For those who can’t knit their own, I’m giving away FOUR Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi Ms. Clauses knit by me!
Four of them because they’re family: mother, daughter, cousin, and an aunt who lives a “clothes optional” lifestyle.
To enter to win one of these holiday heroines, please write a charming Ms. Claus-themed poem in the comments to this post on Instagram. I’ll choose my four favorites on Monday 12/16!
Happy news: the Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi Sugarplum Fairies Pattern is now a kit! It comes with enough fingering-weight yarn to make two sugarplum fairies in opposite plummy colors. And it’s on sale for 25% off through December 24th!
UPDATE: I’m extending this sale through Monday December 2!
This flirty turkey has some pre-Thanksgiving discounts on holiday patterns for you!
All of these are now marked down through Black Friday in the Mochimochi Shop—no code required:
🦃 Tiny Thanksgiving
🐻 Bundle-up Bears
🎄 Generosi-trees
👨🏻 Deck the Walruses
❄️ Special Little Snowflakes
🦌 Teeter-Totter Reindeer
If you can read turkey lips, you’ll know that they’re saying a big THANK YOU for being part of Mochimochi Land with your knitting, your sharing, your follows, and your giggles.
Sometimes a knitter goes so above and beyond with a project, they deserve to be called a hero. Keitha Brannick certainly earns the distinction with this colorful colony of Boos! Then she went REALLY big and knitted an enormous Boo for her front door to delight the neighborhood with. He’s a full 15″ tall with a 29″ wingspan! She had some yarn left over, so she also improvised a giant purple spider, as you do.
I asked Keitha if she would share a bit about how she made her big Boo. Here’s what she had to say:
It was very easy to scale him up. I didn’t have a specific size in mind, just big. I found a bulky yarn that called for size 15 needles. It took three 3.5oz/43 yd skeins with just a little left over yarn. I followed your pattern except that I knit him flat, since I didn’t have size 15 double points, and mattress stitched the pieces together. I sewed the legs into the body as I stitched the body closed.
I wanted a bright surprise when his wings opened so I knit 2 sets of the modified wings, one navy and one purple. I couldn’t find a bulky yarn in the bright purple so I used 4 strands of worsted weight acrylic yarn with the size 15 needles. The smaller yarn made the purple wings slightly smaller than the navy bulky which made a nice edging around the inner wings when I stitched them together. When Big Boo is hanging by his feet his wings drooped so I used thin craft wire to keep them spread out. I bent the wire to follow the curves on the bottom of the wings (which is on top when Boo is up-side-down), and slipped it through the stitches where the curves change direction.
I knit his fangs out of shiny white yarn I had from other projects and stitched them on. I found large crystals meant for jewelry that sparkled purple and white to use for his eyes. I sewed buttons where I wanted the eyes and glued the crystals to the buttons. I was afraid the crystals wouldn’t hold well glued to the yarn but with the right glue they might have been fine. Boo won’t be used as a toy so it’s not as critical to watch all his parts!
Thank you, Keitha, for sharing all about your process!
If you’re inspired to emulate Keitha’s creative genius, you may want to get started now: find the Boo pattern in my shop and on Ravelry. And of course, Keitha gets a $25 credit to the Mochimochi Shop for her brilliance! (Keep tagging your projects with #mochimochiland and the same could happen to you!)
Happy Halloween to all the creepy cats!
Fun news: I’m teaching two classes at Vogue Knitting Live NYC in January!
For advanced beginners, there’s Knit a Pocket Narwhal, a project-based class in which you’ll learn some basic toy techniques (while knitting flat or in the round, whichever you prefer) and come away with a fun-size little narwhal to accompany you for the rest of the weekend.
For intermediate and advanced knitters, I’m offering a Design Your Own Tiny Toy workshop, where you can work with basic shapes to modify and make your own, or come with a more complex design for us to figure out together. (Knit tiny versions of your pets! Your friends! Your favorite cartoon characters!)
Both classes will be held on Thursday January 16th.
I don’t teach very often, so I’m psyched! I recommend signing up ASAP!
🎵 Here’s the story of a big red barn
Who was hungry for some animals to munch
But he didn’t really want to eat his buddies
That’s the way they all became the Barnyarn Bunch 🎵
The Barnyarn Bunch pattern collection is now available as a PDF download! Find it in the Mochimochi Shop and also on Ravelry.
In addition to patterns for a tiny pig, tiny cow, tiny horse, and tiny chicken, you get modifications for a tiny donkey and a penny-pinching piggy bank who will help you save up to TWO pennies. (You’re probably feeling richer already just reading about it.)
This is one of the most involved pattern collections I’ve put together, and I’m so excited to have it out in the world! Big thanks to my tech editor, Marilyn Passmore, and to my testers Amanda, Dorien, Rebecca, Lalie, and Linda.
Keep an eye out for more fun Barnyarn animations coming to Instagram and Facebook!
I had the pleasure of making dinosaur-themed stop-motion videos with a great group of middle schoolers at the ELA Area Library in Lake Zurich, IL, on Saturday.
Most of the devices we were using weren’t connected to the internet, so unfortunately I don’t have finished projects to share, but you can see from the aftermath just how much creativity was going on!
The library currently has an impressive exhibit on dinosaurs—worth checking out if you’re in the area!