Remember these guys?

I’ve been sending them out with physical purchases from the Mochimochi Shop for the past month or so, and I’ve also been giving them away at some recent NYC events. The response to these itty-bitty gnome buttons has been awesome!

So now I’m thinking that I should make more buttons with other tiny mochi characters, and have them available as a set of 4 in the shop. But which characters to buttonize?? I need your help!

Here are a few options that I’m kicking around…

Any of these tickle your fancy? Or are there other tiny mochis that you’d like to see as a button? Please let me know in the comments!

Maybe we can make it a little more exciting too. If you are the first to list a particular four-character button combo, and if I end up making that exact set, you’ll get it for free once it’s ready! (That should be sometime before the end of the year.) Remember that you can suggest any tiny character I’ve ever designed—it doesn’t have to include the above guys (although it’ll probably definitely include the gnome).

I’d love your input—thanks!

The time has come to choose the winners in our Lion Brand Bonbons giveaway!

Earlier this month, I asked you to leave a comment on the giveaway post telling us about the smallest thing you’ve ever knit, for a chance to win the new Bonbons yarn from Lion Brand. At the time of choosing, we had 293 comments—wow!

The tiny gnomes have been bugging me to involve them more in the official business of Mochimochi Land, so I thought I’d indulge them by letting them choose the winners out of a bowl.

Before choosing the winners, the gnomes insisted on first going for a swim in the pieces of paper. This was a big waste of time, if you ask me, and two them suffered from paper cuts, just as I had warned them.

I finally got them to choose one winner each. The first gnome picked ZZZ, which we decided must be 222.

Commenter 222 is coryy:

The smallest thing I ever knit was an olive–and I messed up the shape, so it became yoda’s head. I knit a teeny sweater to go with and a belt, and ended up with a yoda finger puppet!

The next number they picked was 165….

That’s beffuh:

The smallest thing I’ve ever knit was a hat for a matching Christmas jacket I made for my sister’s stuffed animal bear. I made it up in the car on the drive over and it turned out quite well, I must say! :)

And our final number is 106…

jessicac:

The smallest thing has been the gnome from your book! I wish I lived closer to the Lion Brand studio.. ;)

(The gnomes were especially excited about this last winner.)

Each of these winners will get three packages of Bonbons yarn! The yarn comes in three varieties (acrylic, cotton, and metallic), each of which comes in two beautiful color assortments—check them out on the Lion Brand website.

If you are one of the winners, look for an email from me soon asking for your information.

After choosing the winners, the gnomes decided that they would rather keep the Bonbons for themselves, since the little balls of yarn are appropriately tiny gnome-sized. Selfish gnomes!

I told them they would have to learn to knit first—I’ve tried to teach them several times, but their attention spans are just about as short as they are.

A huge thank-you to Lion Brand for sponsoring this giveaway, and thank you to all of you who entered with your comments about super small knits! (By the way, the gnomes had a little help from random.org.)

Last Thursday I was at the opening of the needle felting show at gallery hanahou. It was so cool!

I got to meet Hine Mizushima, one of my fiber art heros, for the first time. Here’s a quick iPhone pic I took of her section of the show:

All of the pieces in the show were amazing and really different—here’s a look at the sculptural works of Kit Lane.

Moxie was nice enough to squeeze me into her sold-out workshop on Saturday. I had never tried needle felting before, and it was so much fun! It’s really like working with clay in many ways. I gained a new appreciation for the incredible pieces that these artists create, and I went home with this little bug and a photo of me and Moxie:

(We’re standing in front of her neat-o pieces in the show, but you can’t really see them in the photo.) Moxie was an excellent teacher—if you ever have a chance to learn from her, I recommend it!

The needle felting show is up through the end of March at gallery hanahou‐check it out if you’re in NYC!

Betcha can’t guess what I’m working on for 2011!

I’m at that stage in the design process when I’m daring to hope that it will turn out just how I want, but at the back of my mind I’m fearing that I may need to rethink it entirely…

Either way, I’m looking forward to finding out what the new year will bring.