Update to this update: Diny at Everyday Mooonday sent me these photos of the gnomes on their diplomatic mission—some are being given away with cafe orders, and others are being mailed out to friends of the gallery!

Time for an update on your tiny gnome diplomats!

The show at Seoul’s Everyday Mooonday gallery has now come down. I’m told that there were many visitors for the month that it was up, including plenty of cute kids.

Now the diplomats are ready to go on their official mission! Diny, the director at Everyday Mooonday, tells me that they’ve started giving them away through the gallery’s cafe. Each one comes with a little tag like this:

This one reads, “Hello I’m a gnome. Happy to meet you.”

There are several different requests on the tags, including:

“Please give me to a stranger.”

“Please give me to someone you meet today.”

“Please give me to someone who looks like they’re celebrating something!”

“Please give me to someone you really love.”

“Please give me someone who looks sad.”

“Please give me someone who says hello to you today for the first time!”

So with the help of the people who visit the gallery, your 333 little gnomes will spread smiles all over the city of Seoul—and probably beyond!

You can learn more about how this project got started here. Because of the great participation and the fun we’ve had, I’d love to do another similar project (whether with more gnome diplomats or something else) in the future!

It’s time for one lucky contributor to Project Gnome Diplomacy to win a fabulous box of fun from Seoul!

Here’s what’s in store for the winner.

Highlights include:

— A cute bee + hive magnet set

— A Sticky Monster Lab Smoothy King banana figure

— Weird fox and ogre face peel masks

— Cute tooth-shaped toothbrush holders

— Fun cloth ribbon

— Individually wrapped caramel erasers

— Lotsa stickers and candy!

OK, selection time. I’ve got a big bag of names to draw from, and it’s hard to choose just one…. but… the winner… is…

John, who contributed Lief Gnomenson and his younger brother Sprout! Congratulations, John! I’m emailing you right now for your mailing address.

Big thanks again to all of you who contributed to Project Gnome Diplomacy. As generous gnome makers savvy enough to participate in an online call for gnomes, you are all winners in life. We’ve been talking about the gnomes’ ultimate destiny with Everyday Mooonday (and generating some fun ideas!), and I’ll be sure to share an update on this project as it developes.

I just returned from a really fun weekend at Vogue Knitting LIVE in sunny Pasadena!

Right here is where I would insert a photo of palm trees, but I have a habit of missing important “locale” photos, and instead this is the only photo I took outside of the marketplace all weekend.

I passed this place every morning on my run, and I liked the local flavor of it amongst all the upscale chain stores. Pasadena has an interesting mix of the old and the new like that.

The last time I was in the area was for VK LIVE in LA four years ago. So this was a welcome opportunity to return, and it was great to see some familiar faces from last time, plus plenty of new people.

Thursday and Friday morning were a blur of stitching and pinning Mochimochi Land together. Seven hours of work on this might seem like a lot, but spreading it out over two days helps a lot, and I don’t get much happier than when I’m listening to some music on my phone and making little dramas take shape.

And to me it’s worth it to add all the fun little details for people to discover.

I set up most of Mochimochi Land in a similar way as I did in NYC earlier this year, but I like to change it up a bit every time, so this time we had colorful sheep, alpaca, and disco gnomes!

See more from the weekend after the jump!

Continue reading “VK LIVE Pasadena Recap” →

For the fifth year in a row, Mochimochi Land is coming to Vogue Knitting LIVE in NYC!

That’s right, next weekend’s event is the 5th anniversary show, and I believe it will be my 9th overall VK LIVE. How time has flown since that first show!

For this VK LIVE, I’m actually going to reprise the Mochimochi landscape that I brought to that first show. Mochimochi Land is getting packed up to be shipped out right now, in fact! This year’s display will be updated with many newer characters getting up to cute and strange mischief, including a sneak preview of what’s in store from my forthcoming book.

And here’s an idea I thought would be fun: this year you can be a part of Mochimochi Land by adding your own tiny mochis! Bring a creature (about 2″ or smaller) that you’ve made from a Mochimochi Land pattern, and add it to the scene.*

Also, we’re bringing back the Sunday hunt! This year we’re celebrating 5 years of VK LIVE with tiny balloons.

Ten tiny balloons will be hidden around the marketplace on Sunday, and everyone who finds one wins a copy of Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi!

I’ll also be signing books, and tiny kits will be 2 for $20. So I hope to see many familiar faces and many new ones next weekend—find me in the 6th floor art gallery!

Vogue Knitting LIVE NYC
January 16 – 18
New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway, NYC

* You can either take your mochi home at the end of the day/weekend, or just donate it to us (we can’t ship it back to you after the event is over). Also, don’t bring one that is too precious to you, as there’s always a small chance that it could escape into the world!