This car is frequently parked on my street and gets lots of attention from passersby.
As the Xed out rodents symbol indicates, it’s owned by someone with a business trapping animals. I have to assume this is a pretty effective marketing campaign, if only for the surrounding neighborhood.
Every time my mother-in-law Bonney visits us, she insists that this car should make an appearance on my blog. Since it’s her birthday today, she gets her wish!
Remember the Hokusai bunnies by Kozyndan that I posted during Bunny Week a few months back? I just saw on the Munky King website that it will soon be available in vinyl form!
So cool.
Speaking of Bunny Week, it’s about time we did another themed week on the Mochimochi Blog. Any ideas?
He’s a sucker for leggy ladies!
Elizabeth was the first to leave a comment suggesting that I knit a tiny octopus about a year ago, so she gets a free pattern!
Just added to the Mochimochi Shop!
What do a gnome, a frog, a stack of pancakes, and a trash can have in common? The answer is completely nothing, and that’s what makes the newest Tiny Things pattern collection so much random cute fun.
I chose four of my favorite designs from my ongoing Tiny series for this new pattern collection. All use fingering weight yarn and size 1 double-pointed needles, and the simple techniques include picking up stitches and I-cord.
As always, if you’re in a not-so-tiny mood, these projects can be scaled up easily by using thicker yarn and larger needles.
You can buy the PDF pattern collection for $5 here!
I am drooling over this pastel TV Guy from Hello Maddy in the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group!
I’m also finding myself studying that cupcake fabric to try to decide which one I want to eat. (The chocolate cake with yellow frosting seems to have my name written on it.)
The pattern for TV Guy can be found in Knitting Mochimochi. And remember to add your photos of Mochimochi toys to the Mochimochi Friends group pool—they will be automatically entered in the next Mochimochi Photo Contest!
Interested to learn about how I design all of my patterns? You can hear me talk about my design process on episode 72 of the YarnCraft podcast, which went live today. (Spoiler alert: I way prefer experimentation and frogging over swatching and math!)
The podcast also includes interviews with designers Margaret Hubert and Kristin Omdahl—very different designers, very different processes!
Thank you for the interview, Zontee!
Nipsey’s newest hangout is a bucket in the corner with all our recyclables.
We will try to remember not to throw him out with the cardboard!
It’s time to get to work on a mountain for my installation! This will be a mountain that a model train can go through, so it needs to be big and sturdy.
After getting advice from people who know about models and soft sculpture, I decided to get some foam from Canal Rubber (“serving your rubber needs at the same location since 1954”). I feel so cool and awesome when I buy something at these kinds of specialty materials stores, and this time I got to go home with two big blocks of foam!
Soupy found them mildly interesting.
Carving one of the blocks was pretty easy—I just worked away at it with a serrated knife—but messy! I started carving at around 11 pm last night, and by midnight I was all sweaty and covered in foam. (Well, that sounds more disgusting than it actually was.) But I think I made good progress, the idea being that if I can make a rough shape with a big enough hole in the middle, then I can always add more foam to build up the outer shape before giving it a knitted covering.
Before I got the foam, I laid out the track the other day and tried to envision the layout as a whole. (It should be super crazy and colorful!) The pile of yarn on the right represents mountains.
This mountain will probably be the biggest piece in the installation, so I’m eager to make it and see how it’s going to turn out.