The results are in! We are so excited to announce the winners of the 8th Annual Mochimochi Photo + Video Contest today! If you entered at all, of course, you’re a winner in the game of life, because you went out of your way to use your creativity to make something beautiful (or cute and silly) and share it with the world. As Mochimochi Land grows and changes, it’s the original ideas that you all put into it that are the single biggest source of inspiration to me. Thank you!

Big thanks are also in order for our sponsors, Knit Picks and Milk+Honey, for providing super prizes this year. And thank you to my lovely mother-in-law, Bonney, for opening up her stash for additional prizes!

Now for the winners of the photo category!

In third place is the adorable Snow Turtle! by ForeverWrens.

ForeverWrens wins a $10 gift certificate to Knit Picks, a gift bag from Milk+Honey, a $10 gift card to Mochimochi Land, plus a bag and Howdie Doody knitting kit from Bonney Teti’s World’s Biggest Yarn Stash in Wilmot, New Hampshire!

In second place is the incredible Beauty and the Beast by Knit Mermaid.

Knit Mermaid wins a $10 gift certificate to Knit Picks, a gift bag and an additional lotion bar from Milk+Honey, a $10 gift card to Mochimochi Land, plus vintage patterns and kits and more from Bonney!

And our top photo winner is… Fancy Seeing You Here by Molly.

Molly wins a Candy Rainbow Yarn Sampler from Knit Picks, a gift bag and two additional lotion bars from Milk+Honey, a $20 gift card to Mochimochi Land, and a whole slew of vintage patterns and kits and more from Bonney!

And finally, we have a video winner to announce. Let me tell you, we were so excited about the video entries we received (and I will be posting more of them here soon). But one video stood out as a clear winner for its story, its originality, and its execution. It’s By a Thread by juleenbean.

Amazing, right? juleenbean wins everyone’s adoration plus 10 tiny mochi kits!

Congratulations to these very clever knitters! And that wraps up the 2014 Mochimochi Photo + Video Contest—thank you again to all who participated!

Feeling inspired? It’s not too early to enter next year’s contest! All photos added to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group will automatically be entered in the 2015 Mochimochi Photo Contest. And we’ll probably also bring back our springtime photo series contest, so keep an eye out for that in a few months.

Update: Congratulations to the winners!

It’s voting day in Mochimochi Land! After much deliberation, John and I have selected 15 finalists from the hundreds of photos entered in the 8th Annual Mochimochi Photo Contest.

Presenting your top 15 photos!

Which of these, in your opinion, are the cutest, funniest, most original photos of Mochimochi toys? Cast your ballot below! To help make things fair, we’re asking that everyone please vote only one time, but PLEASE VOTE FOR AT LEAST TWO PHOTOS. You can vote for even more—as many as you like!

The poll will be open through this weekend, and we’ll announce the top three winners, along with the top video winner (selected by us), on Tuesday, December 16th. Be sure to return for the results!

[POLL CLOSED]

Every year for the past eight years I announce our photo contest with much excitement, then immediately start worrying that people are over it (“it” being the completely impractical activity of knitting toys and posing them for photographs) and no one will enter. And every year, as we get to the final days in the entry period, you all come through with the most amazing entries and I am so excited and grateful and moved.

This year we added a video category, and I’m happy to say that we received 17 entries! I think that’s pretty great for the first year. I can’t even count how many photo entries we had—it was hundreds. (Click on the image above to see them all now if you like!) Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who took time out of their busy lives to participate!

If you missed the December 1st deadline, don’t despair. We’ll be holding this contest again next year, so all photos uploaded to the Mochimochi Friends group will be eligible for (and automatically entered in) the 2015 contest.

We’ll be announcing honorable mentions and semifinalists here on the blog soon, so please check back—we’ll be asking for your help to determine the finalist photos and then the winners, and we want everyone to participate in that!

A bit more than a week is left to enter the Mochimochi Photo and Video Contest! I’ve already showed you the beautiful lotion bars from Milk+Honey and the rainbow of Palette yarn from Knit Picks that are in store for our winners, and now to reveal the prizes that come from my mother-in-law’s stash!

Bonney’s stash, if you aren’t familiar, is the undisputed titleholder of World’s Biggest Yarn Stash. I first introduced it to the world here on this blog in 2007, and in 2011 I did a follow-up interview with Bonney about her stash. (That means it’s about time to do another official check-in on the stash in 2015!) More than just yarn, Bonney’s stash includes kits, tools, weird toys she found on Ebay, and plenty of other randomnesses. So I didn’t know what was going to come when I asked Bonney if she would donate something from her stash for this year’s photo contest prizes. It turns out that Bonney was characteristically generous, and she picked some real gems for us!

Our first-place photo winner will receive these vintage patterns straight out of the mid-20th Century and Bonney’s stash!

PLUS vintage kits, including a valuable Howdy Doody slipper kit (soles included)! You know you want that kit.

PLUS this awesome bag that has creepy anthropomorphic rabbits playing croquet on it.

Our second-place photo winner will also get vintage patterns and kits (including a valuable Howdy Doody mitten kit!), and creepy rabbit bag.

And our third-place photo winner will receive a valuable Howdy Doody mitten kit and creepy rabbit bag too!

I can tell already it’s going to be a great weekend for working on entries. And if you’re wondering about the prize for the video portion of our contest, I’m going to announce it next week! See full contest details.

By the way, if you’re intrigued by Bonney and want to get to know here a little better, check out Mom on Pop, the pop-culture podcast that she does with my husband, John. It’s my favorite thing in the world right now.