I just spotted this adorable Valentine’s Rainycloud made by lelanowhin on Ravelry!
As you can see, lelanowhin cleverly combined the Rainycloud pattern with Hearts (one of my free patterns, by the way!). And she used Vanna’s Glamour yarn from Lion Brand for those fabulous sparkles. Love it!
As far as I can tell, most people who knit Mochimochi Land toys do so because everybody loves toys (at least in my fantasy world they do!) and they’re quick and inexpensive projects to make. But sometimes I hear from people who have really interesting stories behind their desire to knit a toy. I recently heard from a woman named Tunie who lives in Australia. She had a very special reason to make some Baby Gators (or in her case, some Baby Crocodiles)! Here’s her story:
My husband is a volunteer aviation safety/maintenance teacher for sport aviation and last July was flying over the Kakadu National Park where there are salt water crocs. Some of his students in the Darwin area told him they carry licensed firearms because if you walk away from a forced landing near the crocs, you won’t stay alive long unless you have a gun. YIKES!
As he was flying over the park, our engine failed (due to a broken rocker arm, which is very rare) and he was able to land the plane without injuries to any of the four on board. They barely made it to a small airstrip in Jabiru where they had to spend several days taking the wings off and making cradles to put it in a large cargo container for the trip back to our hangar in the southwest.
Wow, right? To commemorate her husband Fred’s bravery and the team’s successful avoidance of dangerous crocs, Tunie wanted to make them all some toothy knitted crocs from the Baby Gators pattern in Knitting Mochimochi. (The pattern is also available for free on my blog):
For the larger one, she doubled the yarn and used larger needles. Smart!
And here are the passengers on that flight, each with their own new little friend.
Looks like they far prefer the smallish soft version over the real things that they might have encountered!
I love Tunie’s story, and I bet there are other toy knitters out there with awesome stories that I don’t know about at all. If you have a Mochimochi toy with an interesting background, please share it with all of us by adding your photos to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group! You can also always email me about it at info [at] mochimochiland [dot] com.
Here’s another darling holiday project! I love this simple snowman wreath that Tusulisa shared on Ravelry.
This knitter lives in Finland, where lumiukko is the word for snowman. Cute!
As always, check out the Mochimochi Shop for the pattern. (Need a last-minute gift for a knitter? Don’t forget we have downloadable gift cards in the shop too!)
Christmas is next Saturday, people! Yeah, I have a lot to do before then. TheBon is on the ball with a colorful bunch of Snowmen covering the full spectrum of visible light.
Amazing and cute! If this doesn’t get you excited about last-minute holiday knitting, nothing will.
Seriously, these guys are so quick to whip up, you could totally make your own rainbow of Snowmen by the 25th. The pattern is available as a PDF download for $2 in the Mochimochi Shop!
Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting got creative with her dog Olive’s Halloween costume this year, and if you have a copy of Knitting Mochimochi, the look might seem a little familiar to you…
That’s right, Kay based Olive’s “Lady Dogga” wig on the Beautiful Beehive from my Pigs with Wigs pattern! According to her blog post, it was quite a feat of engineering to make the wig stay perfectly perched on top of a roaming animal’s head. I am impressed! (It seems up for debate whether Olive was impressed, though.)
Oiyi is a friend and one of my superstar testers, and she did a great job testing my new Forest Friends cross-stitch pattern a while back. She recently showed a pic of her results on her blog.
Beautiful! Oiyi was a big help in making the pattern as user-friendly as possible.
Oiyi is actually venturing into knitwear designing herself, and she just released a pattern for this gorgeous shawl.
The design is called Kouyou, and you can buy the pattern as a download on her blog.
OK, so I just blogged about holiday knitting, but then I also just spotted this awesome Halloween Rainycloud that I had to share!
That’s right, a clever knitter dressed a Rainycloud up as a spooky ghost, with a separate sheet for each of the Rainydrops!
fullerenedream added these photos to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group, so they’re in the running for the Mochimochi Photo Contest! Be sure to add your photos by November 15th!
November has barely begun, but I suspect that many knitters already have their holiday knitting well underway. (Not me, though…) Yarngirl69 is putting me to shame with a mini tree of Mochimochi Snowmen that she whipped up last month.
This festiveness is irresistible! We all might as well just succumb to Snowman Season already.
The Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi Snowmen pattern is available for just $2 in the Mochimochi Shop. And for those of you who are fans of tiny things, a new pattern collection is coming any minute now!