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Put a Ring on It

One of the cool things about Tinys is that you can easily make them into different things like ornaments, pins, or jewelry. Check out this Tiny Gnome ring I made yesterday!

tinygnome_ring2

It’s really easy to do. I just made a knitted band out of the yarn I had leftover from knitting my gnome. For my medium-sized finger, I cast on 24 sts onto size 1 DPNS and worked a k1, p1 rib for 3 rounds, then bound off the stitches.

tinygnome_ring1

I used the loose ends on the band to stitch the gnome on, and now he’s turned into fashion! (He’s pretty proud of himself.) You can do this with pretty much any Tiny pattern—all you have to do is figure out how many stitches you need to cast on for the band.

If you make a Tiny ring, be sure to sure a photo in the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group so we can all see!

Tiny Burger Kit on NY Mag Website

This is kind of old news, but in April my Tiny Burger kit was featured on the New York Magazine website as a nifty gift for Mother’s Day!

tinyburger_nymag

The kit was featured as a product available at Saffron, the lovely boutique in Brooklyn that carries my kits and a few of my hand-knit Tinys.

There are several retailers now carrying my kits— if one is near you, please check them out and help support a local business!

In NYC:

Brooklyn General
Knitty City
Purl Soho (coming soon!)

Outside of NYC:

Clay Wood & Cotton (Beacon, NY)
Cloverhill (Catonsville, MD)
Essential Knits (Grantham, NH)
Schmancy (Seattle, WA)

My Tiny Kits are available at wholesale prices to retailers, so please email me if you’re interested in them for your store!

Sozi’s Cake

My souvenir from Berlin just arrived! It came beautifully wrapped…

sozi1

…and inside was a framed illustration by Rilla Alexander!

sozi2

It came from her exhibition that was happening in Berlin at the same time as mine, as part of the Pictoplasma Festival. (Rilla is an Australian artist who lives in Berlin.) The adorable character is Sozi, Rilla’s alter-ego who also stars in a new picture book called Her Idea. Highly recommended for those who love beautiful illustrations and stories about creativity!

John is a big fan of cake, so that’s why the illustration is perfect for us. Can’t wait to hang it near my desk!

Tiny Grub a Reality TV Star?

Thank you all for your terrific captions for our Tiny Grub! Many of them were first-person grub quotes, including our favorite…

tinygrub_celebrities

Celebrities in my jungle, this won’t end well.

Hilarious! The author of that witticism is Mummy, who wins a free Tiny kit from the Mochimochi Shop!

Also, there was a very strong runner-up this time that we simply have to give props to as well:

There once was a tiny yarn grub
Who wished for a bath in a tub
So that he would be clean,
White and pristine,
Instead of in need of a scrub!

That adorable poem was from Lydia. We thought she deserved something too, so she’s getting the Tiny Things Collection 5 Patterns. Yay!

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Tiny Grub

Winning caption by Mummy:
Celebrities in my jungle, this won’t end well.

tinygrub

It’s a Tiny Grub! What does a Tiny Grub think about all day while he’s lying around being grubby? Leave your cute/funny caption in the comments (one per person please), and we’ll pick our favorite on Monday to win…

… you probably guessed it, a free Tiny Kit!

tinygrub_kits

The winner will get to choose from Tiny Buger, Panda, Zombie, Frog, or Bee. So get captioning!

Tiny Kits Now in the Mochimochi Shop!

UPDATE 5/20: Thank you to CRAFT for blogging about the kits!

I’m happy to announce that my Tiny Kits are now available in the Mochimochi Shop!

tinykits_avail

The kits come with a pattern (obviously) and enough fingering-weight yarn (Cascade Heritage, which is a wool/nylon blend) and stuffing to make multiple Tinys. Make them into earrings, gift toppers, or carry them around in your pocket for good luck!

Available kits are for Tiny Zombie, Bee, Panda, Burger, and Frog.

tinykits_avail2

You’ll just need a set of size 1 DPNs, a tapestry needle, and a couple of hours to make the little guys.

p.s. These patterns won’t be in Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi, in case you were wondering!

Toy Design Class at Brooklyn General June 26

toydesignclass

With encouragement from nice knitters on Twitter, I’ve decided to offer a class on designing your own knitted toy! Wouldn’t that be fun?

If you’re experienced knitter who loves toys in the NYC area, I hope you’ll sign up for my 3-D Toy Design Class at Brooklyn General on June 26th. (Experienced just means that you have an understanding of basic construction and experience with knitting in the round.) You’ll bring a sketch of an animal, doll, or any other kind of character, and we’ll make a plan for how you can turn it into a knitted toy design.

I think it will be a blast seeing what people come up with and figuring out the best design together. A little simple math and geometry will be involved, plus a lot of tricks and techniques that I’ve picked up in 4 years of toy designing.

Date/Time: Sunday, June 26, 1-4 pm

Price: $75

Level: Experienced (an understanding of basic construction and experience with knitting in the round)

Supplies needed:
– One or two sketches of toys you’d like to design
– Worsted-weight yarn in two colors and size 5 double-pointed needles

Sign up on the Brooklyn General website, or call 718-237-7753.

Down the Toilet?

I recently started working on a toilet design, because Tubby the bathtub needs a friend! I hadn’t given it much thought before, but it turns out that toilets are much more complex than bathtubs, what with the bowl and the tank and everything in between.

To figure out the design, I started by sketching what I think a toilet looks like. Then, I did a Google image search to see what actual toilets look like. (Yes, I was too lazy to walk across my apartment to the bathroom and look at my own toilet.) Then it was back to the notebook for more sketching. Maybe because I’m not so skilled with a pencil, my technique is slapdash: basically, doodle toilets over and over again until I begin to like what I see.

toiletsketch

Here you see I’ve finished knitting a bowl, and I’m trying to decide how to do the rest of it. I’m happy to say that I finished up my toilet over the weekend, but—oh no!—not before seeing Katie Boyette’s blog post about the knitted toilet in her upcoming book, More Knitwits!

toilet_katieboyette

Katie’s design is pretty genius (especially because it seems to solve the balance problem perfectly), but I’d rather not have my project go down the toilet just because she had the idea too. Surely there is room in the knitting world for more than one toilet, right? Plus, Katie’s super cool and she seems OK with my going ahead with it.

I still have some little bits to finish up with my design, then it will take a while to create the pattern. (It’s not as complex as Grouchy Couch, but it comes close…) If all goes well, Flushie the Toilet will be out and about in a few months!