Month: August 2008

Announcing Pundit Babies!

Election season is now at full tilt. Get through the coming months of negative ads, dodgy debates, and endless analysis with a new pattern from the Mochimochi Shop!

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Make a tiny army of your party animal of choice, or knit up one of each if you’re a swing voter!

Techniques include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, I-cord, and mattress stitch.

Buy the bipartisan pattern as a PDF download for $5 here.

Beep Boop Crash

My hard drive crashed last week. The techy people I took it to told me it would be a week to fix, but it’s now been well over a week, and their new estimate is “we have no idea how long it’s going to take.”

I was hoping to keep this mundane and somewhat embarrassing news (no, I hadn’t backed it up in a loong time) out of the blog, but the situation has disrupted my work and brought a few of my projects to a halt, and I’ve also lost some photos I had been planning on sharing on my blog. It’s taking long enough now that it seems like time to whine publicly.

In the meantime, I’ve started scrambling to replace stuff I’ve lost (only temporarily, hopefully). Among these things is a new top-secret pattern coming very very soon.

Disco Smurf’s Captain Capacitor

I get so excited when I see the first completed toy that someone else has made from one of my patterns. It always seems like a small miracle that a few lines of written instructions can yield a similar but totally unique creation in another’s hands.

Disco Smurf was eager to make a Captain Capacitor for her dad for Father’s Day (it’s coming up soon in Australia, apparently), and she’s already finished!

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Love his expressive eyes!

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By the way, the pattern for Resisty the Resistor will be coming a bit later, so stay tuned!

Droplets

Droplets by JamFactory, which debuted earlier this year, are a great example of a reversible toy.

Right side up, they’re happy little guys (well, all but one of them are)…

…and upside down, they’re vury vury sad.

Either way, cute! You can get them as blind boxes at Crazy Label or at your local vinyl toy store.

Coming Soon: Captain Capacitor and Resisty the Resistor

Two new free patterns are on their way!

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We’ll start with Captain Capacitor later this week, and little Resisty will follow soon after. Get ready with your knitted circuit boards!

While I’m on the topic of geeky knitted toys inspired by my husband, I want to take the opportunity to plug his blog, Geek Out New York. John’s been working hard on it, and though I’m pretty foreign to his world of gaming and gadgets, I always enjoy reading his smart and witty writing. If you like what you see, please tell your friends!

Photo Contest 08 Winners!

The votes are in for the 2008 Mochimochi Photo contest!

It was clear from the way the votes came in over the last two days that each of the 10 finalists had their fans. In all, we received almost 1,000 votes! The results are exciting, too.

But first, John and I want to thank everyone who entered the contest and everyone who voted. It’s so much fun to see that other people are as excited about this contest as we are, and the creativity of your photos is endlessly inspiring! If you missed the contest this year, we will be holding it again next year too, with a few changes: we will be adding a “series” category, as well as a “judges’ choice” award.

And now for the results!

We actually had a TIE for third place, between Stackable Cats (Blue) by Bitter-Sweet- and Conga Line of Bobs by kayk. To break the tie, we had to look back to the comments in the semifinalist round, and the winner of third place is…

Conga Line of Bobs by kayk

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Yay, kayk! You get some cute goodies from Japan…

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…and a $10 Mochimochi Land gift certificate.

Second place goes to Tubby (and octopus) by PrettyCranium.

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Hooray PrettyCranium! You will also receive cute goodies from Japan…

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…and a $15 Mochimochi Land gift certificate.

And finally, with over 250 votes, first place in the 2008 Mochimochi Photo Contest goes to…

Slug Checkers by denise.y.cheung

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Congratulations, Denise!! You win a box stuffed with craft supplies, kits, books, and toys from Japan!

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You’ll also receive a $20 Mochimochi Land gift certificate.

Thus concludes the second Mochimochi Photo Contest! Thank you again to all who participated. And remember it’s not too early to get started on your entries for next year’s contest!