Category: Mochimochi Land News

A new Knitty pattern for u and us (it’s a uterus!)

Posted on by Anna

While I’m not pleased about the events that prompted this project, I am pleased to introduce a new (and FREE) pattern in Knitty, everyone’s favorite online knitting magazine. It’s the Fumin’ Womb, the tiniest, angriest little uterus ready to take on anyone who wants to tell her what to do in 2022.

It almost feels like this project doesn’t need any explanation, but I’ll say that I’ve been suppressing my rage every day since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, followed by all the state restrictions and talk of national bans on abortion in the United States.

So when Knitty asked me to design a tiny uterus for their 20th Anniversary issue (congratulations to Knitty! 🥳), inspired by recent events and their much-loved Womb pattern by MK Carroll (from the Winter ’04 issue), I was grateful to have a creative way to channel my rage.

Techniques used in this pattern include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, grafting, picking up stitches, and I-cord. I used Hand Dyed Diva’s Homegrown Sock in Pink Petunia for the main color (get a skein and make a bunch of uteruses!), and Knit Picks Palette (a favorite basic of mine) for the gloves and details. (Yarn scraps from other projects work great too!)

Thank you to Amy Singer and Kate Atherley and everybody at Knitty, thank you to my tech editor, Marilyn Passmore, thank you Kate O’Leary for modeling in the photos above, and thank you to Kristine Brandel and Bonney Teti for pattern testing!

I hope you enjoy the pattern, in whatever way you’d like. It’s in great company in this issue of Knitty!

(This version is coming soon too!)

It’s Tori time!

Posted on by Anna

Just in time for your end-of-summer tiny knitted dinosaur needs, the pattern for Tori the Tiny Triceratops is now available as a PDF download 🦕💕

Tori is cute as a fossilized button, and super quick to knit. Her pattern features the magic of simple yarnovers: little yarnover holes help with leg and horn placement, and more yarnovers give Tori her fabulous frill 🦚

Other techniques include I-cord and mattress stitch—video demos linked in the pattern will help you along the way.

The cute yellow Tori shown here was made with Hand Dyed Diva Homegrown Sock yarn in Limoncello, which gives her body some lovely variegation. Yarn scraps also work great!

Tori was super fun to design, and I hope you enjoy knitting her! And possibly knitting your own tiny dinosaur adventure park! (Tori, of course, is besties with Tina the Tiny T-Rex, also on my website 🦖)

Big thanks to my tech editor Marilyn Passmore, and test knitters Amanda, Brian, and Rikke for their help making this pattern as user-friendly as can be! ❤️

This pattern was originally published in the wonderful Knitrino app. If you bought the pattern in Knitrino and would like to get the PDF as well, you can email me for a discount code on the PDF.

You can find the pattern in my shop and also on Ravelry.

Summer Shipping Break

Posted on by Anna

UPDATE: Due to COVID-related travel delays, orders of physical goods will be shipped by 8/19

via GIPHY

It’s time for our annual summer shipping break! If you order something physical (books, kits, buttons, etc) from the shop around now, it will be shipped out by August 9th.

(Digital patterns don’t involve shipping, so there should be no disruption with those orders.)

We hope those of you in the northern hemisphere are having a good summer and staying cool!

Hey Tiger, it’s a new year!

Posted on by Anna

Happy New Year! I gave this one a very slow start as things have been crazy and I’m mostly taking it day-to-day so far. I imagine many people are feeling this way! Anyway, whatever day it is, it’s a good day for knitting something tiny and cute, so let’s knit tiny tigers together for the year of the tiger!

Just looking at these little guys, with their peppy stripes and friendly face fuzz, makes me happy. It’s a quick pattern that uses stranded color knitting, I-cord, and a smidge of picked up stitches for the tail. Great for yarn scraps, or I also have a kit that makes two yellow tigers, one for you and one for a friend!

I have Yuri from Eylul yarns in Osaka, Japan, to thank for motivating me to make this pattern. I spent one new year in Japan when I was an exchange student (many years ago now!), and it was such a wonderful time of family and friends and fancy foods and wishes for the new year. And I have Lora Kinberger to thank for her test knitting!

As for this design, I think this is the first time I’ve gone with this sort of side-facing look for the face—it’s something I’ve been doing in clay for a while, actually, and it only recently occurred to me to try it in knitting.

I like how you get to see the full face and body at the same time! It’s very illustrative, and although I’m not an illustrator, I’m trying to open my eyes more to the shapes and patterns that illustration can inspire.

Anyway, I hope you love the pattern, and I hope we all have many good things ahead in 2022!

Oh, and you can take 22% off most everything in my shop right now with the code HappyNewRawr!

Goodnight Mice

Posted on by Anna

As you may have heard, the 2021 Mochimochi Land holiday pattern is here!

Goodnight Mice are sleepy little creatures who just want to curl up and forget about the holidays, and the world in general. Sounds nice, right?

The mice are quick enough that you can make a few for gifts and even knit them little stockings or sleeping bags to nestle into. Or just make one for yourself and call it a day!

I like my holiday knitting to be as simple as possible, so I aimed to design a mouse that had some shaping to the face without using short rows. (I love the effect of short rows and I’ve been using them a lot lately, but they do require a little dexterity and paying a bit more attention to where you are for a few rows.) That was also motivation for me to learn a new (to me) sock heel technique, the afterthought heel. It uses waste yarn, a smidge of picking up stitches, and grafting (which also takes a little focus, but in this case it’s a small number of stitches).

But my main challenge with this project turned out to be designing a creature that didn’t look like a koala!

My lovely mother-in-law, Bonney Teti, has an eye for such things, and she gave me several rounds of feedback as I was working out the design. Then she became the first pattern tester, so she deserves a lot of credit! By the way, Bonney has a really fun podcast that she does with her son (my husband), John. Check it out!

Once I had a draft of the pattern, my sharp-eyed tech editor, Marilyn Passmore, got it into shape, as she’s been doing with all of my patterns for a long time. Marilyn is just the best!

A few days past the initial pattern launch, I’ve been delighted by how many of you have already downloaded Goodnight Mice for yourselves—thank you! And some VERY cute mice have already been popping up on Instagram and Ravelry, YAY!

Whether or not your holiday plans include these mice, I hope you skip the stress and find the fun as much as possible, and GET SOME SLEEP!

Pattern sales supporting refugees

Posted on by Anna

Update: Thank you for helping us raise $210, which we matched for a total of $420, for refugees!

While some of us are stressing over who is and isn’t “knitworthy” this time of year, others are starting completely over in a new country. I’ve been reading about the needs of newly arrived refugees in the Chicago area—it’s everything from furniture to English classes to food support.

For the month November, all proceeds from sales of my Homely and Hut pattern, Tiny Thanksgiving patterns, and Tiny Sugarplum Fairies pattern will go to support refugees who are resetting in the Chicago area. (Purchases of these patterns from both the Mochimochi Shop and my Ravelry Shop apply.)

And if you can, I hope you’ll support a resettlement organization in your area. (Here’s a list of organizations working in many states in the US.)

Introducing Tori the Tiny Triceratops

Posted on by Anna

She’s cute, she’s Cretaceous, she’s Tori the Tiny Triceratops—ready to be knit by you! Tori is all about flaunting her crest and living the vegetarian lifestyle, and her pattern is all about using yarnovers for simplicity and elegance: yarnover holes guide you in foot and horn placement, and the crest is a picot pop that completes her perfectly prehistoric look.

Tori’s pattern is available exclusively in the Knitrino app, which you can get in your favorite app store. It’s an interactive pattern with charts, photos, and video! Right now you can also purchase a kit for Tori that includes gorgeous Hand Dyed Diva yarn, plus sign up for a virtual dinosaur workshop with me on December 5th!

If you haven’t used Knitrino before, definitely give it a try—it’s intuitive to use and comes with a fun and very welcoming community. And it’s the most portable way to knit patterns on the go—especially tiny ones! It doesn’t hurt that Knitrino’s creators, sisters Andrea and Alison, are just the best people you could meet.

I personally LOVE this pattern, and I have a feeling that, once you knit a Tori, you will want to knit more(-y), and more(-y)!

Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi 10th Anniversary

Posted on by Anna

Do you remember this book?

Somehow, it’s been TEN YEARS since Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi was published!

My second book of knitting patterns captured my new obsession with knitting tiny little creatures. That obsession had started out as a mere short-term project to see if I could design and knit a new “tiny thing” every day for a month, and when that month passed, I just kept going…

…until it seemed that I might as well make a book out of all these little creatures! It wasn’t quite so simple as that, but I had a lot of support from my then-editor at Potter Craft, Joy Aquilino. She helped me select around 20 of the best from this project, along with some new additions, to turn into patterns for a new book.

My tiny designs have evolved quite a bit since, but I consider the projects in Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi to be Mochimochi Land classics, and they’re a great starting place for knitters who are new to small projects on DPNs.

Brandi Simons, who did the photography for my first book, Knitting Mochimochi, did a terrific job again with this book. The best part of the process was the way we worked together to figure out the simple props and backgrounds, and I assisted her with all the shoots too. Here’s Brandi getting the Tiny Computer ready for his close up.

The Tiny Gnome had some help from toothpicks and fishing line to make him and his mushrooms look just perfect.

(Seriously, I learned so many of my photography tricks from Brandi during these shoots!)

This tiny trash can is a project that didn’t make it into the book…

…but if you want to knit it you can find it in Tiny Mochis Collection 3.

Here I am adjusting the strings of these Tiny Ghosts. (This might have been the last time I was photographed with zero gray hairs!)

…and later, of course, I made one of these ghosties into one of my favorite GIFs.

via GIPHY

A lot more work went into this book besides the photography, namely, testing by some very talented and sharp-eyed knitters, many of whom are still test knitting my patterns! Oh boy how the time has flown.

I still see people’s projects that they make from this book all the time, and they make me just as happy as when the book first came out. If you’re able to use Ravelry, check out all the favorited projects that knitters have linked to the book—all 165 pages of them!

You can still get a copy of Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi from a bunch of booksellers, both online and in person, plus hopefully your local library has it too! An ebook version is also available.

Since Teeny-Tiny, I’ve probably designed enough tiny things to fill at least three more books. And I do think it would be fun to write another book of patterns sometime! For now, I’m working on something that’s technically in the fiction category, and having great fun with it. More on that…eventually!