Knitter Anna Hrachovec Is a Genius

The older I get, the more I value my relationship with my high-school best friend. As might have been predicted back in our days of shoving notes through each other’s locker vents, I ended up moving as far away from our hometown as I could, and she ended up moving across the street from her childhood home. When we were teenagers, our differences kept our friendship interesting, if not occasionally fraught with adolescent angst. As we get older, it’s our similarities that make me smile that much brighter.

But still, when M texted me last month with a photo of her new Birkenstocks, which are the same kind as mine but in a brighter colour, I marvelled at how we never had the same taste in fashion before this decade. I’m more comfortable about what I wear now, I suppose, and she’s more adventurous.

So imagine my delight when, a couple of years ago, after I posted a photo from the knitting book Huge & Huggable Mochimochi, M begged me to knit her then-two-year-old daughter a capybara. My high-school friend would have thought a big knitted rodent was weird. My adult friend loved it as much as I do. And so obviously I knitted it, and I loved knitting it, and I think I’ll end up knitting another at some point.

From the brain of the same woman who designs knitting patterns for ginormous rodents and tiny gnomes and unicorns comes Adventures in Mochimochiland. Which is a storybook. About teeny-tiny knitted creatures and donuts and things. With patterns at the end so you can make those teeny tiny things. It has nothing to do with my best friend. Nor does it have anything to do with giant knitted rodents. I just felt like telling that story.

Adventures in Mochimochiland is unlike any knitting book I’ve ever seen, by a woman who has made other brilliant knitting books that are like none I’ve ever seen, and my love for it is complete and unqualified.

That is all.

PS I’m starting to use some affiliate links here and there on the blog. It’s an experiment.