Author: Anna

Guess the Next Tiny Collection

Posted on by Anna

Update: tess b won the little contest by guessing the four patterns correctly! (Check out the comments to see what they are.)

The next Tiny Things collection will be coming to the Mochimochi Shop very soon! Before the big announcement, I thought it would be fun to do a little guessing game about which four Tiny Things will be included in the pattern collection. I’ve listed some hints below, and the first person to guess all four Tinys correctly in the comments will get the pattern collection for free when it’s available!

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Some hints:

The first Tiny lives underground and kisses by rubbing noses together.

The second Tiny has been known to sometimes rain down from the sky when the weather is very strange.

The third Tiny has a history that dates back to Roman times, and it has a connection to Mardis Gras.

The fourth Tiny has had one famous resident, and it is also found on most computers.

What do you think they are? Try to guess all four in the comments!

Tiny Taco

Posted on by Anna

tinytaco

He could really go for some Chinese food right now.

Sursi was the first to leave a comment suggesting that I knit a tiny taco last year in July, so she gets a free pattern!

Schmancy Exclusives

Posted on by Anna

Schmancy, the plush and vinyl toy store in Seattle, has been doing an ongoing series of “Schmancy Exclusives,” limited-edition plush toys made by some very awesome plush artists that are available only at Schmancy. The exclusives have been rolling out for over a year now, and each one is great!

The two most recent exclusives are adorable plushes from Cotton Monster and Softlife.

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You can find them all in the Schmancy online shop. (And a few of my Baldees are still available there too!)

Malabrigo Moose

Posted on by Anna

I’ve been obsessively checking out all the Knitting Mochimochi creatures that are popping up on Ravelry every day since the book was released—there are so many fantastic ones already!

One of my favorites is this adorably plump Confused Moose made by Alice of Kathryn Ivy.

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It’s amazing how the size and placement of the features can give a toy such a different personality—to me, this guy looks like the “Muppet Babies” version of the original. And the Malabrigo yarn that Alice used is gorgeous! Somehow I’ve never used Malabrigo myself, but now I really want to give it a try now.

If you’ve made a toy from Knitting Mochimochi or any of my other patterns, be sure to add your photo to the Mochimochi Friends group on Flickr! It will appear on the Mochimochi Land gallery page and it will also automatically be entered in the next Mochimochi Photo Contest.

Limbo

Posted on by Anna

Limbo is a new game for the Xbox 360 that I am eager to play when I find some spare time. Just look at this beautifully moody screenshot:

limbo

John just reviewed the game for Eurogamer, so I got some glimpses of him playing it a few days ago. I was happy to hear from him that the game lives up to its prettiness.

Looks like it is officially released tomorrow!

Let’s Put on a Show

Posted on by Anna

A few months ago I hinted that I was working on a big project for later this year. “Later this year” is quickly approaching, so it’s time to start saying more about it!

This October I’m going to have my first solo show at gallery hanahou in New York. A Mochimochi Land show is something I’ve entertained some vague thoughts about for a long time, so it’s like a dream that I hardly let myself dream come true. I’m incredibly thankful to Koko, the gallery curator and my boss, for believing enough in my work to let me have a show!

I thought for a long time about what a Mochimochi Land show would look like, and the idea that got me the most excited was a knitted installation, something big that would incorporate lots of little elements for maximum fun and silliness. Movement is something I’ve always been interested in incorporating into my knitting, so I had the idea to create the entire thing around a running model train.

I talked to the nice people at Cascade about my project, and they were generous enough to help out with the yarn for the entire thing. So I got started a few months back on making the ground out of various green shades of Cascade 128. I never knit anything bigger than an average-size toy, and this felt like making the biggest, heaviest blanket ever!

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(By the way, I am wearing shorts under all that yarn.)

As for the train, dad was just the person to ask about it—he happens to have a friend with a model train business! Ludwig at The Last Train Stop set me up with a model train from the 1950s that he thought would work best for my project.

We set it up at my parents’ house and got it to run.

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In the end the train will have a knitted covering and will be throughly anthropomorphic, of course.

After several months of knitting, I’m almost finished with the ground, and it seems to be the right size for a figure-eight course. Soupy recently inspected it and granted approval.

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Over the next two months I’ll be working on aaalll of the stuff and creatures that will populate the landscape—I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I think it’s going to be a ton of fun. I plan to post periodic updates about it all until the show opens on October 7th!