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Shipageddon

Posted on by Anna

Thank you for all the orders these past few weeks! The thought of many tiny squeezable things getting knit throughout this winter is making me happy.

Just a quick note to encourage you to choose Priority Mail shipping in the US now if you want to have a chance for your physical order to arrive before Christmas. But there are no guarantees this year! Personally, I’m OK with getting presents all through January and maybe even into February.

Of course, PDF patterns arrive within minutes—no shipping necessary!

And remember to use the code GINGERBREAD to get the Cookie and Crumbles PDF pattern added to your purchase! Update: This code expired in January 2021

In GIPHY’s Top Ten (Again!)

Posted on by Anna

This was a nice surprise: GIPHY has included my OK! GIF at number 6 in their list of “Top GIFs of 2020”!

via GIPHY

I guess many of us have been working toward various forms of OK-ness this year.

I’m so grateful to have this weird little medium in which my characters can help express ideas and feelings.

Btw, this is the SECOND time one of my GIFs has made it into GIPHY’s year-end top ten 🤯 In 2017 my heart-knitting gnome was number 1!

Cookie and Crumbles pattern FREE with $5 purchase

Posted on by Anna

Our 2020 holiday pattern is here! Cookie and Crumbles provide a delicious combination: a bulky, squeezable project you can really sink your teeth into, and fingering-weight friends that you can knit up in a snap.

This PDF pattern comes FREE with any purchase worth $5 or more from the Mochimochi Shop: Just use the code GINGERBREAD when checking out, and the pattern will magically appear in your cart!

You’ll need yarn in two weights plus corresponding needles. The sample is knit with bulky and fingering-weight yarns, but you can use other weights of yarn with equally scrumptious results.

Techniques include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, picking up stitches, mattress stitch, I-cord, and backward-loop cast on. (These last three are for Cookie only.)

Crumbles make excellent stocking stuffers, gift toppers, and ornaments. You can even embroider icing masks on them!

Plus, Cookie comes with opposable thumbs that can hold little gifts, like candy canes!

Remember to use the code GINGERBREAD to unlock this free pattern!

BIG THANKS to my tech editor, Marilyn Passmore, and to superhero testers Amanda and Lalie!

New Tina the Tiny T-Rex pattern in Knitrino

Posted on by Anna

I’m so excited to share this tiny dinosaur with the world!

Tina the Tiny T-Rex is a new pattern available exclusively in the Knitrino app. Knitrino offers a new way to experience knitting patterns using interactive charts. You can find Knitrino in both app stores.

And right now you can purchase a kit with lovely Hand Dyed Diva yarn AND join an upcoming tiny t-rex class with me! See the Knitrino website for kit and class details.

Tina was inspired by my kids’ burgeoning interest in all things dinosaur, and her name was inspired by the way my kids have been naming anything and everything Tina. (We found about 30 centipedes named Tina in our back yard this summer.)

Share a tiny bit of Thanksgiving

Posted on by Anna

UPDATE: Thanks to your turkey and bluebird pattern purchases in November, we raised $309 for Chicago food pantries last month!

These proceeds went to Common Pantry, an organization helping feed people in our neighborhood, and for Giving Tuesday we matched the total with a donation to North Side Housing and Supporting Services, another neighborhood charity helping alleviate homelessness.

Together we’ve raised $3,049 to help feed Chicagoans so far in this pandemic. Thank you, knitters! Please keep an eye out for future fundraising patterns.

2020 is truly the year of the Tiny Thanksgiving 🦃
So all proceeds from sales of my Tiny Thanksgiving pattern collection this month will go to Chicago area food banks.

Knit your loved ones a tiny turkey or tofurkey, tiny mashed potatoes, tiny cranberry sauce, and tiny pumpkin pie. 🥧 The tofurkey pattern can double as a tiny fruitcake!

This collection originally came out in 2016, right after a big divisive election. I’m still convinced that if anything can bring people together, it’s miniature knitted food.

Knitting Mochimochi is 10!

Posted on by Anna

Right after I posted that look back at Greetings from Mochimochi the other day, I realized that this anniversary also meant that my first book, Knitting Mochimochi, is also ten years old this year!

Creating my first book was a ton of work and a ton of fun, especially the Tulsa photo shoots with Brandi Simons.


Confused Moose: This photo shoot involved getting little knitted birds wet—fun!


Tiny Pencil: Second professional manicure in my life for this photo! (The first was for prom.)


Baby Gators: This is still one of my all-time favorite Mochimochi Land photos… Actually several from this book are all-time favorites!


Here’s me with my sister, Leah, during the first photo shoot for the muff. We decided to reshoot it later with two models instead of one, but I’m glad Brandi thought to snap this picture of Leah and me.


The cutie in the middle is a high school senior now! Myself and fellow model Mike Simons (Brandi’s husband) haven’t aged a bit.


Posing Cuter Polluters in a big chunky necklace I got a thrift store in Tulsa while I was there.


I have a lot of photos of Brandi flat on the ground, trying to get the perfect angle. She’s such a professional!


And she’s a wonderful mother!


So many photos in this book (and other books) were shot in Brandi’s girls’ playroom. It got the best light! Incidentally, my kids’ room also gets the best light in the house we live in now, so I occasionally sneak in to take pictures there too.

I learned so much in the process about designing, writing, editing, and photography. And the feeling of holding a copy in my hands for the first time was one of those big life experiences that I’ll remember forever.

My style has changed a bit since 2010, but I still love so many of the patterns in this book, and I’m happy that people are still knitting from it. You can find it on a lot of websites (also as an ebook), and I keep a stock of signed copies here.

Greetings from Mochimochi 10 year anniversary

Posted on by Anna

Greetings from Mochimochi was ten years ago this month!

Ten years ago I brought Mochimochi Land into the real life for the first time at gallery hanahou in NYC. Putting together Greetings from Mochimochi got me exploring a big interconnected world of knitted weirdness, and my subsequent installations at venues like Vogue Knitting LIVE were based on this first one. And it had a working model train!

I couldn’t be more grateful to KOKO Art Agency for making this magic happen and helping inspire so much Mochimochi Land fun in the past ten years.