John and I moved to a new apartment over the weekend. We’re now living in Brooklyn near Prospect Park. I’m so in love with our new place and the new neighborhood!
This is the window that my desk is now facing. Those are actual trees that you can see outside! Sometimes there are also actual birds chirping. And look—that’s molding on the walls!
It is all very exciting. And tomorrow we’re expecting two new furry additions!
I just can’t resist posting this rainbow of Boos made by DutchMoeder on Flickr (Amaranthology on Ravelry)!
She’s added this and a few other photos of her Boos in the Flickr pool for the Mochimochi Photo Contest. Stiff competition, people!
Whoa, Halloween’s not far off! Wouldn’t it be awesome to dress in brown and attach a bunch of Boos to yourself, to be a tree with bats in it? I guess that might be a little over the top, but sometimes I’m tempted to wear the toys I make….
Here are a few more Boos that I fell for on Ravelry. There are so many fabulous ones!
iamkashi‘s boo isn’t afraid to show its softer side with floral buttons!
Aw and check out this super-cute group of Boos made by orangecat! I bet they get together on Saturdays to play squash. Or Yahtzee!
He once rescued a drowning ant! That was a proud moment—until they landed and the ant started carrying him.
The toys from the “Plush You!” show are now available for all to see and purchase online! That includes my three Mossy guys, which are one-of-a-kind knits available only through this show. The Seattle show will be up at Schmancy (where my toys are on display), Nancy, and Fancy until November 12, and at Bluebottle until October 31.
I had an awesome surprise today when I listened to a recent Knit Picks podcast—they were talking Mochimochi!
Angela, one of the staff at Knit Picks, had told me last month that she had mentioned me in an upcoming podcast, but I wasn’t expecting such a thorough discussion of my patterns. My designs were also brought up by Stacey, another staff member on the show. How nice! The theme for this particular episode (number 117) was “Impractical Knits,” a genre of knitting that I pride myself on being a part of.
You can hear the full episode, which is hosted by Kelley Petkun, on the Knit Picks website.
You may have also noticed that Knit Picks is contributing prizes to the Mochimochi Photo Contest this year. (This is unrelated to the podcast, by the way.) So be sure to enter so that you have a chance to get some yummy yarn in addition to the other prizes!
Back in early September when I was designing the Oscillating Owlets, I decided to take some photos throughout the design process. It turned out that the Owlets changed quite a bit from my original design, so I thought it would be fun to show some of my photos here so that you can see how the Owlets came to Oscillate.
Like with all of my designs, I started with a sketch—or more like 20 small sketches. I often draw something over and over again while I’m turning the idea over in my head, until I feel ready to start making it.
I am not much of an illustrator! But I don’t let that stop me from visualizing an idea in two dimensions before I tackle it in 3-D.
As you can maybe see, I started out thinking that the owls would be stackable, just like the Stackable Cats and Pile-able Pups. The more I thought about it, though, stacking owls, while cute, didn’t seem to me different enough from the Stackable Cats to be very interesting. So then I thought the owls could be vertically aligned in a tree: a Tower of Owls!
I designed some little round owls, then I got right to work on a tree with holes for three of them to fit in…
When I had finished two holes, I popped two owls in to see how they would fit.
Pretty cute! I liked the owls I made, and they remained unchanged for the final design.
But the tree wasn’t really working for me. It would either have to be completely hollow and flimsy, with the owls sitting right on top of each other, or it would have to have separate pieces for the inside of the holes, which would hold the owlets in place and allow for the tree to be stuffed. And with two owls inside, the tree was already getting really tall—if I were to add room for another owl, the tree would be way too tall and would surely fall over.
It was time to take a break from the tree, so I decided to try my hand at a nest. I had wanted to design something involving a swing for a long time, so I added some I-cords to the sides of the nest, while wondering how I could combine a tree and a nest…
After thinking about it for a while, I finally decided to scrap the tree altogether, and I instead started working on a fat branch for the swing to hang from.
Instead of being a freestanding toy, it would now be a wall decoration. I was still thinking that the design would include three owls on three swings, but once I saw how long and fat the branch would have to be for that, I decided to go with a pair of owls and a slimmer branch.
The final touches were a twig and leaf accent for the branch, a fun twist to the (now green) I-cord swings, and new autumnal colors for the owls. John helped me come up with a name for them, and the Oscillating Owlets were born!
I hope this uncharacteristically long post was interesting to some people. If you have any questions about how I design, my process, or anything else, feel free to ask away!
Have you made your Boos yet this year? More and more of them are popping up on Ravelry. Here are some recent ones that caught my eye!
btownknitter made these colorful Boos to hang in a kindergarten class. How cute!
And ekinneywy’s autumnal Boo is nicely captured in this photo.
If you’re a member on Ravelry, check out all the Boos—there are over 300 of them! And all you Boo knitters (or any other Mochimochi Land toy knitters), don’t forget to enter the photo contest by November 16th!