Happy Chinese New Year—it’s now officially the year of the sheep!

To celebrate, why not turn your yarn back into itty-bitty sheepies? The pattern is now available in two forms, as a PDF download and as a giftable kit that makes two sheep.

The inspiration behind this design is pretty obvious—I can’t count the number of requests that I’ve gotten for this high-fiber animal over the years. But I’m kind of glad that I waited until this year to make it, because my tiny designing skills have come a long way, and I wanted to get this one just right!

The techniques that the pattern uses are your standard tiny mochi techniques—knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, I-cord, and picking up stitches (just for the tail). But I added a new technique: brushing, a tip I picked up from June of PlanetJune.

I recommend using a 100% wool yarn to help get your sheep the fuzziest they can be. For the samples in the photos, I used a combination of Cascade 220 Fingering, Knit Picks Palette, and Cascade Heritage yarns (for the faces and legs).

And if you’ve got wool scrap yarn, this pattern is perfect for using up leftover bits—just use a larger needle size to scale it up.

Happy shepherding!

Our January pattern sale is back! Through January 31st, take 20% off all PDF patterns in the Mochimochi Shop with the code HELLO2015.

This is a good time to pick up any patterns you might have missed last year, like Quarters, Thwickeds, Farfalla, or the Tiny People 2 patterns.

And maybe a good time to discover some classic Mochimochi Land designs, like Tiny Mochis Collection 4, Godfrey the Groundhog, the Uh-Ohs, or Sleepy Snake & Mischievous Mouse.

It’s all of 3 degrees in Chicago today, and probably a good day for knitting where you are too!

I’m so smitten with the Tiny Woodland creatures that I debuted earlier in the fall that I just had to get pin-back buttons made!

These guys are available as a pack of 4 for $5 in the Mochimochi Shop.

As it so happens, at the same time that I was contemplating having these buttons made by Busy Beaver Button Co., I got an email from them asking if I’d be interviewed on their blog. And that interview is now up!

You might want to poke around a bit on their blog if you have a moment—you’ll be surprised at how many cool buttons you see there!

Thanks to Abbey and Busy Beaver Button Co. for the interview!

Now and then I get an opportunity to work on a commercial project, and I’ve been looking forward to sharing this one for a while. Earlier this year, Milan advertising agency TITA asked me to create tiny knit characters and dramatic scenes from Don Quixote for a ballet produced by Teatro alla Scala. I recently received samples of the 8″x8.5″ brochure that my photographs became, which was distributed to the ballet audience in September. It’s such a thrill to see them in print!

The photos depict the major scenes from the famous story, starting with Don Quixote’s literary inspiration, to his adventures with Sancho Panza (knitted windmill included, of course), to his courting of Dulcinea.

This was the first time that I’d taken on a commercial project that involved my photographing characters in nature—I was really happy to get the experience, and I think the whole thing turned out nicely. And I had a blast making my versions of a tiny Don Quixote and the other characters!

I should probably say that I don’t have plans to make patterns available in the foreseeable future, but they might turn up in in a book or somewhere else someday.

You can see all of the photographs from this project over at my art website.