Category: Mochimochi Land News

Hoppy New Year

Posted on by Anna

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I hope your new year is hopping with fun ideas and plans for the coming months! Here’s to 2023! 🐰✨

In celebration of this year of the rabbit, I have a new kit to help you to get 2023 started off on the right rabbit’s foot—by knitting two lucky little bunnies!

(This pattern will be available as a PDF download soon too.)

And how about some extra new year’s motivation in the form of a sale? Use the code RABBITRABBIT for 20% off all patterns, kits, needles, and notions in the Mochimochi Shop. (Code also works in Ravelry.)

Hoppy knitting! 🐰

Say hello to Holi-Log!

Posted on by Anna

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Introducing the sweetest new friend in Mochimochi Land, the Mini Holi-Log! This little treat of a design is destined to be the life of your holiday gathering. Just look at her adorable lil face! And her mushrooms! And her holly! And sprinkles!

Use the code YULEBEMERRY after adding $5 or more in products from the Mochimochi Shop, and the Mini Holi-Log pattern will magically appear in your cart!

Holi-Log’s elegant wood grain is made using a fun technique: basically knit and purl at random!

Other techniques used in this cozy little project include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, I-cord, a little bit of mattress stitch for assembly, and French knots for holly berries. (These last two are shown in video tutorials linked in the pattern.)

You’ll need some woody-brown yarn (about 24 yards), some creamy white (about 8 yards), and a teeny bit of green, red, and black for details. Any weight of yarn and corresponding needle size will do, but the sample shown is made using fingering-weight yarn and size 1 (2.25mm) double-pointed needles.

As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere approach the darkest part of the year, we’re wishing you warmth and light and coziness among your favorite creatures and comforts!

New tiny apatosaurus pattern in Knitrino

Posted on by Anna

I’m so excited to share with you my newest tiny dinosaur pattern, Amy the Apatosaurus! You can now find her pattern in the portable Knitrino app, where they also have a limited number of apatosaurus kits available featuring lovely Hand-Dyed Diva yarn.

Knitrino works on iOS and Android devices, so to get the pattern or kit, install Knitrino or click the apatosaurus link from your phone. 📱

Amy is the third tiny dinosaur pattern I’ve debuted with Knitrino, and as with the others, I focused on unique construction to build a classic jurassic body type. Amy is knit the round, with flat sections for the belly and back, a smattering of short rows for the head curve, and mattress stitch to seam her graceful neck. It’s a quick pattern that will give you plenty to chew on, herbivore-style.

New to Knitrino? You can use this code for $3 off your first purchase:

MOCHILOVE

Knitrino offers curated patterns and kits crafted for mobile phones: click a stitch to see how to do it, highlight your current place, see only one size at a time, and match charts to your yarn colors. There are no PDFs, no importing, just purchase your pattern and go!

I love this app because it makes patterns portable, with built-in resources, and it’s a perfect fit with my tiny designs. Plus, it was built by sisters Alison and Andrea, terrific people who really understand knitters!

I’ve debuted two other dinosaur patterns with Knitrino—Tina the Tiny T-Rex and Tori the Tiny Triceratops—and they’ve brought those patterns back to the app for a limited time right now too! So you can get all three in your pocket. 🦖💕

Happy dino knitting!

Enrollment NOW OPEN for Knit Stars Season 7

Posted on by Anna

Today’s the day! You can now enroll in the Knit Stars Season 7 Masterclass Event, featuring courses by me and a slate of brilliant knitting teachers and artists! Enrollment is only open for ONE WEEK.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’m so excited to finally share my new class all about knitting toys big and tiny. You’ll truly have the keys to the kingdom with this class—because you’ll knit a huggable castle and a bunch of characters to go in it! 👑
Plus you’ll come away with a better understanding of how toy designing and construction works, along with the basics on how to animate your knitted friends. All with video modules that you can watch at your own pace and keep forever.

Along with my masterclass, with Season 7 you’ll also get to virtually travel the world and take classes with a bunch of amazing Knit Stars who are masters of all things knitted: Lisa Borgnes Giramonti, Mieka John, Mary Martin, Lotta Lundin, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Summer Lee, Fatimah Hinds, Xandy Peters, Patty Lyons, and Lauren McElroy.

To learn more about what we’re all up to in Season 7, tune in to the webinar we’re doing at 2pm CT on Sunday, October 9. I hope to see you there!

Making this masterclass has been one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in my knitting journey, despite my weird face in this behind-the-scenes photo. 🤪 I hope you’ll join me! See the Knit Stars website to sign up!

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

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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!