I’ve just had an amazing week working with Brandi Simons, my good friend and can-do photographer! We were working on photos for a super-exciting project, which I’ll have more to say about soon. But she also did all the beautiful photography for Knitting Mochimochi, and I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.

It was just about a year ago that she was hard at work taking the fun photos for the book. While she was working, I snapped a few quick shots, and I thought it would be fun to share a few of those pics here.

Brandi was often lying flat on the ground to get the perfect shot. Here her husband Mike holds the reflector while their neighbor Loren pushes an lawn mower dangerously close to knitted mushrooms!

Brandi shooting in her daughters’ playroom. It gets great light!

Brandi is also a mom to two beautiful girls, Sonnie and Sarah, both of whom are great helpers. Sonnie has been a fabulous model for us, and Sarah is an inspiring muse.

I just can’t say enough about how great Brandi is and how amazing her photography skills are. Her main focus has been photojournalism, but she also does fabulous portrait, wedding, and sports photography. If you’re looking for a photographer in Oklahoma, she is just the best!

I’m spending this week with my family in Oklahoma, for pleasure and also for a fun kind of business—more toy photography with the talented Brandi Simons!

Now that I live far away, it’s fun to return and discover new things in the Tulsa area that I’d never known about. Like the Skiatook Statuary, where I went with my dad the other day. It seems that if you have a lawn statue or fountain, it’s not unlikely that it came from this place. Even if you live in Russia, apparently!

It’s difficult to capture the size of the place or the number of statues on the grounds, but it is extensive. Cute, tacky, creepy, basket-y—they’ve got it all.

Gnomes abound, of course.

There was so much, and every type of statue came in so many different variations, that it was hard to focus on any particular one for long, and absolutely impossible to see them all. But my pick for most creepy-cute was this bunny bench.

And the ugliest thing I could find was this fountain, which might be specially designed to keep solicitors away.

I could have spent a couple of hours looking at everything, but there were Mother’s Day gifts to shop for. (Tragically, none of the Skiatook statues fit the bill.)