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It’s Your Vote

Posted on by Anna

So I’m feeling a little wishy-washy about what the next free Mochimochi Land pattern should be. I’ve narrowed it down to two worthy candidates: Grass and Happy Cross.

Both could be interpreted as Easter-themed, and thereby in season for the month of April.

Know your candidates:

knitgrass
Grass is a classic toy inspired by natural forms and modeled after the grass on the Mochimochi Land homepage.

happycross
Happy Cross looks great on a wall and is a requisite for optimistic Christians, cheerful ironists, and giddy vampire slayers alike.

Cast your vote in the comments to this post. The winner will be featured as a free pattern on Mochimochi Blog (and the loser might still turn up again in a different context someday).

The polls are now open!

Sarah Vowell’s Radio On – A Review of the First 45 Pages

Posted on by Anna

radioon

This week I’m reading Radio On, a “listener’s diary” by Sarah Vowell. Normally, I try to avoid books with the words “memoir” or “diary” in the subtitle – I think it’s because I kept a diary once, so I’ve been there, and it wasn’t particularly insightful or compelling.

But I was willing to make an exception for Sarah Vowell because she’s cute – her voice is a squirrelly cross between a five-year-old and a kindly ancient grandmother – and her little pop-history stories on This American Life are usually entertaining. Plus, Radio On appealed to me because I’m interested in most anything about media.

I’m actually becoming less keen on Sarah the further I get into Radio On. It’s largely about Kurt Cobain (Sarah admits this herself – the book was written in 1995), but even more about how no one really understood Kurt except for Sarah, and how anyone who even dared allude to Kurt in 1995 was a first-class imbecile. Also, how much NPR sucks. This is a little ironic, since most of Sarah Vowell’s fans know her from listening to NPR, but she’s just so cool and non-elitist that she can disdain the (completely harmless) daily news program All Things Considered at the same time that her stories receive airtime on it every once in a while.

In the end, I’m probably less disappointed in Sarah than I am embarrassed for her. I think I was hoping for something in a tone closer to her “This American Life” segments – a clever, somewhat distanced narrative take on a historical and cultural tool. Instead, she sounds like a wordy high schooler who is into progressive politics and music you’ve probably never heard of before.

But that’s just the first 45 pages. Fingers are crossed that it gets better!!

Evolving Punk

Posted on by Anna

evolvingpunk1

Evolution is still a pretty radical idea – just ask this little Evolving Punk. He recently made the big step onto dry land from the primordial ooze of a dirty toilet.

If you haven’t cleaned your bathroom lately, now might be a good time.

Here is his little evolving backside:

evolvingpunk2

Easter Comes Early

Posted on by Anna

TWO Easter surprises in the mail today!

First, from my darling big sis, an sweet little package full of traditional Easter goodies: an egg-dying kit, cocoa Peeps bunnies and the perennial Easter frog.

easterbox

Yes, according to my sister, there was an abundance of frogs inhabiting the Easter aisle at her local supermarket…. Any explanation for this? Anyway, thanks, Sis!

And secondly, it seems that my overuse of the caps lock has finally paid off. TWO new Labbits arrived in the mail, thanks to my pushover of a husband – the white Labbit Pack B and his adorable Easter Labbit cousin!

labbits

Just look at his bubble gum – so sweet! And the other one thinks he’s an Easter egg. They each came with three more things to chew on.

Speaking of Easter, I was thinking that the next free pattern might be grass (you know – Easter grass), based on the new grass buddies on the homepage. We’ll see….

littlegrass

Site Launch Coming Soon!

Posted on by Anna

Just a couple more agonizingly long days until the official debut of Mochimochi Land!

The charmingly befuddled Uh-Ohs will be the first pattern available in the shop.

uh-ohs_comingsoon

If you would like to know the instant it’s available, please email info[at]mochimochiland[dot]com to receive a notice.

waitingmochis

See you in Mochimochi Land!

Move Over, Jeffrey Sebelia

Posted on by Anna

I have every intension of making a skirt from a sewing pattern with my brand-new sewing machine. Someday.

A month or so ago, my lovely mother-in-law took me to Mood, the fabric destination featured in Project Runway’s harried shopping scenes. (It’s truly an experience to be had. You could definitely made an entire day trip out of it, if only it had public bathrooms.)

We picked up this sweet little print there, which I instantly fell for:

fabric1

It’s got a nice Victorian goth look, but on closer examination, the people and animals in the print all have these curiously cartoonish faces. So I love it.

fabric2

But the pattern-following is a bit more challenging than I expected. Having forgotten whether or not I had any good scissors for cutting fabric, we ended up struggling with my old dull paper scissors. Strange, cryptic pattern paper was flying everywhere. Finally, we got the sewing machine out, which should be “very simple to use,” according to my in-law. Then, after getting the setup all ready, she tells me to read the manual before attempting any “real sewing,” and splits town for New Hampshire.

So now I’m left with these two pieces of Victorian goth fabric that are neatly pinned together, and no idea what to do with them. Are they even part of the skirt, or something we cut something else out from?

Luckily, I recently got the latest Make Workshop (no relation to Make magazine) calendar. I know what I’m doing on March 27th, April 5th, or April 28th: Intro to Sewing Machine.

Until then, I think I’ll stick to knitting patterns.

Little Pixels of Cute

Posted on by Anna

Despite my age, I wasn’t really raised on video games. I was 10 or 11 before I got my first game system – a Sega Genesis. My months of badgering my mom and dad for it didn’t faze me until Christmas Eve night, when, riddled with guilt, I burst to their bedroom and tearfully told them that I didn’t want that hateful Sega after all. My poor parents didn’t have a contingency plan, though, so I still got it Christmas morning. I ended up getting pretty good use of it in the end (finishing Sonic the Hedgehog about 3 times), but I never failed to suffer a twinge of shame every time I flipped the “on” button.

It wasn’t until I was well into college that I was able to appreciate video games as an exciting and often misunderstood new medium. That said, most of my game purchases have been based on how cute the characters in them are.

For me, The Legend of Zelda games are the hands-down winners, both for their classic cuteness and their challenging fun. There are 15 games total in the series, which began in 1986 – I’ve only played 5, and finished 3 of those.

Some cute Zelda highlights:

minnish

In The Minish Cap for Game Boy Advance, magical tree stumps transform you (Link, the hero of the story) into a little person and back again. Here, a miniature Link explores a cobbler’s table. Note the little Minish person at the bottom right. This is such a cute game, what with the extreme smallness. It’s my favorite.

windwaker

Wind Waker for Game Cube is the most cartoon-ish Zelda game. This was the first one I played, so it’s my favorite.

twilight

The new Twilight Princess for Wii, which I’m playing right now, is less cute than some of the other Zelda games, but it does have this one cute little monster that talks gibberish, and the art direction is pretty special in parts. So far, it’s my favorite.