My latest attempt at organization involved sacrificing an innocent little marshmallow for a makeshift pincushion. I too wish it hadn’t come to this, little buddy.
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Free Pattern: Hearts
June 2020 Update: I’ve revised this pattern to include circular knitting instructions! The new version is now available as a free download on Ravelry. The original version is below.
This is a free and easy pattern for you to make and share. Please check out the Mochimochi Land shop for more patterns that you’ll love!
For anyone looking for a last-minute hand-made Valentine’s Day gift idea, done and done! These little hearts make a perfect topper for a box of chocolates, or a little handful of them will make your sweetie smile.
One-off Mochis Now Available Online!
The “Luv-able and Hug-able” plush show is still up at Gallery LELE in Tokyo (you can faintly see three of my works hanging on the wall in the above itty-bitty photo), but for those who can’t make it there by February 11th, a couple of my toys from the show are now available for purchase at the gallery’s online shop. (They’re being exhibited under my name, Anna Hrachovec.)
It’s pretty exciting to see my toys alongside the classic plushes by My Paper Crane and the exquisite work of Betz White, among other amazing artists.
Here is a close-up of my piece “Wuzzle” in the show. The four creatures fit together puzzle-style, or they can also go solo as in the photo. The top left one looks a little warped here – they’re a bit of an unruly bunch, but you can’t say that they haven’t got character.
Swinging Thing
This is a thing that swings. It’s my first motion-oriented toy – somehow, it’s pretty interesting just to give the creature a little push and watch the swing go back and forth a few times. I guess because you don’t expect to see this kind of kinetic motion from a stuffed toy.
I really like the idea of soft toys that move or suggest movement. Aside from this kind of structural work, I’m thinking about eggs that are in the process of hatching, so that you see a foot or a wing sticking out of the crack in a worried-looking anthropomorphic egg. (To me, this egg is a particularly interesting existential question – once the live, fluffy chick hatches out of the egg, what happens to the shell with all that personality? Does the poor thing have to die?)
In any case, Swinging Thing gets its structure from wire, which kind of feels like cheating, but it’s not a toy that’s meant to be hugged and squeezed anyway. It was really fun (albeit nerve-wracking) to construct, and I’m hoping to make a few more of these kinds of sculptural knits. Perhaps a monkey swinging from a tree?
Enough Talking Animals
I didn’t really watch the big game tonight, but what I did see of it was the commercials. And what I saw of those were commercials with talking animals. I was pretty surprised – talking animals? That’s so Superbowl XXIX.
This year, the animals were talking about beer and fast food. Again. So congratulations, animals – you have now become just as boring to me as most people I could encounter at a lame frat formal.
I believe that among this year’s Superbowl commercials was also an ad for another forgettable animated movie featuring talking animals. I don’t recall what this one was called, but if they never make another movie with talking animals, I won’t miss them.
Maybe this seems out of character for someone who adores stuffed animals and, to some extent, real animals. But we humans seem so intent on dragging animals into our most cliché conversations, which really shouldn’t even be happening among humans. I guess the idea is that, if a talking fish paraphrases something from Pulp Fiction, then it’s new and clever all over again, and that’s one less writer we need to hire.
That’s one reason I find Hayao Miyazaki‘s animated films so enchanting – most of the time, animals and other creatures keep their thoughts to themselves, and they leave the gabbing to the humans (who also tend to be more reticent than their Disney/ Pixar counterparts). Even when his animals talk, such as in Spirited Away (which is great, by the way), they aren’t overly cute or precocious, they repeat no despicable catch phrases, and they certainly never bother to argue over how to pronounce words in Spanish.
A Word about Mochi
Mochi is pretty cute. Essentially, it’s white rice that’s been pounded and mushed up to make a sticky, glutenous glob of empty carbs. It can be eaten a number of ways – it’s delicious when baked for a crispy outside and with a splash of soy sauce, or it can be the “meaty” part of a sweet soup made of beans, or it can be not eaten at all, and instead used as a symbolic (and highly decorative) gift to ancestors. Japanese people make it on New Year’s, and there’s reportedly a mochi-making rabbit that lives on the moon.
The best mochi is sweetened up, flavored with green tea or sakura, and filled with sweet adzuki beans or ice cream. Some people, of course, don’t care for mochi. They often remark on how much the texture reminds them of human flesh.
The term “mochi-mochi” is a little different. It’s an onomatopoeic word that is basically the sound of something that is sticky like mochi. Here is the example sentence given by my Giongo Gitago Dictionary (translated by me):
The August air is mochi-mochi[ly] sticky.
Mochimochi Land toys aren’t intended to be sticky, but to have a somewhat chewy-seeming quality to them, I guess. I haven’t chewed any yet myself, but if I were to, I would hope that they bring to mind New Year’s traditions, the mochi-making moon rabbit, and – why not – the smooth elasticity of human flesh.
Baby Elephant
Here is my finished elephant – I must admit, I’m pretty happy with how it came out. It’s always a little distressing to see the small, shriveled-up pieces come out of the dryer (and often with one or two missing – I’ve really got to stop putting them in loose), but when I begin sewing on the eyes, it’s amazing to see how quickly what looks like less than nothing can focus into something with personality. So it was with this little elephant. (And it is little, easily sitting on the palm of my hand.)
I think the trunk is pretty cute, but a little difficult to photograph. It’s basically a tube worked in the round, with the end tucked in a little and sewn into place.
The side view. I haven’t chosen a name yet. I haven’t chosen a gender yet, either.
And here is some elephant-inspiration. I picked up this elephant in Tokyo, and gave it to my husband (boyfriend at the time), who named it Trunky. Then about a year later, John re-introduced me to Trunky, and said that he couldn’t remember who gave it to him! Sheesh.
By the way, this guy is one of the adorable characters by Dick Bruna, who did Miffy. Like the other Bruna characters, he’s so perfectly compact.