Author: Anna

Happy Catsgiving

Posted on by Anna

I’ve decided that it’s now a Thanksgiving tradition to share a photo of one of my cats impersonating a turkey.

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Nipsey just needs the sides and he’ll be all set!

I have so many things to be thankful for this year: healthy family and friends, a supportive husband, a nice home in a new city, and all of you who give me joy and inspiration and make my job possible. Thank you!

Lots of less fortunate people are dealing with hardship and loss right now. If you can, today’s a great day to give to organizations like Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, and the UN Refugee Agency.

And this would be the post-turkey scene in our household.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And Happy Hanukkah too!

Win Craftsy Classes and Discounts

Posted on by Anna

How are your Mochimochi Photo Contest entries coming?? Don’t worry if you haven’t started—there’s still plenty of time before December 9th arrives. And we have plenty of reasons for you to enter, including prizes from our new sponsor Craftsy!

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Craftsy is the destination for online classes on all things craft: knitting, quilting, sewing, weaving, cake decorating… their list goes on and on! Good friends of Mochimochi Land teach for Craftsy, including Angela Tong, Franklin Habit, and Stacey Trock—check out their full instructors list, and you’ll likely see lots more familiar names!

When you take a Craftsy class, you watch the videos at your own pace, the instructors are available throughout, and you can get feedback and advice all the time from interactions with your fellow classmates.

Craftsy also sells patterns and supplies, and oh look—they’re having a big sale on yarn right now!

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We’re so excited to have Craftsy as a sponsor for our photo contest this year. Our top winner (chosen by all of you) will get a free class! Our second place winner will get a 50% discount, and our third place winner will get a 25% discount. That’s in addition to prizes from Knit Picks, from Bonney Teti’s yarn stash, and from us here at Mochimochi Land!

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So after the eating and the napping and the crazy shopping (if you’re into that), this would be a GREAT weekend for making your contest entry! All you have to do is knit a Mochimochi toy, take a fun photo of it, and add it to our Flickr group. See the full contest details, and have fun with it!

Jessica’s Happy Oyster

Posted on by Anna

Last week I mentioned how fun and inspiring it was to teach a toy design master class at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in October. Because I was just about to move to Chicago, we couldn’t schedule a follow-up class to see everyone’s progress with their designs, but I asked the participants to send me updates by email. A few have come through, including Jessica, with this adorable oyster that she designed and made!

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In the class we had talked about how Jessica would make the top and bottom pieces hinge together, and how she might make the wavy “lips” of the oyster. For the lips especially, it seemed like there would be a simple solution, but it would require a little trial and error just to see how it would turn out. She opted to try making a separate I-cord and stitching it in place, and I think it worked out brilliantly!

If you’re interested in designing your own toy, my biggest advice is to just start knitting! It’s easy to get caught up in Planning Mode, thinking that you have to have everything figured out before you begin. Toys are a great place to start with designing because you can incorporate lots of fun knitting techniques and you don’t have the pressure of making sure that it will fit someone in the end. If you’ve had a toy in mind that you’d like to design, just go for it!

I’ll be leading a short workshop on toy design at Vogue Knitting LIVE in NYC in January, so I hope you’ll plan to join me if you’ll be there.

And if any of the other Lion Brand Studio class participants are reading this, I’d love to see more of your finished projects!

Win Cool Stuff from Knit Picks

Posted on by Anna

Knit Picks is a huge part of my knitting: I got my swift and yarn winder from them, I have a whole stash drawer dedicated to their Palette yarn, and I used their Brava Bulky yarn for a bunch of the projects in Huge & Huggable Mochimochi. So it made my day to see KP staff member Hannah’s Roland on the Knit Picks blog this week!

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And Knit Picks is giving away THREE copies of Huge & Huggable Mochimochi right now—check out Hannah’s blog post to find out how to enter. (The deadline is for the book giveaway is Monday.)

What’s more, Knit Picks has been a sponsor of our annual Mochimochi Photo Contest for the past four years, and they’ve stepped up again this year! Our second and third place winners will each receive a $10 gift certificate, and our first place winner will get a $50 gift certificate. That’s a lot of Palette!

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Or needles, books, kits, tools…there’s so much to choose from!

(And if you don’t live in the US or Canada, this is your rare opportunity to score Knit Picks stuff—we’ve worked it out so that any winners in other countries will be able to get the goods too.)

But you can’t win if you don’t enter your photos! The photo contest deadline is December 9th. So check out the full contest details, and get knitting and clicking!

Tiny Snowman Kits Now Available

Posted on by Anna

By popular demand, look who’s now available as a kit!

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The Tiny Snowman Kit comes with the pattern and enough yarn (Cascade Heritage, a fingering-weight wool/nylon blend) and stuffing to make two snowpeople, one with a blue scarf and one with a pink scarf. All you need are a set of size 1 DPNs and a small tapestry needle.

This would make a COOL gift for your knitting friends, if you’ll pardon the pun. (And the pattern is super simple, so it’s a great one to start with!)

If you haven’t checked them out, we now have 17 different tiny kits in the Mochimochi Shop, each available for $12.

Arcade Mochi: The Prototype

Posted on by Anna

Here’s a project that got put on hold for way too long: my unnamed arcade mochi! He sat unfinished on top of my yarn drawers for a good two months before somehow making it through the move to Chicago without unraveling. It felt so good to pick this guy up again and finish the prototype yesterday!

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(I really need to start putting things on my office walls—yuck!)

I don’t usually make prototypes for my designs, but I wanted to get the shape of this one just right before adding colorwork and other details. (The pink rectangle was just to help me see where the top front panel will go.) I’ve had second and third thoughts about the final colors, and now I’m anti-black and trying to decide if he’ll be orange, red, pink, or some shade of blue. Or who knows, maybe even green! Pretty much any color but black is what I’m thinking right now.

While I think about colors, I’m getting started on the color chart for the sides and back of this guy. Just getting ready to make a design takes some time, but now I think I have the correct number of squares to work with.

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I use Illustrator to make my charts—it can be time-consuming (especially when I forgot how Illustrator works, as I often do), but I like the control that I have and the way that I can easily fill in squares with the Paint Bucket tool.

The thing that really motivated to continue with this design is the toy design class I taught at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio last month. I’ve already gotten updates from several of the people who took the class and went on to finish their designs! I hope to teach this kind of class again soon—it was really inspiring, and I may have learned just as much as everyone else.

In case you haven’t been following along, here are my earlier posts in this series:

Arcade Mochi: Face Off
Arcade Mochi: Taking Shape
Arcade Mochi: The Screen
Arcade Mochi: The Sketch

I’ll be back with another design update soon(ish)!

Photo Contest Inspiration: 2012 Winners

Posted on by Anna

Happy Friday! You know what a great activity for this weekend would be? Knitting up some mochis for your entry in our just-announced 2013 photo contest!

To get you inspired, here’s a look back at the winners from last year’s contest.

Joan gave us chills with her terrific Thriller scene! She won our Judges’ Choice award.

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Our top three winners (who scored gift certificates, books, and a bunch of cute and crafty goodies) were chosen by all of you who voted!

In third place was the delightfully creepy Knitted Sofa by Jill Watt!

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It was a really tight race between first and second place. In the end second place went to the incredible Knitman’s Sampler by Kimberly Schaeffer!

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And finally, our first-place winner was the oh-so-cute Teamwork by Amy Hicks!

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As you’ve likely seen, Amy’s winning photo is now representing this year’s contest in our announcement images.

These are some big shoes to fill, but I’m sure you are all up for the challenge! See this year’s full contest details, and let’s get started!

At Home in Chicago

Posted on by Anna

I can’t describe how great it feels to be in what feels like a home after two weeks of being in that strange in-between state of transition. Let me show you where I now live and work!

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Isn’t it adorable?!? Like in Brooklyn, we’re living in an apartment, so the whole thing isn’t ours, but it’s still way more space than John and I have ever lived in.

Most of the apartment is pretty standard (although we have a kitchen island! such luxury!), but I wanted to at least show off my new office.

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You can no longer touch the bed from my desk! The bedroom is a completely different room! I’m feeling so spoiled by this new way of life. (Soupy is trying to claim the office as his own and push me back in the bedroom, but I’m determined to win this one.)

And I now have a little place to put knickknacks!

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This calls for the buying of new knickknacks, which I haven’t done in a long time. (I’m headed to Rotofugi soon to do just this.)

And what does Nipsey think of all this?

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Nipsey still has his tattered old scratching post, so Nipsey is all good.

Since we’ve been busy getting settled in (and the weather has been COLD), I’ve just barely started exploring my new neighborhood, much less the broader city. So, Chicagoans, I would love any tips or recommendations for favorite places to go, things to do, etc!