When I’ve encountered chickens as Link in the Legend of Zelda games, I’m usually just carrying them around and making them angry. For our Fine Feathered Photo Contest last month, Stephanie_055 made a crocheted Link do battle with them, stop-motion animation style!
These guys are worse than Fire Keese!
We’ll be featuring more of our favorite entires from this contest every day this week, so stay tuned!
Today is the LAST DAY for free mystery kits from the Mochimochi Shop! There are 13 designs available in the shop, and three mysteries that await you…
Buy two kits and/or books today from the shop, and a randomly-selected mystery kit will automatically be sent with your order. (You don’t have to add it to your shopping cart.) Order four kits/books, and two different mystery kits are yours. Order six kits/books, and all will be revealed to you!
These are all-new designs that won’t be available in the shop until later this year. So don’t miss out!
Happy Memorial Day!
It’s The Birds meets World War Z in this thrilling scene made by Knitjvf!
I especially love the chicken hightailing it out of there.
This was another one of our favorite entries in last month’s Fine Feathered Photo Contest. (And you should really check out this knitter’s Flickr page for lots more mochi awesomeness.)
If you missed this contest, never fear! You can add photos of any toys knit from Mochimochi patterns to our Flickr group anytime, and they will automatically be entered in our big photo contest coming up this fall.
Remember this guy?
I made him back in September of last year, and foolishly thought I would release the pattern in November. Everyone knows that monkeys prefer summer! So he’s coming to the Mochimochi Shop next month, and he now has a name: Zaru!
I blogged my design process for this guy in a guest post for Whipup that went up in October. You may have heard that Kathreen Ricketson, the founder of Whipup, passed away earlier this month in a tragic accident. She was huge influence on the contemporary craft movement, and she is sorely missed. You can find out how to contribute to a fund for her children here.
This tiny cowboy is spending the day rustling up love for the tornado victims in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma is my birthplace and will always be home to me. I’m so thankful that none of my friends or family were hit, and my heart goes out to those who were not so lucky this time.
I hope you’ll join me in donating to the Red Cross or other organizations that are helping with shelters, supplies, and resources. (This list on CNN.com is helpful.)
I already had plans to fly to Oklahoma tomorrow for a visit with my family. I’ll be giving them extra hugs this weekend!
Sometimes my morning goes in a completely different direction from what I had planned. Today I was expecting a couple quiet hours of prototype knitting, but instead I started looking at some photos from last year, and then somehow I ended up with this screen in front of me.
So now I’m working on new buttons with colorful rainbow gnomes! You can expect to see them in the shop soon. (For now, you can get a variety pack of tiny mochi buttons.)
The only thing better than a friendly local yarn store is a local yarn store run by friendly chickens!
This is Sarah’s adorable entry in our recent Fine Feathered Photo Contest. It was heartbreaking not to include it in the top three, but all that cuteness and attention to detail gets a big honorable mention from us! (And the gnome button portrait is just genius.)
Don’t forget to keep adding your photos of Mochimochi knits to our Flickr group—they’ll appear in the gallery page of this website, and they’ll automatically be eligible for our big photo contest in the fall.
I spent Saturday with my mother-in-law Bonney (who’s now on Twitter, you guys) at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. It was so nice to go to a fiber event just for fun!
We saw cotton-candy roving wool…
And the world’s saddest photo contest…
(Actually the photos were really good—it was just the display that broke my heart.)
And we saw a sock knitting machine at work! Of course the most interesting thing was the thing that I forgot to take a picture of, but it looked like this:
It’s made by the Erlbacher Gearhart Knitting Machine Company, which is based in Missouri. Jim from Good Karma Farm showed us how it works, and we were mesmerized. I actually saw more than one of these at the festival, so it must be a popular choice among serious sock makers.
There was a brief moment when I fantasized about using such a machine to crank out hundreds of mochis for my next installation. But that dream died when I reminded myself about all the shaping that I do, and the tiny scale that I prefer, not to mention the price of the machine. But if I ever need to make a boatload of giant snakes, I know just what to get!
If you haven’t seen one before, here’s a demo video of a vintage machine at work.
Are you sock knitters tempted?