Category: Exhibitions

Adventures in Ann Arbor July 11

Posted on by Anna

I’m so excited to announce that John and I will be returning to Ann Arbor the weekend of July 11th for events at the district library!

On Saturday the 11th, join me from 2-5pm at the library for a tiny crab knitting workshop.

garycrab

Bring some yarn and a set of double-pointed needles sized for the yarn, and things are going to get crabby! (I recommend size 1s for fingering-weight yarn, size 3s for sport-weight, and size 5s for worsted-weight.) The project is suitable for advanced-beginning knitters who are familiar with using double-pointed needles.

There will also be copies of my new book for sale, and I’ll sign one for you if you like!

Then at 2pm on Sunday the 12th, my husband and pop-culture genius John Teti will be giving a presentation on one of his favorite topics: The Price Is Right! Seriously, this is going to be fun.

If you live in Ann Arbor but can’t make it that weekend, you can download 20 of my patterns for free if you have a library card! Check them out on the AADL website.

Photos from The Gnome Genome Project

Posted on by Anna

Well, the big trip to Seoul happened like a blur last week, and we’ve been back in Chicago for a couple of days already, trying to recover from jet lag. (It’s really hard!)

I can’t express just how amazing our week was. Most of our time was spent setting up the exhibition at Everyday Mooonday. The welcome that they gave the show was just incredible!

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This was by far the most complex show that I’ve done, with four rooms to fill with gnomes displayed every which way.

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I also set up the Mochimochi Land tabletop display (a bigger version than I’ve done at recent Vogue Knitting LIVEs), which took a good 15 hours or so to arrange and stitch together.

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John was a big help throughout—he managed to mount 81 tiny gnomes to the wall in perfect circles!

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A few more photos from the show, including pics of your gnome diplomats on display, after the jump!

Continue reading “Photos from The Gnome Genome Project” →

The Gnome Genome Project

Posted on by Anna

Finally, all the gnome diplomats that you guys made, plus two giant gnomes, plus lots more gnome-y knits, have cleared customs, and I can announce this show officially!

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The Gnome Genome Project opens Saturday, May 23rd at Everyday Mooonday in Seoul. Anyone who happens to read this from somewhere in or near Seoul, I do hope you can join us at the reception Saturday night!

Here’s the introduction I put together for this show, which should give a fuller picture of what the whole thing is about.

The Gnome Genome Project
Mochimochi Land

In Mochimochi Land, it is commonly believed that gnomes are the glue that holds the universe together, from the subatomic to the cosmic level. Gnomes (sometimes spelled knomes) are neither male nor female, and once mature, they are ageless. To those who live in Mochimochi Land, they represent wisdom, tradition, mischief, and magic. These are properties that they share with the craft of knitting.

In our world, gnomes are generally associated with northern European folklore, but they appear in many stories from various cultures, where they take on all manner of personalities, from good to evil. In Mochimochi Land, gnomes are neither good nor evil, gnomes just are. They’re busy, weird, playful, and quick to love or fight.

This exhibition is a celebration of gnomes to an almost obsessive degree. It also asks: What do gnomes do when no one is looking at them? How much can a gnome be twisted, morphed, or given a costume change before it’s no longer a gnome? What do we see of ourselves in the gnomes that we make? Is there such a thing as too many gnomes? Where the heck will all of these gnomes end up? It may all just be a big silly joke in the end, but for now it’s time to go gnome or go home!

Anna Hrachovec
Mochimochi Land

I’ll be sharing plenty of images from the show here once it’s up, but if you’d like to see the pieces available for sale as early as possible, please sign up for my art newsletter.

Shipping off the Diplomats

Posted on by Anna

This has been a busy week of organizing and packing and otherwise getting ready to ship hundreds of gnomes off to Korea for next month’s show at Everyday Mooonday. Here’s what our dining room looks like right now.

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I think at least one of those boxes is just holding packing peanuts for other boxes, but I don’t even know anymore. Shipping is stressful!

Of course, among those hundreds of gnomes are hundreds of gnome diplomats that all of you sent in. In preparation for sending them off on their mission of spreading cuteness and happiness to the other side of the globe, we’ve finally tallied them all: Including the lovely gnomes submitted by Chicagoland knitters at YarnCon, we recruited a total of 332 gnomes to travel to Seoul—I am blown away by this number!

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To celebrate, I’m selecting two random gnome knitters to get a Personal Happiness Labbit that I picked up at Rotofugi.

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There’s no need for suspense, so the winners are… Monica E. and Rosemary S.! I’ll send you each an email for your mailing address.

Full details about the show are coming soon, but first I get to take a weekend off from knitting gnomes, which will be a refreshing break before John and I start getting ready to go to Seoul ourselves!

Soupy Says Goodbye to the Giant Gnomes

Posted on by Anna

Previously:
Project Giant Gnome
Three Feet Tall
Kinda Done but Not Really
Giant Gnome has a Big New Friend

Just as I’m about to ship the giant gnomes off to Seoul, Soupy finally cozies up to the big guys.

soupy_giantgnomes

Today I’m going to “deflate” them by removing all the stuffing, so that they’re more compact for international shipping. Then once I arrive in Seoul later in May, hopefully they will be waiting for me to stuff them back up and put them in a show at Everyday Mooonday!

By the way, they now have names! Alfred (in the blue shirt) and Omelet (in the green).

Big thanks to Lion Brand for providing the yarn for this epic knitting project. The full show announcement and info are coming soon!

Thank You for the Gnomes!

Posted on by Anna

After a long weekend away at VK Live Pasadena, and a long cab ride back from the airport in a suddenly chilly and overcast Chicago, it was awesome to come home to this on the front porch.

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So many happy packages of gnomes! There were even more inside waiting for me.

The deadline has now passed for Project Gnome Diplomacy submissions, and I want to thank each one of you who contributed, whether it was with a single gnome or a whole gnome entourage. There’s no final tally yet—I’m still playing catchup with the packages, and I still need to get the gnomes that were made/dropped off over the weekend at YarnCon—but I’m more than thrilled with how many we’ve received. I love that you all came through for this vaguely defined and pretty silly project!

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I’m going to continue sharing the gnomes that I un-package on Instragram—they’re all so unique and cool that I’m going to space the posts out over the next week or so, to maximize the gnome fun. (So if you can’t find your gnome on there right now, don’t worry!)

Some of the gnomes are even meeting strange new Mochimochi Land creatures who will join them in their journey to Seoul, like this fellow from Colorado, who encountered a most unusual gnome…

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I’ll be sharing more on this project as we have the final tally and, of course, once the gnomes are on display in Seoul for all to see. (What exactly will happen with them after the show is still yet to be finalized, but I plan for them to remain there as a gift to the people of Seoul.)

If you missed out on participating, I’ve been so happy with how this project has gone that I hope to do something along these lines again in the future. So stay in touch for more creature calls.

Thanks again to all you super gnome makers!

Giant Gnome has a Big New Friend!

Posted on by Anna

Previously:
Project Giant Gnome
Three Feet Tall
Kinda Done but Not Really

Project Giant Gnome has been clicking along! With the first guy done in only a few weeks (thanks to super thick Hometown USA and Wool-Ease Thick & Quick generously provided by Lion Brand), I couldn’t resist jumping headfirst into making him a giant friend.

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Looking at this picture again, I could probably get used to a rug like this in my living room. Because I had the pattern more or less worked out from the first giant gnome, and because I was out of stuffing after using 16 lbs of it on him, I knitted this one without any stuffing, just leaving the hole at the bottom to add later.

But the idea of shipping him off to Korea without getting a look at him first in his full-figured glory just didn’t sit right with me, so I went ahead and splurged on another 20 lbs of stuffing.

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Yep, this is the kind of major purchase that excites me these days. (In case anyone is interested, I order my stuffing in bulk from Batt-Mart.)

And so I got to try out my plan of stuffing my giant gnome from the bottom.

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This was real work! I was actually sweating by the end. Stuffing him just right involved much prodding and massaging, and I even had to sit on him a couple of times to get the polyester to take the shape I wanted. Whew!

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So now I have two giant gnome faces staring at me all day while I work. In a couple of weeks, I’ll “deflate” them again for their big trip to Korea, and I’ll be stuck with about 30 lbs of stuffing at home to repurpose. (That’s going to make a whole lot of tiny kits!)

Why am I knitting giant gnomes? They’re for an art show at Everyday Mooonday gallery in Seoul next month! I’ll share the official announcement with a title and everything soon.

Many thanks to Lion Brand for providing yarn support for this ultimate gnome project!

86 Gnomes and Counting

Posted on by Anna

As of April 1st, we’ve received a total of 86 gnomes for Project Gnome Diplomacy!

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I’m feeling a bit like an April fool myself today, because I had these delightful Euro candies all ready to send out to anyone whose gnome arrived today…

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…and then no gnomes showed up! Silly gnomes. So the candies will go to the next three people whose gnomes arrive.

These little guys of all shapes, sizes and colors are headed for Korea next month to be a part of a Mochimochi Land art show. You have until April 21st to send us your gnomes—find out more about this project here. And keep an eye on Instagram for gnome updates whenever we have new arrivals!