Author: Anna

Knitting Mochimochi Release Party at Brooklyn General

Posted on by Anna

Are you in the NYC area? If so, please come to Brooklyn General on July 11th for the Knitting Mochimochi release party!

I’ll be at the store from 2 to 6 pm along with the full cast of characters from the book, so you can pat them and hug them and decide which you’re going to knit first.

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Bring some yarn and double-pointed needles (worsted-weight yarn and size 5 or 6 dpns are recommended), and you can make a Bite-Free Bed Bug from the book!

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The pattern will be available to anyone who comes, and you will be welcome to get knitting on it right there. Of course I’ll be there to answer any questions about the book and give tips on toy knitting. Should be fun!

It would mean a lot to me to see people there. PLUS two days later is my birthday, and having a fun little release party would be the best present ever.

If you haven’t been to Brooklyn General before, it’s about time that you did! They are housed in an old general store (hence the name), and they carry yarn, fabric, and other cool crafty stuff. The closest subway station is Carroll St in Brooklyn—just a short trip from Manhattan on the F line.

No signup or RSVP is needed—just come anytime between 2 and 6 pm. Hope to see you on July 11th!

Liberty

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I just wanted to write up a quick post about Liberty. It’s likely that you’ve heard of the famous department store in London, but I didn’t really know much about it before visiting the other day. I can now confirm that it’s an incredible store, both in architecture and stock!

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For one thing, I knew they had printed fabrics, but I didn’t know that they had an entire floor of craft supplies, including yarn.

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I could say a lot more about the store, but I’ll just point out one fun find: plates and cups with designs by Donna Wilson, an artist and toy knitter.

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I blogged about Donna Wilson’s pattern book The Knitted Odd-bod Bunch last year. I love her style!

The Pigeons have Landed!

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Update: The Tiny Perching Pigeon Party was featured in Londonist! (Thanks, m@!)

I just had the best time making Tiny Perching Pigeons with Stitch London!

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About 40 London knitters turned out to this evening’s Tiny Perching Pigeon Party at St James’ Park. I was wowed by how many brought multiple pigeons already finished, and all the many variations were a riot to see.

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After a couple of hours of knitting and chatting, we all paraded over to Trafalgar Square with our feathered friends to replace the pigeons that were chased out a few years ago. (Feeding them is now banned in the square and surrounding areas.) No one seemed to object to our temporary flock of cuties, fortunately—although we certainly got the attention of some tourists.

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Once in place, the pigeons all got their picture taken by the group.

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After the photo shoot, most knitters took their birds home to cozy captivity. I’m planning to set a few of my own free in the city and in other parts of England that my mom and I travel to this week.

Thank you to everyone who made pigeons and contributed to this fun display of knitted cuteness in all shapes and sizes. And a HUGE thank-you to Deadly Knitshade and Stitch London for arranging the pigeon-perfect party!

All the Fun of the Fair

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Wow, London has been so much fun! It helps that we’ve had great weather so far—I’ve even gotten a tiny bit sunburned, which I wasn’t expecting. My mom and I have packed an unbelievable amount of sights and shops and food into one weekend, so I’ll share a bit of that here on the blog when I can!

One of the highlights so far has been my visit to All the Fun of the Fair, a knitting shop just off Carnaby Street in Soho.

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It’s a darling little shop, with very pretty yarn and lots of fun buttons and other goodies. The neatest thing about All the Fun of the Fair is the way that they specialize in silly knitted foods, tea cozies, and other cute and more or less impractical stuff. Right up my alley!

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Sarah was behind the counter there and I chatted with her a while about the shop and knitters in London. I was happy to learn that she had seen my Tiny Perching Pigeons from the Stitch London newsletter!

… Speaking of which, today is the Tiny Perching Pigeon Party at St James’ Park! I can’t wait!

Check out the perched-upon logo that Stitch London used in their latest newsletter.

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Totally squee-worthy!

Knitting Mochimochi Giveaway from Knit Picks

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If you haven’t seen it yet, Knit Picks is giving away two copies of Knitting Mochimochi on their blog! To enter, just leave a comment on their post about it.

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Knit Picks staffer Stacey wrote up the nicest post about the book and my designs. It’s so great to have the enthusiasm of a yarn company, and the comments that people have been leaving are just amazing—as of my writing this, there exactly 700 comments! I can hardly believe it, but you CAN believe that I’ve read every one of them. I’m so touched (and a bit bewildered) by the response!

Tiny Umbrella

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Sick of the rain, she’s hoping someone will mistake her for a parasol one of these days.

A Tiny Umbrella seems fitting (thanks Lauren!) because I’m off to London and beyond right now on a trip with my mom! I’m looking forward to real vacation, but I’ll still be more or less available if you need to get in touch, and I plan to keep blogging from the UK whenever I have wifi. I am anticipating cute accents, cobbled streets, and eating ice cream with Camera Obscura. (That last one is unlikely.) I don’t think I’ll do much knitting there EXCEPT for the Tiny Perching Pigeon Party in London on Monday (6/21)!

By the way, Tiffany was the first to suggest that I make a Tiny Umbrella back in July of last year, so she gets a free pattern!

Knitting Mochimochi Preview: Pigs with Wigs

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It’s time for another preview from Knitting Mochimochi! This one is the beauty shot for the Pigs with Wigs pattern.

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The name of the pattern is pretty self-explanatory: it’s pigs. wearing wigs. Can you guess how I came up with the idea? I wanted to design a pig, but it had to have something a little special about it, and so I thought of words that rhymed with “pig.” And soon a design was born, including the wigs Awesome Afro, Buxom Bob, Magnificent Mohawk, and—of course—the Beautiful Beehive.

I wanted to show this photo because we (my photographer Brandi, my sister Leah, and I—but mostly Brandi) worked really hard on this one, and I think it turned out fabulous. Brandi’s friend Sandi runs a beautiful spa in Tulsa (Serenity Aveda Day Spa—check it out!), and she was nice enough to let us use one of her rooms and all the equipment in it.

The room had a cool retro-salon vibe to it, but it was quite small, and since we wanted to show all four wig-wearing pigs in the photo, Brandi had to get creative with how to do the shoot. First, we moved everything in the room into one small corner to shoot from one direction, and Brandi could only fit everything in the shot by crouching down under the sink! Then we needed a vertical option, so we moved ALL of the stuff from one side of the room to the other side to shoot from the other direction.

The photo above is the second composition that Brandi shot, with one pig in a mirror and the others watching. You can’t tell from the photo, but the pigs are sitting on a stool that’s precariously perched on top of a hamper, and the busts with wigs behind them are just barely balancing on the edge of the sink and the stool and the wall. I seriously thought everything was going to collapse! I was the one holding the mirror up, and you can see a little muscle strain in my wrist because I was pressed right up against the wall and I had to hold the angle just right for several minutes.

So this shot was hard work, but we were rewarded with a great photol The Pigs with Wigs themselves are a pretty silly pattern, but I thought there might be a few other people in this world who would like to make them too.

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I plan to post one more preview from the book next week, so stay tuned!