Month: November 2015

I’m so thrilled to work with Kawaii Box again to bring you guys a new giveaway! Kawaii Box is a super cute monthly subscription box filled with 10-12 hand-picked items from Japan and Korea, ranging from plushies to pouches to stationery to pens to candy to nail stickers and so much more. Shipping is free worldwide, and subscriptions start at $17.30/month. This is a great box to share with friends! It’s jam packed with goodies! Manda’s already been eyeing some of my items…. Let’s take a look at the November box!

Remember those lil shrimps I crocheted about a month ago? Now I get to tell you what they are for: Australian brand Eat Me Do’s Hardcore Prawn collection! It already looks so fun, and I am dying to see what Part 2 is! I made all the shrimpies myself, so there is a very limited quantity available. Grab some goodies now before they’re gone! (I’m told they are already very nearly gone anyway!) Here’s me with one up to my ear while I was showing her the size before I shipped them. It was really fun to work on these lil dudes. Do you think you would like to see more tiny crocheted doodads as earrings or pendants from me?

So we went to Target to just pick up some laundry detergent, and we ended up finding ourselves inside this ugly Christmas sweater for two. Someone on my Instagram feed said, “I was stocking these sweaters at my Target store and wondering who would end up in them. Now I know.” If you are looking to stay warm this holiday season, invest in one of these. IT GOT SO HOT IN THERE. ABORT MISSION. Target also has a blue colorway. I didn’t find the Target sweaters online to link you guys, so you’re just gonna have to go in the store and take some funny photos, too! I found a few links for you guys (here and here), but I’ve never bought from these stores and just Googled them. The one at Target was $30something dollars to give you an idea of the price range!

For the last couple of years, Manda and I have always gone to the pumpkin patch together before Halloween. I don’t usually carve mine, and Manda didn’t carve hers this year either. We’re getting ready to decorate the house for Christmas, and I was like, “I was looking into what people do with their pumpkins so they don’t go to waste, but I don’t want to break them down and cut/roast/puree them or whatever.” I’m the only one in my house hold who consumes anything pumpkin-related, and I don’t even consume that much. Manda said she would call the San Francisco Zoo to see if we could donate our pumpkins to them. As it turns out, we could! Manda drove all of our pumpkins to the zoo. The zoo lady said that the little ones could go to the porcupines, and the big ones would become toys for the rhinos. Here’s a Brazilian porcupine with one of our lil pumpkins! So cute! Have you guys ever seen the video of this other porcupine eating a pumpkin!! His happy munchy sounds are the cutest!

Here’s a quick snap of a fun custom order I just completed. She wanted crocheted cup cozies to store her corn dog pens in, so we met up downtown so she could give me her glasses!

Happy mid-month! It’s giveaway time, and also time for me to say thank you to all my wonderful sponsors! One lucky winner will receive:

Fully moving into my new craft space – since switching it to my dining room –  has been kind of a process of fits and spurts. One of the last things I needed to do was hang my art, but it never really seemed that pressing and important compared to other things on my to-do list. However, a camera crew is coming through soon, and this prompted me to ask Manda to help me hang everything. I’m not a really good spatial organizer, and also, I don’t really care so much, so I asked Manda because that kinda stuff is really important to her, and I figured her opinion on how to arrange everything would be helpful. We decided to start with my BANANA collection (which is looking kinda puny and sad right now….. I NEED MORE NANNERS). After breaking the ice with the nanners, we started creating other vignettes until they all sort of melded together. These are just quick iPhone photos that I snapped. I know my house is super cluttery, but that’s just sort of the way I am: not a minimalist, and always working on stuff! Manda did all of the hammering and everything, and since there is a table in front of the wall, she did some crazy stretching  and lunging to get all the nails in. That’s what BFFs are for! She was like, “How do normal people hang art!?” And I was like, “I dunno. THEY HIRE SOMEONE.” It’s not perfect, but there is a definitely a good feeling in the room in real life. Once I get everything done in there (need to hang some curtains to hide ugly things like storage and supplies) I will definitely film a room tour for YouTube! I think I want to crochet a cozy for my desktop monitor, too!

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that 2 weeks ago, I filmed some crochet videos with Creativebug in their studio, which conveniently, is also in San Francisco! Creativebug is a how-to/crafty website that is subscription-based. It’s only $4.95/month for access to all the classes on the site. That is pretty nuts, if you ask me! All the videos are high quality, beautifully edited, shot from various angles, and taught by awesome instructors. Hopefully my presence does not lower the bar on that instructor part :P. They pulled items from my craft room to dress the studio. Some of what you see there in the background will be projects in my book :). I don’t think that the projects I wrote and filmed for them are top secret, but they haven’t posted anything to their Instagram yet, so I won’t until they do! My classes will be available in 2016, and I will definitely let you guys know when they start rolling out! I was super nervous about it all before going in. Usually when I film tutorials for YouTube, I’m just by myself. If I say something stupid, I can edit it out (or keep it in). If I have to say something 100 times to make it sound right, nobody cares. If I start a project at noon and can’t finish filming until midnight, no big deal. I can angle and adjust my camera or laptop around a window or light until I feel like I don’t look gross. I am in control of all these things, but when someone else’s camera (or 3 cameras, rather) are on you, and there’s a schedule, it’s kind of a lot of pressure and also hoping you don’t look like a bridge troll! I did have a few moments where my brain stopped communicating with my mouth, and all sorts of random weird things would come out, but the crew was really awesome and patient, and the whole experience was really fun. It was definitely hard work, especially for a night owl and a hermit, but the people at Creativebug made a huge difference. They have an amazing team! One of my infamous stories is that many many years ago, I was asked to appear on HGTV for the show Uncommon Threads. I have always HATED seeing myself on camera, have always felt extremely not-cute because I only have one cute angle, and I said HECK NO!! Everybody was mad at me, but I was steadfast. No. Appearing. On. TV. EVER. At least HGTV asked if I could send some samples for a short segment, so my work got to be on HGTV, just not my face. Doing my stupid vlogs – and now my Youtube tutorials – allowed me feel more comfortable with being in front of a camera and sort of comfortable in front of somebody else’s.  I’ve never felt like I was a natural for videos or even teaching in general, but I tried really hard to get better at it […]