip with my mom. It was a wonderful trip! I won’t bore you with all my photos of cathedrals in England and the beautiful Welsh coastline, but I do have one amusing story to share from our stay in Bampton, a charming little town near Oxford.
Bampton was neat—we didn’t know anything about it when we decided to stay there, but it turned out to have an incredibly old church, several friendly pubs, and many footpaths that cut through fields.
My mom and I stayed in a very comfortable bed & breakfast called Wheelgate House.
The morning after our first night’s stay there, I was woken up by a scratching noise coming from under my bed. At first I thought it was coming from the living room on the floor below (maybe someone was doing some work on the ceiling), but it persisted and it didn’t take long for me to be fully awake and standing on the opposite side of the room. Something was under the bed!
The scratching got louder, and after a few seconds, the bed skirt started to move. I freaked and jumped on the other bed with my mom. The scratching was loud enough that it would have had to be a very large mouse or other bigger-sized animal, like some kind of English version of an opossum.
Finally something emerged from under the bed, and it was… the cutest fluffy orange cat! It bolted for the door, which I had by this time opened. Mom and I breathed a sigh of relief, but then the bed skirt started to move again! And this time out came… an identical fluffy orange cat! It ran right out the door after its friend.
That was when we remembered hearing that the owner of the B&B had two cats that were supposed to stay outside in the garden. The poor things must have snuck into the house at some point and hid under the bed. Then we had had the door closed all night, without them making a peep. They were obviously not used to being inside with people.
It was a very memorable start to the day! The rest of our trip was great too, but not quite as hilarious.
Remember beforesunrise’s punky Grouchy Couch? Turns out he has an appetite!
A-plus for animated awesomeness!
I just wanted to write up a quick post about Liberty. It’s likely that you’ve heard of the famous department store in London, but I didn’t really know much about it before visiting the other day. I can now confirm that it’s an incredible store, both in architecture and stock!
For one thing, I knew they had printed fabrics, but I didn’t know that they had an entire floor of craft supplies, including yarn.
I could say a lot more about the store, but I’ll just point out one fun find: plates and cups with designs by Donna Wilson, an artist and toy knitter.
I blogged about Donna Wilson’s pattern book The Knitted Odd-bod Bunch last year. I love her style!