A lot happened in Mochimochi Land in 2015. Here are some highlights!

Free pattern: Tiny Rose!

Funky Fleece

Tiny Alpaca tongue twisters

Looong Gnome!

Giant Gnomes

Adventures in Mochimochi Land

Project Gnome Diplomacy and The Gnome Genome Project

Back Page Photo Contest

Tiny Terrors!

Tiny Turkey vs Tiny Tofurkey

Wrap Party starring the Generosi-trees

And finally, Baby Leo!

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty great year. Thank you for being a part of it!

Also, due to this last item, I plan to update the blog less frequently in 2016, but I hope you’ll keep up with Mochimochi Land activities via Facebook or Instagram. See you next year with photo contest results!

Just in time for Halloween, some creepy new creatures have crept into Mochimochi Land…

Tiny Terrors are an itty-bitty vampire, werewolf, mad scientist, and two-headed dude who are out to make you scream! (Or at least squee!)

Like all of my tiny patterns, these guys can be knit up with very little yarn and with plenty of time left over for you to finish your Halloween costume. Perfect for a spooky diorama, a ghoulish garland, or surprises for your favorite trick-or-treaters.

Techniques include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, I-cord, and a little stranded colorwork. Fingering-weight yarn and size 1 DPNs are recommended, but you can use any weight of yarn and appropriately sized needles. (Scrap yarn works great!)

The downloadable pattern collection is available for $6 from the Mochimochi Shop OR from the Mochimochi Land Ravelry store.

As you can see, I got to buy lots of my favorite Halloween candies for the photo shoots for these guys. Here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of the main image.

(Yes, I have since eaten each and every one of those pumpkins and the candy corn above.)

As often happens during the testing stage of my patterns, I got to see some fun color variations that I hadn’t thought of. Amanda’s bunch included a mad scientist with some shockingly bright hair…

Which led me to make some of my own variations, including a tiny vampiress and a three-headed dude.

Instructions for tiny three heads are now included in the pattern, by the way.

Thanks to Amanda, and also Shama, Yvonne, and Marilyn!

I can’t wait to see what these designs become in the hands of the rest of you…

I’ve updated the 1″ tiny woodland pin-back buttons in fun colors! The new look strikes me as very Wes Anderson for some reason, which was a happy surprise when the shipment arrived in the mail.

They’re $5 for a 4-pack in the shop.

And speaking of buttons, I’ve been randomly including a rare naked gnome button free with some of the physical orders I’m shipping out. (Other physical orders are receiving the traditional clothed gnome button.)

I’ve got about 80 left, and I’ll keep sending them out while supplies last!

Move over tiny sheep, there’s a new tiny fiber animal in Mochimochi Land! (Just kidding, sheep, you can stay.)
Tiny alpaca have arrived in pattern form just in time for Easter or your springtime celebration of choice!

Just how tiny are tiny alpaca?

Pretty tiny.

This pattern incorporates short rows (using the wrap & turn method) to get that perfectly alpaca shape, plus an inside-out technique for a purl-tastic coat with no purling required. Other techniques include I-cord and picking up stitches. All that, and you can still finish in a couple of hours!

Short rows can be an intimidating prospect if you’ve never tried them before, but they really are very simple. The Purl Bee has a clear tutorial, which might be where I learned it to begin with myself.

I find that the hardest part of short rows is just keeping track of where you are, and not losing count. This isn’t such a big deal with a small project like tiny alpaca—just don’t stop partway through doing a set of short rows to check your email, like I did. You will lose track!

As with the tiny sheep, I felt that the stakes were high with this pattern, because knitters know an alpaca when they see one. And even though short rows are pretty easy to do, I don’t totally know what I’m doing when I incorporate them in a design, so it took a few tries before I got it right. My imperfect practice alpaca:

Neck is too thick and bowed on the bottom one, neck is too skinny and weak on the top one. (But they’re beautiful in their own unique legless way, of course!)

The one thing I was certain of when I designed these guys was that I wanted to use alpaca yarn to make them. My LYS Windy Knitty came through with fingering-weight Titus by baa ram ewe, which worked great in combination with Cascade Heritage for the face and legs. Titus is not an inexpensive yarn, but if you’re really into alpaca you can make 40 or 50 alpaca with one skein, so that’s a bargain. And of course, any basic fingering-weight yarn will work great for this pattern—and you don’t even have to use fingering-weight yarn, for that matter. All tiny patterns can scale up!

I’m hoping we’ll have an animation starring tiny alpaca one of these days. For now, you can purchase the pattern as a PDF download from the Mochimochi Shop!