John and I have just gone through all 700+ photos entered in the 2012 Mochimochi Photo Contest last night—it was a late night, as you can imagine! I can honestly say that this was the best overall batch in Mochimochi Land history. The photos were bursting with creativity in the form of fun pattern mods, hilarious stories, and imaginative concepts. It sounds cliché, but we love them all and they are all winners to us!

After much hand-wringing and a few tears, we managed to narrow down the photos to 20 honorable mentions and 20 semifinalists. Today and tomorrow we will feature our honorable mentions, in no particular order.

Without further ado, here is our first group of awesome honorable mentions—after the jump!

Continue reading “Honorable Mentions ’12, Group One” →

The deadline for entries in the 2012 Mochimochi Photo Contest is almost upon us! Be sure to add your photos of Mochimochi knits to our Flickr group by Monday, December 3rd.

If you have some knitted guys you’d like to enter but you’re feeling stumped about the photography, it’s really simple to take a good photo!

It always helps to use indirect natural light, and set your camera on a tripod or something else (like a stack of books) to keep it steady and prevent blurriness. If you’re shooting something tiny, you might want to use the macro setting that’s on many cameras. (It usually looks like a tulip icon.)

I also think it’s helpful to make up a story in your head about what your mochis are doing, so that they can take on a life of their own in your photo. Show them doing something, and not just posing! And don’t be discouraged if your photos don’t look professional—we’re looking for fun and originality more than something that would hang in a gallery.

Good luck! See full contest details.

You’ve been thinking about entering the Mochimochi Photo Contest, but you need that last little push to convince you that it’s worth the effort. May I present this funny Japanese felting kit!

Like the Rilakkuma soap dispenser (which this will go perfectly with), the kit will go to one of the winners of the photo contest! Needle felting is probably a universal language, so I figure the winner will be washing their dishes with quirky new friends in no time.

You have until December 3rd to submit your entries, so photographing your mochis could be a perfect after-Thanksgiving project this weekend! See full contest details.