Remember the colorful mochis I was knitting for a new art piece that’s going up in the Lion Brand Studio in August? I’ve continued knitting them in whenever I find some time—between other projects, when I watch TV, or go to knitting groups. I think their numbers are really climbing, although I don’t have an exact count right now because some are still in Berlin from being in my last show. (They were playing the part of asteroids on the 26-foot-long asteroid belt.) Soon, I’ll have to figure out exactly what I want to do with them!

It’s interesting how my eyes find patterns in the colors when I just dump them out of the bag I keep them in and let them fall randomly.

For the piece, which will be more or less two-dimensional and will hang on a wall, I’ll make sure they all have noses and are all face up (though their bodies will be oriented in all different directions), but how to arrange them? I originally planned to keep it as a big random bunch, although lately I like the idea of shaping the mass into a longer curve that has some movement.

There’s a big part of me that wants to add some really big mochis to the crowd, and have them be performing some action like eating the smaller ones or something. But I kind of want to challenge myself to keep it abstract.

I hope to add many more mochis in the next few months; with enough of them, some could act as a base layer, and others could kind of float on top. I think this would add a lot of depth and interest. (I tried a bit of that in the photo below, but I don’t think it really comes through in the image.)

Here’s another quick arrangement, this time by size, with the biggest in the middle and the smallest on the outside.

Even though this now feels like a pretty silly project that I took on, knitting hundreds of these little guys one by one, it also feels like I’m stretching my brain in a good way to figure out something to do with them that is worth the time that I’ve put into making them. I have about two and a half more months to make up my mind.

I should also mention that this knitting madness is made possible by the generosity of Koigu, who contributed lots of their beautiful brightly-colored yarn!