Author: Anna

2024 holiday pattern: Koko and Puff!

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Our 2024 holiday pattern is here and it’s brimming with cheer!

And it’s FREE with $5 purchase all this month!

Drink in the merry cuteness that is Koko and Puff, warming holiday friends to knit, share, and enjoy. Because nothing brightens a winter’s day like a cup of hot chocolate, topped with a marshmallow and the teeniest candy cane you’ve ever seen.

✨☕️ Use the code MERRYMUG after adding $5 in products from the Mochimochi Shop, and the Koko and Puff pattern will magically appear in your cart! ☕️✨

You can also purchase the pattern on its own via Ravelry.

Koko and Puff is a seamless, super simple project, with nothing more complicated than I-cord, yarnovers, and one wrap & turn (demonstrated in a linked video).

The construction was inspired by those cute “take apart” erasers that you’ve probably seen in gift shops. It’s so satisfying to pop in the hot chocolate, and it means that you can knit and swap out other drinks. (Matcha egg nog, anyone?)

Scrap yarn works well for this project, plus you may want a bit of wool or yarn and a needle felting tool to add those cute lil cheeks. ☺️

And this pattern comes with secret BONUS mods! Can you guess what they are?? 😉

Big thank-yous to Marilyn Passmore for her tech editing, and to Kristine Brandel for testing this pattern.

I hope you all love knitting Koko and Puff as much as I loved designing them! Happy Holidays, everybody!

December 13th: Knit kitties with me and Modern Daily Knitting!

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I am thrilled to be teaching an all-new virtual workshop with Modern Daily Knitting. On December 13th, join me online to knit my classic Cat in a Box, just in time for cozy winter gifting. You’ll come away with all the skills you need to knit a Cat in a Bag and a Cat in a Life Preserver—and all the yarn you’ll need, too! We’ve created custom cozy cat kits (that include stickers!) for the occasion. 

Sign up and get the kit on the Modern Daily Knitting website. I can’t wait to see you there! 

New Pattern: Computer Cat =^.^=

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I’m so excited to announce my newest Catside pattern: Computer Cat!

Computer Cat is a multitasker, working hard at getting comfy and deleting your progress at the same time. An inspiration to screen addicts everywhere!

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Now available as a PDF download AND in two kit options: fuzzy white and fuzzy surprise color!

The cat is a seamless knit that uses grafting to finish, and the computer is knit flat with intarsia colorwork for the screen, with some mattress-stitch assembly. The pattern includes five BONUS intarsia designs for the computer screen, along with three templates for you to create your own graphics.

This is a great project for scrap yarn, or get all the yarn and stuffing you’ll need with a kit. Featuring Chicago-based Gnome Depot Fiber Lion’s Mane Suri Lace (a baby alpaca/silk blend), the kit comes with yarn to make a computer and a fuzzy cat in white OR a fuzzy cat in a surprise hand-dyed color!

Computer Cat is modeled after a cat that appears in my picture book Catside Up, Catside Down: A Book of Prepositions, published by Feiwel and Friends. It makes a purrfect gift to go with the book!

Many thanks to Marilyn Passmore for her tech editing, and to Kristine Brandel for testing.

Also available on Ravelry!

Grafting Tutorial

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A quick tutorial on grafting stitches together, a finishing technique that gives you an invisible flat seam.

* Note: I meant to say “purl OFF” when dealing with that very last stitch!

See you at Vogue Knitting LIVE NYC in January!

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Vogue knitting LIVE is returning to NYC in January 2025! I was excited to be asked to spread the word with the help of some animated skyscrapers. These little videos have been appearing on the Vogue Knitting social accounts and in their newsletters. With more to come!

I’ll also be teaching at this event! Here are the classes I’m offering:

🦄🌈✨ Tiny Toy Knitting Basics: Unicorns and Rainbows
In this class, we’ll knit a tiny unicorn together, covering all the techniques from start to finish: knitting on double-pointed needles, I-cord legs and horn, and embroidering a magical mane and tail. We’ll also go over how to use mattress stitch to shape knitted tubes into a little rainbow, so your unicorn can have a friend! This is a great class to start with if you’re new to knitting toys, tiny toys, or circular knitting. The simple unicorn body can also be turned into all sorts of four-legged creatures!

👨🏻👩🏽🤷‍♀️ Knit a Tiny You (or Anybody)
In this *all new* project-oriented class, we’ll start with a basic pattern for a 1”-3”-tall human, then go into all kinds of ways you can customize it to create individuals representing yourself, your friends, your favorite celebs and characters—anything that walks on two legs! Techniques that we’ll cover include I-cord and circular knitting, shaping through basic increase and decrease stitches, embroidery, color work, needle felting, and anything else that might come up through participants’ interests.

I’ll probably also be displaying my artwork and vending at the marketplace. It’s gonna be a big weekend!

Registration is now open at the Vogue Knitting website. See you there!

Yarnover classes in Minneapolis September 20-22

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via GIPHY

Who needs a tiny knitted kitty to massage?

I’m looking forward to bringing more of these tiny cats into the world this September at Yarnover! This is a weekend of classes, a marketplace, and more brought to us by The Minnesota Knitters’ Guild. 🧶

I’ll be teaching a tiny cat knitting class AND a toy design class too! Sign up for both, and you can knit a cat with me, then get ready to knit whatever kind of toy you can dream up. Registration for non guild members is now open ✨

🐈 What: Yarnover 2024 classes
🐈 When: September 20-22, 2024
🐈 Where: Crowne Plaza Minneapolis West

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Moe information and registration on the Yarnover website!

A visit to Eylul in Osaka

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We just returned from the absolute best family vacation in Japan!

You can see a little recap with lots of my photos in this Instagram reel. But I must make a special post about my visit to the lovely yarn store Eylul in Osaka, and its lovely owner, Yuri Kojima!

I met Yuri years back when she visited Vogue Knitting Live in NYC and stopped by my booth there. Since then she’s been carrying my kits in her Osaka store—my only retailer in Japan! It’s an honor to be featured in a yarn shop in the country where the art of amigurumi was born. 🥹

Yuri has been influential in my design work as well, encouraging me to keep up my series of new year animals and advising me on them, too! (It’s thanks to her suggestion that the Year of the Dragon kit comes with pompoms for the dragons to protect.)

Yuri and her colleague Koyuki welcomed me and my sister-in-law, Jenna, for an evening of tea with gourmet jellies, dinner at an okonomiyaki restaurant, and dessert at Mister Donut, home of the original Japanese donut. It was wonderful to get to know Yuri better and learn the story of how the idea for Eylul started when she asked herself, “would I be satisfied with my life if it were to end now?”

Of course before leaving we had to purchase some lovely Japanese yarn, including paper yarn and unique yarn that’s created from factory oddments.

This was such a fun and meaningful part of my trip to Japan. Thank you, Yuri!

Behind the scenes of Catside Up, Catside Down in Modern Daily Knitting

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The Catside kitties are on Modern Daily Knitting today! I was thrilled when MDK invited me to write something about the making of Catside Up, Catside Down, and I loved the opportunity to revisit the process that went into the writing and the knitting that went into my book.

I’ve been a fan of MDK since way back, so it’s a special thrill to appear on their site after so many years 🤩

Thank you to Kay and Andrienne!