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The Wooly Woods was a while ago!

The Wooly Woods happened TEN YEARS AGO this spring!

This was a project that started when Superstorm Sandy came through Brooklyn, where I was living at the time, and among its milder effects were lots and lots of downed trees and branches in nearby Prospect Park. I saw a lot of beauty in the scattered wood, and started taking pieces home to use as little landscapes for my creatures to play in.

It was a meditative pleasure covering the twigs with colorful stripes of yarn, and I loved finding nearly endless ways to use the happy twists and bends in the wood as places for perching, nesting, and play.

The pieces were displayed at smallspace gallery in Berlin, where the show was part of the character walk accompanying the Pictoplasma festival. (The gallery is no more, but Pictoplasma is still going strong!)

I still love this concept, and I’ve come back to it a couple times over the years. (I also still have several pieces hanging in my house.) And I still feel like there’s lots more to with wool and woods! How fun would it be to fill a space with more branches and creatures hanging every which way around you? There could also be adorable stumps with little scenes happening on them 😀

The only tricky thing is shipping, but after this show I felt like if I could figure out how to ship delicate twigs from NYC to Berlin, I can ship anything 😤

Thank you to Jenna Teti for many of these images! More after the jump.

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New Fumin’ Womb kits

Update: You’ve helped us raise over $700 for abortion funds so far—thank you! The money has gone to Chicago Abortion Fund and Roe Fund in Oklahoma. We’ll continue to send all proceeds from sales of the kit to these and other abortion funds.

We’ve got new Fumin’ Womb kits featuring Hand Dyed Diva yarn!

Show your unflagging support for reproductive rights by knitting a tiny angry uterus 😡

❤️ Half of the proceeds from sales go to abortion funds ❤️

The pattern was originally published (and still available for free!) in the Fall 2022 issue of Knitty. The HDD Homegrown Sock is the recommended yarn in the Knitty pattern—I love the bright, organic verve of this hand-dyed Pink Petunia!

We debuted these kits at YarnCon, where they sold out quickly! We sent half the proceeds to the Chicago Abortion Fund—along with proceeds from our Fumin’ Womb sticker, we raised $210 that weekend.

We’ve got a limited supply for now—get yours in the Mochimochi Shop!

via GIPHY

Join me for a virtual Fiberside Chat!

As you can see, I’m elated to have been invited by Longmont Yarn Shop to be a part of their virtual Fiberside Chat series later this month!

I’ll be chatting about how Mochimochi Land came to be, why it’s good for even the most serious knitters to knit toys, and how you can create any little person or creature you want with some toy knitting basics. I’ll also demonstrate my top tiny toy knitting techniques and will even get into some animation tips. Plus, your questions!

You can register for this event via the Longmont Yarn Shop website. See you on April 30th!

YarnCon recap

I just had a fabulous weekend at YarnCon!

I love this event—the friendliest people turn out, and it’s full of the DIY spirit thanks to all the lovely indie yarn dyers. And I did buy a whole lot of yarn… like, the most yarn I’ve ever bought at one time 😬

It was a blast putting together Mochimochi Land for the first time in 3+ years.🌳

Thank you to YarnCon, to my booth babe (and so much more) Kristine Brandel, and to everyone who came out 🥰

More photos after the jump!

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Craft Industry Alliance Podcast interview

I recently had the honor of being interviewed on the Craft Industry Alliance podcast!

The podcast is hosted by Abby Glassenberg, co-founder and president of CIA. So Abby is a pretty big deal in the crafts industry, but I’ll always know her as a plush maker—back when I was working at gallery hanahou in NYC, Abby was one of the artists we invited to take part in our plush toy show! As I talk about on the podcast, that show was one of the big influences on my journey of knitting toys, and it shaped my thinking about plush toys as objects of art and design, and not just kids’ playthings. (Although toys made for kids are awesome too, of course!)

As I expected, Abby was really easy to talk to, so I hope that makes for an enjoyable listen. Thank you Abby and Craft Industry Alliance for having me on!

It’s Lambie season!

The newest pattern in Mochimochi Land is instant Easter kitsch: a teeny-weeny lamb cake!

Inspired by all the weird lamb-shaped cakes I’ve eaten and baked in springtimes past…


Lambie is a quicker-than-it-looks project that requires very little purling (you turn the piece inside out right before finishing) and no seaming to speak of (a 3-needle bind-off takes care of that straight back).

👉 The pattern is now available as a PDF download here on my website and on Ravelry.

Use any basic yarn along with a small helping of eyelash yarn for the coconut grass. Samples are knit in Knit Picks Palette and Red Heart Scrubby, using double-pointed needles in sizes 1 (2.25mm) and 5 (3.75mm).

Lambie is small enough to fit inside an Easter egg, traditional enough to be a bitty centerpiece at your holiday table, and cute enough to embellish your Easter hat! I’m hoping to see a bunch of adorable Lambie photos on the internet soon (especially if you put it on a hat!)

My thanks to Marilyn Passmore for her tech editing, and to Bonney Teti and Kristine Brandel for their quick-turnaround testing!

If you’ve ever attempted to bake one of these in its full-size glory, you know that even when things go well, there’s always something a bit wonky about them. (Mine usually ends up with a chopstick jabbed into his head for extra support.) That’s what I love about lamb cakes and knitting toys in general—each is unique and lovable in its own weird way.

I hope you love this project as much as I do!

YarnCon is April 1 and 2nd

If you’re somewhere with a direct flight to Chicago (that’s almost everywhere), I hope you’ll join me for YarnCon in a few weeks! There are classes happening March 30-31, then the marketplace runs April 1st and 2nd at Plumbers Hall, and that’s where you’ll find me and a new iteration of Mochimochi Land 🌈 I’ll also be selling kits and books and other fun stuff!

YarnCon is really all about the indie dyers: it’s THE place to see all the new exciting yarn innovations made by the most creative dye wizards. Get all the info from the YarnCon website. Can’t wait to see you there!