Through August 31st, all mochi-making goodies in the Mochimochi Shop are on sale: Books are 15% off, and all kits and PDF patterns are 20% off. Just enter the code SUMMEROFSQUEE in your cart before checking out.
This is our last big sale of the year, so take advantage of the deals and end your summer with a squee!
As of Friday, I’m the proud owner of a new bulletin board!
This is actually my first-ever bulletin board. I was getting tired of all the loose papers and other small things that I’m constantly shifting around on my desk (for like the past six years), and recently it dawned on me that I could mount all of this flotsam vertically on the wall. Obviously that hasn’t happened in full yet, but I’m mighty pleased with my progress. I have the notion that people with bulletin boards get stuff done and are never far from new inspiration, so there are a lot of high hopes contained in this piece of cork and wood.
Also, I’m not so experienced with drilling holes into walls, so getting this baby up was an exercise in using power tools. It turns out that drilling through drywall makes me feel like a real can-do lady.
We have tons more stuff that we still need to put on our walls—it’s been 9 months since we moved, so it seems like about time to get on that—but at least this is a start!
I was listening to the podcast Sideshow (made by Sean Rameswaram of Studio 360) on my run/walk this morning, and the topic was the artist Pogo, who makes remixes using clips from animations and TV shows. I found the clip they played of his “Alice” remix to be totally mesmerizing, so even though it’s nearly five years old, I wanted to share it for a little Monday inspiration/chill-out.
This is the first time I’ve been really captivated by something featured on Sideshow, but it’s still a pretty new podcast, so maybe it’s still coming into its own. For now, I’m a much bigger fan of TLDR, another internet-themed podcast that came out of WNYC’s On The Media. I do love this trend of public radio podcast spinoffs!
A couple months back my sister gave me this 1960s-era peace symbol magnet that she received at an event organized by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. It has an interesting story to go along with it, and with all the heartbreaking conflict going on in the world in recent days (and months, and forever) it seems like as appropriate a time as ever to share it.
The following was printed on a card that came with the magnet.
After being released from an internment camp for Japanese Americans, Chiyoko and Goro Otagiri returned to Japan in 1947 to found the Otagiri Mercantile Co, which later produced these colorful, hopeful hand-made peace symbols as part of their housewares and giftware products. The symbols were shipped to San Francisco and then taken to showrooms in Los Angeles and Dallas. In 2011 a member of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship discovered 23 shipping crates of the peace symbols in the estate of the Dallas showroom manager. Coming from the only nation to have experienced nuclear weapons to the only nation to have used them, the peace symbols had never been opened.
Rediscovered unopened vintage products are always fascinating (especially when they’re from Japan), and this one is especially enigmatic to me since it was produced at a time when WWII was still in the very recent past, in a country that experienced some of the worst events of the war. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with it yet—it seems like a waste to just stick on my fridge—so it’ll stay on my desk for now, its bright orange color never letting me ignore it for too long.
You can learn more about the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, which was originally started in the 1940s as an organization that gave support to conscientious objectors to World War II, on their website.
What’s on my needles right now? It’s a tiny mystery!
Today (July 31) is the LAST DAY to get a free mystery kit with purchase of any two kits or books from the Mochimochi Shop. There are three mystery designs available—so, order four kits/books to receive two of them, and order six kits/books to get all three. These are sent automatically with orders—no need to add anything to your cart.
And as I’ve mentioned before, if you’ve already received a mystery kit and would like to get one or both of the other designs, just shoot me an email (at info [at] mochimochiland [dot] com) and let me know which one you already have so you don’t get a duplicate.
The mystery designs will be revealed later this year (probably October) when the patterns are officially available in my shop. From what I’ve seen poking around social media, those who have gotten the mystery kits share my excitement about them—yay!
This long-armed Pooh is having quite a time trying to get at that honey!
Rebecca modified the Totes Adorbs pattern from Huge & Huggable Mochimochi to make her wearable Bear of Very Little Brain. So clever!
Seeing Rebecca’s Pooh prompted me to look up some quotes from Winnie-the-Pooh, and I was reminded of just how many wonderful turns of phrase are contained in A.A. Milne’s slender book. One of my favorites:
“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
I’m giving away a free pattern to anyone whose Huge & Huggable mochis I share here on the blog this summer. Add your photos to our Flickr group to get in on that!
I love getting new pin-back buttons made! I just got 99 of these guys, and I’ll be sending them out with all shipped orders (books, kits, other buttons, and hand-knit items) until supplies last.
These are also the final days to get your mystery kits—Thursday (7/31) will be the last day to get one or more with your order! If you’ve already received one mystery kit and you want to pick up one or both of the other three designs, just email me at info [at] mochimochiland [dot] com and let me know which kit you’ve already gotten so that you don’t get duplicates.
I don’t have a ton of photos to show for it, but my Wooly Woods crafting event in Ann Arbor earlier this month was so much fun!
Around 40 people of all ages came to the district library for fun with wrapping twigs with yarn. It’s such a simple project that I think it lets you get creative in unexpected ways—as soon as we got started I saw people making swings and I-cords and using the yarn in other ways that I wouldn’t have thought to do myself. Many of the participants were knitters and embellished with their own details or with the patterns that I brought to hand out, but many were new to yarn crafting entirely. (I was surprised at the number of people who were eager to learn to knit right on the spot!)
These two cuties showed up a bit late, but still managed to make some colorful sculptures to take home.
I asked Erin the librarian if one really big branch could be supplied as a group project, and she came through with the perfect thing. Various people worked on it throughout the workshop, and we finished it just in time. It’s now hanging about the reference desk in the youth department.
It’s hard to tell in this photo, but this branch is around six feet long!
One of the neat things about this workshop was the way that I picked up a couple of handy techniques when I was preparing for it. (Nothing like the challenge of teaching someone to get you to learn new stuff yourself!) First, it occurred to me that I should finally learn to make a proper yarn bobbin so that wrapping twigs didn’t also involve constantly chasing unraveling balls of yarn around the room.
Here’s the video I used to learn the technique:
These kinds of bobbins are also really handy for instarsia knitting.
I also thought pompoms would be a neat element to add to the wrapped twigs, but somehow I’d gone 33 years on this planet without ever making one myself! So I turned to Vickie Howell, who showed me the most basic way with this video:
I was impressed by the great results you can get just by using your hand. (A friend to help you tie a tight knot really does help too.) While I’m on the topic, I’ll mention that while I was researching pompom making I also stumbled across this technique for making mini pompoms using a fork.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I foresee lots of tiny pompoms growing in my future Wooly Woods sculptures.
Thank you to the Ann Arbor District Library and to everyone who came out to the event!