About a year ago (a bit less) I started this blog, so the beginning 2008 marks roughly a year of knitting toys and getting other people to do the same. It was such a great year!
(Mountain Man, one of the first toys I knitted)
Thank you to everyone who helped me, inspired me, or just visited Mochimochi Land over the past year. Let’s make 2008 even more toy-rific!
I got a little carried away with the Reindeer this year, handing them out like breath mints to friends and coworkers. Now I just have to make one or two for myself!
The pattern still comes for free with any purchase through January 1st. After that, it will be available for $5.
But once a year I can post photos of my parents’ cat Sasha, who will put up with a lot and still keep purring.
She was Santa Cat and Reindeer Cat for about 30 seconds each.
This one is a little more creepy than sad.
It’s a life-size Santa mannequin, propped up at a toll booth on the Cimarron Turnpike in Oklahoma, where I’m spending Christmas with my family. You can’t make it out in the photo, but his face is all ruddy and weird, as if he were made out of paper mache and drug out year after year to greet the eastbound traffic in all sorts of weather.
The creepiest thing to me is the safety vest, which must freak out the night drivers to some extent. Also, the sad table of fake presents is a bit of a downer, though the poinsettias suggest that someone was really trying.
Last-minute gifts to myself, that is!
Yesterday I finally made my purchases at the “Luv-able and Hug-able” plush show at gallery hanahou.
Aren’t they adoooorable? The stripey monster is Bartholomew by Sewn by Blythe, little squid is by Lizette Greco +Grecolaborativo, and the curious pink and white creature is Cecilio’s Family Daughter by Eloole.
Today is the last day of the show, so if you’re in NY, see if you can’t fit a visit into your day. (It’s open noon – 7 tonight.) Some of the plushes will also be available online past the holidays, but the supply is really starting to dwindle!
Oh, and I was quoted about the show in this week’s Village Voice!
Since the photo contest ended, I’ve received a few emails from people who just missed it. As I’ve mentioned, there will be another photo contest sometime next year! And in the meantime, everyone is welcome to keep posting photos to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group.
This little Gargle didn’t quite make it into the photo contest, but he is adorable!
Victoria made him for her daughter, dying wool yarn with Kool Aid for spots (excellent!). He has been dubbed Giggle, a most infectious name.
Recently I was searching for the soundtrack to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland animation, when the iTunes Music Store introduced me to The Sound of Style, a greatest hits album of the music of Bob Thompson.
I didn’t know that “space age bachelor pad music” was an actual genre, and not just the name of a Stereolab album. Most of the tunes in The Sound of Style are working under the retro-futuristic concept of the human voice—a chorus of them, actually—as a jazz instrument, trilling nonsense syllables and mingling with saxophones. It’s kind of reminiscent of the theme to the original Star Trek series or old commercial jingles (Thomspson did the music for tons of them mid-century, and there are a few included on this album as well), but listen a bit and you’ll find that the arrangements are sophisticated enough to have a not-so-novelty place in your music library. It’s what I imagine 1950s hipsters were listening to, while they sipped burbon and played canasta in their carpeted dining rooms.
The Sound of Style appears to be only available through iTunes, but there are other albums by Bob Thompson at Amazon, including The Sound of Speed, a collection of transportation-themed orchestral music (minus the fantastic vocals).
Need a last-minute gift for the knitters in your life? Mochimochi Gift Certificates are now available!
When you order, you’ll receive an email with a unique discount code in the amount you chose—$20, $10, or $5—along with a link to a gift-certificate template to print out and give to your friend.
When the recipient types the code into the Mochimochi Land cart, the discount will be applied.
It’s a great way to give the gift of craftiness and introduce a friend to Mochimochi Land.
And of course, through January 1st, you’ll get a free Mochimochi Reindeer pattern for yourself!