As you may have heard, the 2021 Mochimochi Land holiday pattern is here!

Goodnight Mice are sleepy little creatures who just want to curl up and forget about the holidays, and the world in general. Sounds nice, right?

The mice are quick enough that you can make a few for gifts and even knit them little stockings or sleeping bags to nestle into. Or just make one for yourself and call it a day!

I like my holiday knitting to be as simple as possible, so I aimed to design a mouse that had some shaping to the face without using short rows. (I love the effect of short rows and I’ve been using them a lot lately, but they do require a little dexterity and paying a bit more attention to where you are for a few rows.) That was also motivation for me to learn a new (to me) sock heel technique, the afterthought heel. It uses waste yarn, a smidge of picking up stitches, and grafting (which also takes a little focus, but in this case it’s a small number of stitches).

But my main challenge with this project turned out to be designing a creature that didn’t look like a koala!

My lovely mother-in-law, Bonney Teti, has an eye for such things, and she gave me several rounds of feedback as I was working out the design. Then she became the first pattern tester, so she deserves a lot of credit! By the way, Bonney has a really fun podcast that she does with her son (my husband), John. Check it out!

Once I had a draft of the pattern, my sharp-eyed tech editor, Marilyn Passmore, got it into shape, as she’s been doing with all of my patterns for a long time. Marilyn is just the best!

A few days past the initial pattern launch, I’ve been delighted by how many of you have already downloaded Goodnight Mice for yourselves—thank you! And some VERY cute mice have already been popping up on Instagram and Ravelry, YAY!

Whether or not your holiday plans include these mice, I hope you skip the stress and find the fun as much as possible, and GET SOME SLEEP!

She’s cute, she’s Cretaceous, she’s Tori the Tiny Triceratops—ready to be knit by you! Tori is all about flaunting her crest and living the vegetarian lifestyle, and her pattern is all about using yarnovers for simplicity and elegance: yarnover holes guide you in foot and horn placement, and the crest is a picot pop that completes her perfectly prehistoric look.

Tori’s pattern is available exclusively in the Knitrino app, which you can get in your favorite app store. It’s an interactive pattern with charts, photos, and video! Right now you can also purchase a kit for Tori that includes gorgeous Hand Dyed Diva yarn, plus sign up for a virtual dinosaur workshop with me on December 5th!

If you haven’t used Knitrino before, definitely give it a try—it’s intuitive to use and comes with a fun and very welcoming community. And it’s the most portable way to knit patterns on the go—especially tiny ones! It doesn’t hurt that Knitrino’s creators, sisters Andrea and Alison, are just the best people you could meet.

I personally LOVE this pattern, and I have a feeling that, once you knit a Tori, you will want to knit more(-y), and more(-y)!