Author: Anna

Show Setup, Day 1: Train Trauma

Posted on by Anna

So today was the big first day of setting up my show! It was exciting and a little traumatic.

My wonderful friends at gallery hanahou were nice enough to set up a platform for the installation, and then they helped me attach the ground layer blanket. It fit perfectly!

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You can see the pieces from Stina Persson’s show, which just ended, still up on the walls. Her work is amazing, and it felt a little weird to be displaying my silly knitted stuff right next to her nuanced watercolors.

Next it was time to get the model train set up and working. And work it did not, except to go halfway around before it derailed. That was kind of devastating, since it worked at home just fine, but the softer, slightly uneven surface didn’t seem to be helping. I was freaking a bit, but John was cool-headed about the whole thing and spent several hours making different adjustments until it was working pretty much perfectly. So he definitely earned his “World’s Best Husband” mug today.

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While John was working on the train, I got started on the stitching things to that big blanket.

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I have to say, in a larger room with white walls, the whole thing looked much smaller overall to me, and I was definitely thinking, “is this all I did with most of the first half of 2010?” But I guess I just have to concentrate on the details—no sense in second-guessing anything at this point.

Tomorrow will be all about assembly, and not at all about trains!

Bon Voyage, Tiny Acorn!

Posted on by Anna

Thanks for the great captions for Tiny Acorn! It was hard to choose a favorite, but John and I settled on Wendy’s:

Tiny acorn dreams of putting down roots in Paris, where his love of berets and Jerry Lewis will be appreciated.

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That means Wendy gets a free PDF pattern from the Mochimochi Shop. Congrats!

Honorable mentions must go to several others:

From catspaw:
Why yes, I am partial to berets.

From Jason:
He doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he knows he didn’t fall far from the tree.

From DKW:
Being an acorn isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – Unless of course, you’re having a nutty day.

From JL:
People may think he’s a little nutty now, but one day we’ll all be looking up to him.

From Livi:
Sometimes I worry that I’m going to seed

From Melissa:
He just fell hard for that little hazelnut next door, but she’s just not ready to put down roots yet.

From Rachael:
They call me a nut. They all put me down. But what they don’t know is, my cap is a crown.

Tiny Acorn

Posted on by Anna

I was thinking today would be September 31st, but I’m happy to see that it’s October! (Someday I’ll learn how to read a calendar.) So let’s kick the month off right with an autumnal tiny thing.

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Winning caption by Wendy:
Tiny acorn dreams of putting down roots in Paris, where his love of berets and Jerry Lewis will be appreciated.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be a tiny acorn? (Or a regular-size acorn, for that matter?) Leave your cute/funny caption suggestion in the comments! On Monday I’ll choose the winner, who will get a free PDF pattern from the Mochimochi Shop.

One Week to Go

Posted on by Anna

Today marks one week before my show opens! At this point, I can’t really say how the preparation is coming, except to say that I’ve just spent several months doing almost nothing but knitting for it, and if you gave me until the end of the year, I could easily keep finding things to knit for it.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been concentrating on the tiny stuff. This pile represents an embarrassing number of hours, and about one-fifth of the total number of tiny things to go in my installation.

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Let me tell you, I am in awe of my Crystal Palace size 1 double-pointed needles. Those skinny sticks of bamboo have taken much abuse and are still going strong. And so, thank heavens, are my fingers!

The setup will start on Monday, but I’m expecting to be knitting up until the day of the opening (October 7th). I’ll be blogging the setup next week, so stay tuned for last-minute fiber drama!

Grassy Bench Yarn Bomb

Posted on by Anna

I pretty much squealed when I spotted this on Ravelry the other day.

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How cute is this! This is cute.

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The mysterious Strickbombe knitter recently decorated this bench in Saarbrücken, Germany, with a snail made from my free pattern and mushrooms and grass of her own design. I want to live in a world where every public bench is curated by a knitter like this.

She has many more creative yarn bombs on her blog (including some fun with Tiny Perching Pigeons)!

Maker Faire was a Blast

Posted on by Anna

Saturday was my first Maker Faire, and I was honored to be there as an official maker! Rebecca Reitz, the librarian at the New York Hall of Science (where the faire was held in Queens) had invited me to have a table at her library for the day. It turned out to be a great spot—many people were heading indoors once the thermometer hit 80.

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Helping me out all day long was my great friend Jen. I could not have been there without her! She manned the table while I was out doing my toy knitting demo at the CRAFT stage (which went really well, much to my relief), and she was way better at talking up my book than I was.

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Librarian Rebecca is a fiber artist herself (check out her blog)—she had a display of her beautiful pieces that combine crochet with wood and other natural materials. Our mushrooms got to know each other a bit.

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And I got to meet Robyn Love and her beautifully covered rocket! Rebecca contributed to the squares throughout the day with some amazing crocheted squares that made me seriously consider giving the craft another try. (Maybe someday.)

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I had so much fun seeing everything else at Maker Faire too—I can’t wait to go to another one!

Thank you to Rebecca for inviting me and also for the photos!

Tiny Banana Peel Hilarity

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It turns out that a tiny knitted banana peel was ripe for all kinds of comedy—there were many hilarious captions among the 70-plus suggestions!

It was hard to choose just one, but the win goes to…

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That’s what you’d call a slip-stitch…

Congrats, Juul! That means you get a free PDF pattern from the Mochimochi Shop.

Honorable mentions:

How to break out of comedy and be taken seriously as an actor!
(Bonney)

“Bet no one else can do the splits as well as me!”
(Karen)

Just a moment ago I was giving a wonderful hug… Now? I feel kind of empty inside.
(MrsB)

i’m more appealing than that mushy ol’ banana anyway!
(Kara S)

What a fruitless day I’ve had!
(Peg of Tilling)

I need to check my liability insurance!
(claire)

Nice job, everyone!