Things have been quiet here lately because our baby Leo decided to arrive early! He was born on Wednesday, December 9th, weighing in at 6 lbs even.
As a result, we’ll be delayed in posting photo + video contest results. Thank you for your patience!
Category: Cute Things
Two Little Lions
Personal project time!
I now have two little lions done for our little lion on the way. I wanted to make them out of acrylic yarn so they’ll be extra baby proof, and I was also eager to get started, so I’m using colors that I had on hand (a Bernat yarn, I think) that also happen to work great for lions.
I’m planning to make six total, each with a different type of mane. With two down and about 10 weeks to go before baby, I think I’ll achieve my goal with time to spare! (Sometimes it’s nice not to be too ambitious—don’t ask me about baby sweaters!)
I was thinking about it last night, and this is actually the first personal knitting I’ve done in a long time, maybe in a couple of years. It’s so nice to feel motivated to knit something in my extracurricularly. I guess babies make people do strange things…
A Little Lion on the Way
I’ve got some personal life news to share today: John and I are expecting a baby boy in December!
This is the first thing that I’ve knitted for him, a little lion ball. I’m planning to make several more in different colors and also maybe with different types of manes. They’ll either become a mobile or will just be little balls to play with.
Here’s the side view—very simple.
The due date is December 19th, so the holidays will certainly be different for us this year!
I’ll continue shipping orders as long as I can, but there will be a delay in sending out tangible orders sometime after the beginning of December. (I’ll put up a notice about it when that happens, and we will continue shipping on a delayed schedule after that.) I’ll also be taking a few months off from most work, so the blog and social media will be pretty quiet for a while, but I plan to be back at it whenever I can.
Thanks in advance for your patience while we figure out how to be parents!
More Fun from Seoul
I finally had a chance to go through all my non-gnome photos from our Seoul trip. We sure saw a lot for being in a gallery for most of the week!
OK, I have one gnome photo—this guy snuck into my luggage and couldn’t wait to get some fresh air and see a city on the other side of the world.
The area we were staying in is called Songpa, which is most famous for Lotte World, a big amusement park with both indoor and outdoor attractions. We didn’t get a chance to visit, but every morning we took a walk around a nearby lake, the middle of which is occupied by an island of Lotte World.
Barnabé the Mouse
Update: My friend Jeremy Wheeler found that this guy may be what’s called a Pluffs Doll!
One of the cool things about our Chicago apartment (which still feels new to me, even though we’ve been here almost a year) is a lovely built-in glass cabinet in the dining room. It would be the perfect place to display our china, of which we have none, so instead I’m filling it with plush toys. (The “dining room” also sees a lot of yarn winding and very little dining.) There’s even extra room for more plushes than I currently have! So on Saturday I let myself acquire a new one from the Ravenswood Antique Mart.
Don’t you love his fun colors and mischievous expression? After much consideration, I’ve decided to call him Barnabé. His tag tells me that he was made in Japan, he’s filled with excelsior (aka wood shavings), and he was imported by a company called Illfelder Importing Co. I did a search for the importer and turned up this 2011 photo from 23rd Street in NYC!
One of the best things about this blue mouse was his price: less than $5, if you can believe it. So this was a cheap toy when it was made, and now it’s still a cheap toy, but also awesome and vintage. I might just have to start collecting these big time to help fill out my plush cabinet!
Tiny Sumo Buttons are Here
I love getting new pin-back buttons made! I just got 99 of these guys, and I’ll be sending them out with all shipped orders (books, kits, other buttons, and hand-knit items) until supplies last.
These are also the final days to get your mystery kits—Thursday (7/31) will be the last day to get one or more with your order! If you’ve already received one mystery kit and you want to pick up one or both of the other three designs, just email me at info [at] mochimochiland [dot] com and let me know which kit you’ve already gotten so that you don’t get duplicates.
Kirimi-chan the Fish Fillet
Earlier this year I blogged about Gudetama, the odd egg yolk character that Sanrio released to the Japan market. It seems that Sanrio is ready to test the “weird and cute” waters with their English-speaking followers now, with the introduction of their new character Kirirmi-chan, “a star in the slicked food world.”
Yes, it’s a fillet of fish. Salmon, perhaps? This one is actually a little too weird for me, or maybe it’s the way that the body seems tacked on and lacking in design.
Super Cute Kawaii introduced this character to me this morning, but the blog Kao-ani has more information in a post from January, saying that the character resulted from an online vote that Sanrio held last year for a new food-related character. Fascinating! I have a feeling this one won’t be sticking around for very long, so for that reason alone I’m tempted to get some Kirimi-chan-branded products. Or even better…
Schneck Lecker Gummy Snails
I discovered a new favorite candy this weekend! Schneck Lecker are gummy snails made by Haribo, and they are both weird and delicious (in a weird kind of way).
I was really hoping that schneck lecker meant “snail licker,” especially since we see several little snaily tongues on the packaging. But Google Translate tells me that it just means “delicious snails.” (Still, I’d say they’re pretty lickable, so in my own head they’ll always be “snail lickers.”) Update: Several people have informed me that yes, it actually can mean “snail licker, if you write it a bit differently!”
The snails’ bodies are made of gummy foam, and the shells are regular transparent gummy (sorry, I don’t know the technical gummy terms). Haribo combines these two gummy types in many of their candies, but I’ve never seen the foam-to-regular-gummy ratio be so high, which makes these snails unique among gummies.
Also, they have cute little heads, complete with eye stalks and a nose.
After I tried the first one, I had to play with the others and take photos for a while before they all went into my mouth.
Wouldn’t these be fun toppers on a garden-themed birthday cake? If you can’t find them at your local European foods store, you can find them online from Euro Food Imports.
I’ll also take this snail-themed post as an opportunity to remind you that I have a free pattern for wooly snails and slugs. (Less delicious, but fewer calories!)