Category: Mochimochi Friends

Mix n Match Madness

Thank you, everyone, for your happy comments and emails upon the launch of Super-Scary Mochimochi! I can’t believe that this is my third book of knitting patterns—how lucky am I that this is what I get to do?!

The book was really a team effort, involving everyone from my editor Betty Wong to my photographer Brandi Simons to the professor who let us have a photo shoot in this chemistry lab, Robert Sheaff. And a whole group of testers helped make sure the patterns were clear and usable—a vital element in the book’s success!

Thinking about the testers for this book reminds me of the fun monsters I saw from them when they were testing the “Mix n Match” section…

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This part of the book includes five body shapes to choose from and a menu of deliciously weird body parts to cobble together any way you please. The guys above look something like this when you take them all apart.

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When I was writing the book, I asked some of my testers to each knit one of these monsters. Because we were on a tight schedule, the simplest way to do it was to have them each knit one of the monsters I had made, putting the same parts together that I had, but I was still wowed to see the wildly different resulting monsters.

This is Marianne’s squash monster. He doesn’t want to be made into a pie!

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Jenna’s colorful tall monster has a tattoo!

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And Kelly made a cute and huggable robot monster.

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I love how they’re all so different from the originals just by using different colors and eyes… imagine the possible combinations that will happen when knitters start mixing up body parts and inventing some of their own!

Thank you to Marianne, Jenna, Kelly, Denise, Jennifer, Jenny, Jessica, Joan, Kari, Kristen, Lisa, Marilyn, Mary, Marti, Rikke, and also Bonney for contributing their testing help for this book. It couldn’t have happened without you guys!

Zephrbabe’s Tiny Napoleon

I never really thought of Napoleon Bonaparte as crush-worthy, but I’m swooning over this little guy knitted up by Zephrbabe!

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She used the Tiny Gnome pattern as a starting place, then took it in a completely different direction with custom color changes and shaping, along with some perfectly placed embroidery.

And that hat? According to her Ravelry page, it’s the Tiny Sailboat turned upside down!

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(Both the gnome and sailboat patterns can be found in Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi.)

He’s just the perfect historical figure for tiny mochi-fying, don’t you think?

It’s genius modifications like this that get me excited for our big photo contest coming up this fall. All you have to do to enter is add your photos of knits made from Mochimochi patterns in our Flickr group. Everything added to the group since last year’s contest is automatically entered in the next one! (You can see the details from last year’s contest here.)

For those of you in the US, enjoy the long weekend!

Tiny Turtle Stacks ’em High

Thank you all for the comments on Friday’s tiny turtle post! I had no idea that turtles came out of their shells to play so many games and sports.

Our winner suggested that the turtle in question most loves playing a classic game of skill and concentration…

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Tiny’s favorite game is Jenga. Slow and steady is definitely the key to winning, but if he happens to fail he is protected from the avalanche of blocks by his handsome shell!

That comment comes from Debbie!

As you can see, I thought it would be fun to have a demonstration of Tiny Turtle’s skill, but all we had in the apartment were knitting needles. It turns out they make a lousy substitution for Jenga blocks!

For her winning comment, Debbie gets the new Tiny People pattern collection!

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Thanks everyone for participating! If you’re interested in knitting a tiny turtle of your own, I hope to make the pattern available in the future.

Marianne’s Lovable Puppet Loki

Having not seen The Avengers, I may be behind the summer blockbuster times, but I can still appreciate the cleverness of Mariannes_stuff’s adorable Loki puppet.

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I gather that he’s the bad guy of the movie, but if he looks anything like Marianne’s version, he sure is a cute one!

And look—little Loki too!

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Marianne used the Puppet Love pattern as a base for her little baddie. You can read a bit more about her process on her Ravelry project page.

Add your own photos of Mochimochi knits to the Flickr group so we can all see! They’ll also automatically be entered in our big photo contest this fall.

A Delicious Assortment of Very Small Knits

Have you entered our Bonbons giveaway yet? If you haven’t, you have until Monday to leave a comment about the smallest thing you’ve knit on last week’s post for a chance to win the adorable mini balls of yarn from Lion Brand!

Several people included links to photos in their comments, so I thought I’d share some highlights today. These knitters haven’t won anything (at least not yet—the giveaway winners will be chosen randomly on Monday), but I wanted to feature their super tiny knits while we’re on the topic!

From Michelle:

The tiniest thing I’ve ever knit were the little nunchaku for my tiny ninja!

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From Brian Harrison:

I made a whole series from the Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi out of embroidery floss and size 0 needles.

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From Mallory:

The smallest thing I’ve ever knitted were a few sweater ornaments.

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From Mary!:

the smallest things i’ve ever knit are the mochimochi tiny baby bunnies!

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From Jen:

The smallest thing I ever knit was a mustache that I auctioned off to raise money for Movember.

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All fun examples of bite-sized knitting! See more super small projects and share your own in the comments to the Bonbons giveaway post.