I simply can’t not share this ad that I spotted in a friend’s Facebook post yesterday. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve built up a tolerance to cute stuff, but then I see bunnies playing carnival games and I know that everything is going to be OK!
Author: Anna
Jumbo Gnome Reads a Book
My first copy of Huge & Huggable Mochimochi has arrived! Before I could take a look, though, somebody snatched it out of my hands.
Jumbo Gnome isn’t much of a reader, but this book is right up his alley. He’s actually the guy who inspired the whole idea to write a book of really big toy patterns, so I let him have it for a while.
He gives it 4 out of 5 stars, but only because he thought he should have been asked for a quote to go on the back cover. What an ego this guy has!
Myself, I’m excited for the 20 all-new, super-sized patterns and the fun photography by Brandi Simons. The release date is October 15th, but in the meantime I’ll have some sneak previews soon, along with out first-ever pre-sale of this book!
Arcade Mochi: Face Off
I think I figured out why my squishy arcade guy was staring at me so hard: there was something weird about his face! I got the feeling that something in particular was stopping me from taking the next step in designing, and when I thought about it, his screen seemed just a tad on the small side. So I took a few minutes to give him a face transplant.
I’ll probably make the final version in a different color, but I wanted to focus on the size and shape for now. All I did was take out the black border that originally framed the screen, and extended the screen by six stitches and six rows. It’s a closer match to my original sketches, which I think are important to refer back to throughout the design process. I’m feeling better having made this change, and now hopefully I can move forward again with this guy.
Itty-Bitty Knitted Kitty (And Puppy)
I love that these two photos by two different knitters happened to appear side-by-side in our Flickr group.
Megan’s tiny coupon-clipping cat is all about saving pennies.
And this tiny dalmatian, made by Salla, can’t wait to spend this shiny Croatian kuna!
You can get the PDF patterns for these little guys in the Tiny Pets collection. And don’t forget to add your photos of Mochimochi knits to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group—they will automatically be entered in our fall photo contest, and they might appear here too!
Let’s Knit Crazy Mittens
Last week I got to spend a few beautiful days in New Hampshire, for a quick last-minute summer vacation. Lately when John and I visit his parents, we’ve been staying in Bonney’s epic yarn stash room.
Aside from this being the quietest room in the house (yarn makes great insulation, and this is rural New Hampshire, so there’s not much noise to begin with), I enjoy this room for the strange new knitting paraphernalia that I always find in it. Lately Bonney seems to be taken with creepy vintage puppet mittens!
This kit makes two “lucky puppets.” Apparently dead mice are lucky mice!
What time is it, kids? It’s time to ponder how many nightmares were generated from these kits!
More lucky puppets! I get the skunk, but no way am I buying the left one as “Wally the Whale.”
And since when do skunk and whale make a nice pair of things to wear in the winter? Apparently whoever started on this kit agreed with me halfway through.
Maybe you love puppet mittens. Maybe you can’t get enough of them. Maybe you need ten different designs!
Actually I think these are awesome and I’m hoping Bonney will make me some.
Arcade Mochi: The Staredown
Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
The first half of last week was very busy with exciting future book stuff, and I spent the second half of last week on a last-minute mini summer vacation in New Hampshire. Just a few days away from the city was a nice break—and I got to visit the lovely Gather Here in Boston while I was at it!
Now I’m returning to a big to-do list and a big squishy arcade cabinet that won’t stop staring at me. There’s much planning and charting to do before I get back to the knitting part of him, but I’m determined to make progress on it soon!
In the meantime, here is a photo of Soupy in my yarn stash from yesterday.
Lucy’s Tiny Superheroes
I’m not sure if the internet can handle the cuteness that is Lucy Greening’s tiny superheroes!
Super powers of cute, unite! These guys are based on my (free) Knit Kid and Purl Girl pattern in the current issue of Petite Purls.
Lucy added her photo to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group. If you have photos of toys you’ve knit from Mochimochi patterns, you should share them there too!
Arcade Mochi: Taking Shape
Before I jump into my progress on the Untitled Arcade Mochi Project, I thought I’d share some of the images I’ve been obsessed with over the past few weeks.
Whenever I’m working on a any project that’s based on a real thing in the world, I like to do an image search after making my initial sketches. It’s important to me not to model a design on any particular image, but seeing a lot of whatever it is I’m making (whether it’s arcade cabinets, armadillos, or meatloaf) all together gives me a quick reference for general shapes and proportions.
So to refresh, I started with a sketch and some vague ideas about what direction I wanted to take my arcade toy in, and then after sketching and a little color design, I began the knitting part of the process with the screen. Then I did a little more sketching based on my screen, along with a little math to get to a starting point with the rest of the toy.
What followed were many hours of knitting something that doesn’t look like much of anything, just to figure out the shaping and exact stitch/row counts.
So much black!
I started by making a base that’s as wide as the screen, then after picking up stitches around the flat piece, I continued knitting the sides and back as one piece and the front as another. I could have knitted them in the round up until the control panel shelf, but I have it in mind to add intarsia colorwork in several places later, which will require flat knitting.
I had some general row counts jotted down in my notebook, and I’m altering those a bit as I go and see how the shape is coming out. If knitting were as structured as something like cardboard, then getting the shape right would really just be a matter of checking gauge and doing a little math. But since knitted fabrics are stretchy and squishy, some tweaking of the design is usually required along the way.
This morning I finished knitting the back and sides, all the way up to where the top of the screen would reach. And separately I finished knitting the front, which right now is just one long flat piece. It didn’t look like much of anything until I stitched it together and stuffed it full of stuffing…
… and then gave the thing a lot of poking and massaging…
(This is the moment of truth, when I’m playing the “Is this anything?” game with myself.)
…. and yes, it’s starting to look a bit like an arcade game! But you can’t really tell, can you, because it’s all black and really hard to see on a screen.
It occurs to me that I could have used a different color yarn for this trial run, which may have let me (and you) see everything better, but I was just too excited to jump into this project and I couldn’t get black out of my head. Well, here’s the side view at least, so you can see that there is indeed some definition to the shape.
I’m happy with the progress so far. I have a few possible changes in mind—maybe the screen should be bigger?—but nothing major that requires a big change. So now I need to stop and think about colorwork. I’d like to integrate coin slots on the front and stripes on the back and sides, plus maybe some color on the control panel. Having the basic, physical shape right in front of me is a great way to figure out exactly where I want all of these designs to go, which I’ll sketch out using a color-filled grid in Illustrator.
I can’t tell if I’m being overly vague or overly detailed in recording my design process, but putting it all down in blog posts certainly makes me more conscious of how I go about working on a design. That seems like a good thing to do every once in a while. I’ll have an update all about colorwork designing soon!