If you’ve been following my social media at all, you’ll know that I designed and crocheted this little pastel gingerbread village for my local yarn shop, ImagiKnit, here in San Francisco. With a full-time job, I definitely would not have been able to pull this off without help from two of my trusty crochet elves and my bff. It was a team effort! And we made a village!

Here’s a video of it in action, because the coolest part of the display is the yarn-bombed electric train!

The little people/elves that inhabit this village were heavily inspired by Mochimochi Land’s gnomes. I made little wire stands for them so that they could stand up in the display.

Manda helped me lay out the village, and we decided that a Big Tree in the center would be perfect. Time was really not on my side, so while I would’ve loved to crochet a tree, I decided to yarn-wrap a styrofoam cone instead. Still cute!

And no snowy village is complete without abominable snowmen or yetis! This pattern is based on the Abominable Snowman crochet class I have on Creativebug, but this one is a bit smaller and constructed slightly differently. While I was taking photos of the window, a woman and her son were watching the train go around. When her son realized that the monster was eating a person, he said he didn’t like it! Sorry, kiddo!

I hope that if you’re a Bay Area local, you’ll get a chance to stop by ImagiKnit. If the train isn’t going, just ask them! I’ll provide links to various crochet patterns in this project in the next few blog entries.

It was Harvey Milk’s birthday on May 22nd, and in celebration, the Castro neighborhood here in San Francisco hosts Windows for Harvey, a celebration in which local merchants host art installations inspired by Harvey and his legacy. This year’s theme was “equality,” and the Castro Fountain asked if I would create an installation for their window.

I sketched and envisioned A LOT of different concepts before deciding on this one. A big part of me wanted to make a bunch of smaller items to fill the window, so that people might be more willing to purchase a piece of it at a lower price. But ultimately, I felt like the big triple scoop ice cream cones would make a bigger and more fun visual impact. They are over 5 feet tall!

This is from my artist statement/description posted in the window:

“For Harvey Milk’s birthday, I wanted to crochet a treat that was not only sweet but also highlighted Milk’s legacy and fight for equality. Both crochet and ice cream can have nostalgic qualities that take many of us back to a more innocent time, perhaps a time before we became aware of our differences, or that difference could ever be seen as a bad thing. Milk encouraged us to embrace each other, whether we are pink, yellow, or green, and to always give each other hope.”

Big crochet is super floppy and a little heavy, so I backed both pieces in thick foam board. Manda helped me out a lot by cutting the board, since I was so short on time.

Today is the last day you can view it. I think I’m supposed to take it down tonight! Sorry I wasn’t able to blog about it sooner! If anyone local to SF is interesting in purchasing it, you can always email me. I still haven’t quite figured out the pricing, but I’d sell them together or as individual ice cream cones. Manda wants to keep them, but our house already has a lot of crochet :).

The Craft Yarn Council approached me again this year to create a new pattern for Stress Awareness Month (which was April!) after the success of our Lemon Stress Ball. This year, I decided to GO BIG with this huggable and squishable Lemon Pillow! We’re using big yarn and a big hook, so this big project should go by more quickly than you think. I have a video tutorial on YouTube for the visual learners, and the free pattern is below. A friendly, printable PDF has been available on stitchawaystress.com for the past few weeks, plus they have a knitted version, too!

I hope you have lots of fun adventures with your gigantic lemon!

crochet pattern by Twinkie Chan

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