Author: TwinkieChan

  We have a new giveaway for you guys!! Fashion blogger, author, tv hostess, and all around amazing media personality LaCarmina has partnered up with us to create this Yummy Bento Box prize. You get the cute bento box AND the Yummy You! stuff inside! Please visit her blog entry about the giveaway to find out how to enter to win! Remember to comment on her blog. Comments here won’t count. Thank you! Good luck!  

On Sunday, Marissa and I checked out the Stitches West market at the Santa Clara Convention Center. When we first walked in, I was like, “This is smaller than I had imagined.” But as we got deeper into it, I realized HOW. MUCH.FREAKING.YARN was in there! I am prepping a yarn de-stash sale soon to make some space in my craft room, so I told myself I would only buy yarn if it were REALLY weird and funky and unusual. And even though Marissa wanted to buy the whole convention center, she was really good and only bought 4 skeins! Overall, it was definitely fun to see lots and lots of yarn, but I wish there had been some more crazy-funky-art yarn companies with bits of things and doodads sticking out. I wanted to make a point to stop buy the Lion Brand booth to visit a gal who (a) reminded me to come to Stitches and (b) was super helpful and friendly and was the person who contacted me about contributing a Bonbons pattern (what ended up becoming the gummy bear). I made her a present out of Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice yarn and the pattern I wrote for my Michaels.com APRIL pattern. I will give you guys more deets and photos of that soon! (photo stolen from @LionBrandYarn) Sorry I didn’t get better photos, or even photos of the convention.  I never remember to bring a camera to these things. It’s kinda like how you’d imagine it: a giant hall filled with booths and booths of yarn and yarn-related gizmos. The coolest gizmo we saw was an electric needle-felter with a needle that poked in and out a million times a minute for all your needle-felting needs. Way cool! Allison from ImagiKnit told me that Sunday was a pretty slow day compared to Saturday, and that we had chosen wisely. However, I think it would also be fun to experience a crowded day. Maybe next year! Here’s a cute story, though: A gal named Lynne wrote to me and told me she was demo’ing at a machine-knitting booth. She also mentioned that she had made the Chocolate Truffle scarf and that she might be wearing it at Stitches. I asked her to please take and send me a photo! She did, and also sent me this cute email! Love it! I got a lot of compliments for the scarf.  Usually I’d hear something off in a direction I wasn’t even looking.  I’d turn to see if they were talking to me and give them a thank you if they were.  At one point as the Stitches market was closing up I turned to acknowledge a compliment and it was someone wearing a carrot scarf!!  She was walking quickly by and I pointed and yelled, “Twinkie Chan?!”  She yelled back, “Yes, I tried.”  I yelled back, “It looks fantastic.”  I wish it wasn’t at the point where we were all leaving and heading home.  If it were the more mosey through the […]

Check out this cute video introducing Sephora’s Hello Kitty Tokyo Pop collection! The cute Sanrio clothing is by JapanLA Clothing! What’s extra cool is that adorable Maria of Locketship is wearing a vanilla ice cream scoop hair clip from my shop!

Hey, yarn lovers, weekend is Stitches West! It’s at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I’ve never been before, so I don’t exactly know what it’s like, but I’m going with Marissa on Sunday before the Oscars! It looks like there are lots of classes and workshops, and even a fashion show on Friday night. I mostly just wanna check out the “Market,” which I imagine is just rows and rows of yarn and tools, but who knows! I’ll report back! I never remember that thing exists until it passes, but this year, my buddy Brandyce at Lion Brand  reminded me! Yay! I am going to make her a quick prezzie for when I visit the booth! Tonight is about tea, Girlscout cookies, and yummy yarn!

  My buddy Cassie Wanda has started a crafty blog called Glimmerwood to keep track of her crafty adventures and to interview other crafters and inspire others. Check out her interview with me here! We talk about past, present, and future stuff!

I keep forgetting to post the photos from the Sweets show the other weekend at Big Umbrella Studios, where both Tiffany and I had our arts up! (No, those dinos above my Push Pop Pets are not Tiffany’s.)   Manda and I decided to take photos in front of Tiffany’s art, but we sort of obscured all the it! Ok, at one point, one of Tiffany’s friends wanted to get a photo of both of us in front our pieces. But we couldn’t figure out how to stand or position ourselves and not block the art. We took a lot of photos semi-squatting, and they looked like we were about to take a poo. These two photos are from Manda’s phone. There were like 3-4 phone cameras going off, and we didn’t know which way to look, and then things just got crazy.

Saturday night survivors. After this, they both ate bacon dogs from the streetcart outside the Cat Club, and I drank like 10 gallons of water. We don’t really go out anymore, so this was super fun times! Also I am super in love with my velvet tie dye dress from Miracle Eye which I found about via Jessie Jae Joplin. My little purse was a present from Elysse. People have been asking where they can get one, but I have no idea, as there is no branding on it!

Me and my Blogcademy coffee cup cozies will be hanging out at Blogcademy in Los Angeles April 6-7! I haven’t taken a sit-down-and-take-notes-class for over ten years. Will my hand-writing still be legible!? While blogging isn’t my main gig, I definitely enjoy it as a way to connect with you guys and to keep you and myself inspired. I’m excited to hear what other folks have to say about it and to learn some tips from the pros! Blogcademy is actually in Portland before LA. Portland is March 30-31. If you want a chance to win a scholarship to either location, you need to enter like… TODAY. Sorry for the late warning! I wasn’t paying any kind of attention! I think you’ll be able to pull it off, though! 🙂 Go to this FAQ page and scroll down for instructions. Get to it!   (all photos blatantly stolen from TheBlogcademy. I am sure we will be covering that as well…. hehehehhe)      

I keep seeing a necklace I want all over the internet. It’s a cute, acrylic, heart-shaped cherry lollipop. I figured I would try to crochet something similar! It’s not quite the same, but still cute, and FREE! 🙂 I re-used the 3D heart pattern from my Happy Heart and Rib Cage T-shirt post last Halloween. I noticed there was a little booboo in the pattern while I was reading it this afternoon, so I’ll repost it with the booboo fixed! Mine turned out kinda big because I double-stranded two yarns, so you can experiment with your yarn stash and see what you come up with!   p.s. The sweatshirt I’m wearing is from ModCloth. I tried it on today and then never wanted to take it off!

  I made a series of “Push Pop Pets” for an art show opening tonight at Big Umbrella Studios, 7pm-11pm, at 906 1/2 Divisadero. I was inspired by the push-pop cakes I’ve been seeing around the internet. I was at Michaels a few weeks ago and saw the push pop containers. I didn’t have plans for them yet at that point, but I grabbed some anyway. Now they are cute homes for my cake-like creatures: Funfetti Mouse, Black Forest Cake Bear, Birthday Cake Kitty, Rainbow Cake Unicorn, Red Velveteen Rabbit, and Strawberry Short Pup. There is a magnet at the bottoms of the plushes and a magnet on the push pop stand so that when you push up your push pop, the plush doesn’t go flying all over the place, but you can still also remove the plush if you wish. Each one took way longer than I’d planned to complete, and I had sort of a debacle with the magnets (I had to order super strong ones online at the very last minute…. I learned a lot about magnets!), but I love how they turned out! If I have time, I’ll make more for Etsy, and I’ll definitely  post whatever is left over after the show ends. I think they would make fun birthday presents, espesh with a real candle on top! Here’s a weird animated gif I made. It doesn’t have a point or a story. It just … is!  

I thought I would share some inspiration photos with you that I used while working up the pattern for my Chocolate Truffle Scarf.   Don’t forget I also have this fun I LOVE YOU chocolate truffle crochet painting for sale in my Etsy shop!  

Hey hey hey! So we managed to squeak in a tiny Valentine’s Day update in the Etsy shop. I was working on a new item last night, but I didn’t finish the pattern. Hopefully I can add that in the next few days. Before the end of the week, I also need to make my mom a birthday present, submit some work for a sweets-themed art show at Hairy’s gallery by Wednesday, and ideally, make a cupcake scarf for a buddy visiting on Friday, because we’re supposed to do an art trade, and it’s taken us both eons to finish! 😛 Please enjoy the lil bit of Valentine goodness! Pieces are in limited quantities, so please act fast if you’re interested :). I’ll let you guys know if I manage to sneak any new items in! Thanks for your patience.  I know my shop is kind of bare and weird, but I am hoping my Spring will be a little less psychotic!   FYI, that’s my new duvet cover and pillow shams from PBTeen. Cute, but not very soft :(. Any tips? Just keep washing it for 2 years?

My buddy Polly from PollyAnnaCowgirl told me about the Craftcation Conference for small and crafty businesses. It’s March 21-24 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Ventura, California. Have you ever thought to yourself… I have a great idea for a business but I don’t know how to start. I want to turn my passion into my full time job. I have a successful business and I’m ready to take it to the next level but I’m not sure how. I want to connect with people in my field but I don’t have the time or opportunity to make it happen. I’d love to learn something new and better myself/my business at the same time. I want new ideas to make my business more successful and inspire me. If you want to start, maintain or grown your indie business or take a break from your routine and learn something new while networking with fellow crafters…then Craftcation is for you! I wanna go! The only problem is that I’d always want be in two workshops at once. I suggest you bring a friend, divide and conquer, and then discuss everything you learned! Registration closes at March 1, so start planning now! 🙂

So, my big face (3 times) is lurking in your Nylon Mag this month! Go pick up a copy! It’s the February issue with Selena Gomez on the cover.   Sorry for crappy iPhone pics! I keep avoiding having to futz with my new scanner! I made this ad past the ad deadline while all these Nylon people were waiting for me. Initially, another Yummy You! ad designed by my licensee was supposed to go in that space to promote a new collaboration. The collaboration is still happening, but at the time of the ad deadline, all the paperwork still wasn’t complete, so at the end of the day when the ad was due, I was asked to create a new ad on my end just for general Yummy You! product, but RIGHT AWAY, since everyone was already waiting. My team had some quick ideas for a photo to substitute in and what layout to use so that I could produce this ad super quickly, but the photo and logos and everything weren’t really working inside the magazine specs, and the poop was hitting my mental fan, since I knew people were waiting, and I kept getting emailed to SEND SEND SEND. So I had to scratch the team’s idea completely and just kind of randomly create another one on the spot, based on photos I use on my business card. I really hadn’t had time to organize any cute photoshoots for emergencies such as these, so I felt especially flustered. I don’t know anything about laying stuff out properly, and I don’t even think things are aligned and centered properly, but for having to bust it all out at the last minute and not knowing what I was doing, I think it turned out ok! I was really worried about typos because I was so frazzled! It’s kind of funny, because as you flip through the magazine, it’s all kind of cool and grown up, and then you are hit in the face with a big punch of pink and bubble lettering. It kind of seems out of place, but in a way, I guess that has been my mission all along: to give everyone permission to wear cute colors and cute things, and that age shouldn’t determine what is ok for us to wear as long as we are having fun! Cute is cool!

Happy February! I have two new crochet patterns for you at Michaels.com. The diagrams are kind of messed up (either missing or out of place), but I’ll see if anything can be done about that! The first pattern will look familiar: it’s the heart-shaped sugar cookie brooch we do for Valentine’s Day, but it’s the first time I’ve shared the pattern. Go here! The second pattern is brand new (to me, too!) It’s a Chocolate Truffle Scarf and is inspired by me wanting you to feel like a yummy box of chocolates! Pattern here! I hope you guys have fun making you and your sweethearts some Valentine’s goodies! I know I said I would re-open my shop with V-Day stuff on Feb 1, but I found myself caught up in some surprise deadlines! But I will work on finishing up cute stuff this weekend and try to post on Monday. I want to work on a new pattern for a fun new brooch/hair clip, so cross your fingers that the project won’t give me a hard time!!! 😛 Remember, if you guys end up making stuff from my Michaels patterns, let me know! I’d love to see!    

I am working on pulling the third out of 3 of this week’s work miracles within the next 18 hours, but let’s take a quick break and check out the super cute cupcake pins that ClaireyLou sent me! I know you might be all like, “Not another cupcake pin!” but her work is so cute and delicate and ladylike and well-made. You will not be disappointed! I was afraid that I took so long to blog about them, that Claire might think I hated them, but really, I love them and have just been so super crazy lately. Can you tell that I still haven’t cleaned up my craft room? EEP? Uh, maybe NEXT week!! 😛 In the mean time, check out Claire’s shop and say hello! She has a coupon code right now, too, that ends tomorrow!    

My friend is starting up a new crafty blog and asked if I would answer some questions. One of the questions involved a sketch of a certain hat from many many years ago. I didn’t think I would be able to find this random sketch, BUT I DID. In an old Photobucket account. You’ll be able to see this infamous sketch on February 19th when my interview goes live. I think my sketches are funny because they are really bad, but they are actually really helpful to me while writing crochet patterns and planning ideas. When people commission me to make things for them, I say, “Draw me a sketch!” so I can see what they are talking about, but they say, “I can’t draw!” I can’t either!!! I don’t think we all have to be genius artists to get an idea across. Even cave men were able to tell stories through their primitive drawings, so sketch away! No fear!

I have learned a few things about myself and baking: 1) I might over-mix batter because I am afraid of lumps and under-mixing 2) I might over-bake things because I am afraid of under-baking 3) I break a spoon every time Let’s see if I can avoid doing these things while making…. POUND CAKE!!! I had leftover buttermilk from making blue velvet cookies and googled recipes using buttermilk. There were 3 possibilities: pancakes, fried chicken, pound cake. I don’t ever cook meat and I wasn’t feeling the pancakes, so … pound cake! I have a lot of fond memories of pound cake. My mom would buy the frozen Sara Lee ones. I always thought they were called pound cakes because they were heavy like bricks that weighed a million pounds, but it turns out they are called that because in the old days you used a pound every ingredient: a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of eggs, a pound of sugar. These days, we don’t make such humongous pound cakes, but that’s a pretty cool recipe if you ask me. The Sarah Lee pound cakes were dense but soft and delicious and just kind of perfect-looking. This was my goal. I used Ina Garten’s recipe. Here we go! Here are most of my ingredients. I didn’t have a loaf pan, so I greased and floured up my bundt pan. I hunted around on the internets, and it seemed to tell me that my bundt would have the same cooking time and temp. as the loaf, so I was set! And, bearing in mind #3 on my list of Bad Baking Habits, I decided to use a giant metal spoon for all my spoon-related needs. No spoon-breaking this time! The magic begins when you cream together the butter and the sugar. I want to smell like butter and sugar all day. I have tried to purchase various cake/vanilla/buttercream fragrances, but I have yet to find one that I think actually smells good. After mixing up all the ingredients, I found another great use for my giant spoon: EATING BATTER. I had to stop eating the batter so I’d have enough to put in the bundt. And then, I crossed my fingers. I set the timer for an hour and started eating Cheez-Its cuz I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Yes, it was about 9:20 pm, but I was waiting for Hairy to get home from the art gallery, since I didn’t know if were going to eat dinner or not before seeing “Mama” that night. As it turned out, we didn’t have time to eat dinner, and we ate hot dogs at the movie theater…. Anyway, I checked in on my pound cake when it was close to one hour, and I was a little scared to see LIQUID batter bubbling at the surface, cracking through the cake, seeping out like hot delicious buttery lava. There were still about 5 minutes left on the timer, so I figured that […]

Sorry I totally forgot to tell you guys about this! I got the PDF emailed to me while I was in L.A.! There’s a little bit about me and what I do in the current issue of Girl Talk magazine in the U.K. Their website is 100% adorable, and I can’t wait to get my hard copy in the mail! Back in the day, I was quoted in INKED Magazine saying I didn’t consider myself an artist. That sounds kinda self-deprecating, but I guess I was creating a hard line between my idea of “crafting” and my idea of “art.” I still don’t really know where I believe I stand in those areas, but the top corner of the magazine page where it says “Real Artist” kinda puts a smile on my face, and I’m happy to inspire girls – young and old – to get creative and pursue their wacky dreams. After working almost 10 years in book publishing, I was really surprised when  Angel introduced me to someone a few years ago and called me an artist. That was a first! I think the funny thing, too, is that her day job at the time was something tech or computer related, but I’ve always thought of her as an amazing photographer first. And now she takes fancy snaps of musicians and is rep’d and everything. It’s fun to see us all grow.

Wow, thank you guys so much for all your comments on my last entry! I was really just worried I was letting the crocheters down by not blogging enough about crocheting, but it seems that those of you who responded were okay with a mish-mash of my weird brain. I really appreciate the thoughtful replies. I promise I’m reading every single one. I had intended to also respond to every single one, but this month has been intensely crazy for me!!! I still haven’t cleaned up my craft room or my house or really caught up on all my projects, because new and immediate deadlines keep popping up! I have two new patterns to write and my California sales tax to calculate and file before Jan. 31. Plus, I wanted to update my Etsy shop Feb. 1 with Valentine’s Day stuff, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to meet that deadline. I’ll do my best.  I’m hoping that things will settle in a bit more in February. Fingers crossed!!! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with  a picture of me and my Alf telephone from Instagram. It randomly started ringing the other day (I don’t use my landline or give out the number), and I had no idea what the sound was or where it was coming from! Alf-ringer is now off! In my dream world, I’ll be able to fit an actual desk in the craft room for my computer and my Alf phone, so I can take photos of me looking super professional in my office.

I just took this photo five minutes ago. My craft room has been a hot mess since the beginning of December. I mean, it could be worse, but for me, this is pretty bad. I also left out the part where there are now a bunch of boxes in the dining room, too… I really do not like the site of cardboard boxes. The plastic bags don’t help either. The big problem is that I have all this stuff, but there’s nowhere to put it. This frustration sends my anxiety through the roof, and then I just have to walk away and re-focus my energy on the projects and deadlines I have in the meantime. I basically closed my Etsy shop this month to help me catch up, and while it has definitely helped, I still feel behind and in a frenzy. This constant, mentally-manic feeling has made me re-think a lot of things about my business and how to make everything run as smoothly and smartly as possible. But while I’m thinking about that, I’ve always been curious: what drew you to my blog? What keeps you reading here? Are you only here to see crochet-related posts? Are you un-interested in crochet and just more interested in random life-style stuff? Are you only here for Bibi? Lemme know! While I’ve always stressed the importance to me of blogging for me, I’m definitely interested in how I can blog for you! Let’s clean this place up! (metaphorically… I have to deliver a project by Tuesday, write a new pattern by the end of the month,  draw some new graphics for another top secret collab, and crochet a scarf sample for a different top secret collab…)

We had a lot of Yummy You! fun on Monday night in L.A. with models Jessi Jae Joplin and Stephanie, and photographer Irene Yuen at the super cute Cafe50s. I felt super duper lucky to be around such a gracious and cheerful group of ladies, and the staff at the restaurant were also amazing and upbeat and didn’t yell at us or get mad or anything! I was in town for the Craft & Hobby Association show for a meeting and asked Irene as soon as my meeting was confirmed if she thought it would be possible to also throw together a last-minute photo shoot while I was there.  I am a big ignoramus when it comes to organizing a shoot, because I’m usually just shooting myself with a remote in my house! It was a little crazy on Monday afternoon, trying to coordinate the shoot while also at the CHA show, but everything turned out really well….EVEN after I failed to give Jessi and Irene the address to the cafe so they ended up at a different Cafe50s. DOH. MY BAD!!! Here are just a few behind the scenes Instagram snaps from that evening. Here we all are after the shoot! I took this one right after asking them if they had decided what to order. All good photoshoots involve french fries and milkshakes! Earlier on, Irene had txtd that she didn’t know whether to eat before the shoot or not, because she wasn’t hungry but knew that shooting in a diner would make her hungry. I told her I would feed her french fries while she shot. Also, I felt it would be proper for me to wipe her brow. Here’s a pic I stole from Stephanie wearing her cupcake scarf! The really surprising part of the evening for me was that when diners had to pass us on their way out, they all were curious about who we were and what we were doing, and they all commented that everyone looked really cute and wanted to know where they could buy the goodies. I was paranoid that they would all hate us for ruining their meals or something, but as it turns out, the whole thing was just a big happyfest. Yay! Stay tuned for the legit photos! They are gonna be ridiculously cute!

So Hairy’s bday is today. I have a few, fun presents for him, but I also wanted to try baking something he would like. He is a big fan of red-velvet-anything. Red velvet is not my fave, so I wouldn’t know a good one from a bad one ….. but I do know this: my cookies ended up looking like alien cow patties. Sorry about taking photos with the flash, but this was at 7 in the morning so there’s not a lot of natural night! Yesterday, I was rushing to shoot photos and send samples to Michaels, and then I had a 2 hour time window to sneaky-bake before we headed down to Manda’s birthday dinner. I used this recipe for red velvet cookies from Joy the Baker (which is actually a Rachel Ray recipe) and this recipe for cream cheese frosting also from Joy the Baker. I was surprised that the amount of food coloring called for in the cookie recipe equaled a whole little squeezie-tube of food coloring. So. Much. Food. Coloring. But what I really liked about the recipe is that it’s supposed to be for 10 cookies, which is not a humongous amount of cookies to have to get rid of at the end of the day. I am pretty sure I made my cookies too big by trying to use a 1/4-cup measuring cup as a scoop. Then I started using my hands, and, well, I wish I had three hands at the time, cuz I would have loved to have taken a picture of my hands covered in dark blue sludge. So I figured if I made my cookies too gigantic, that they should stay in the oven longer, but this was a bad move, as my cookies ended up with an odd crispy crust on the bottom, with the tops of the cookies remaining fluffy and cake-like. Oops. I have never made frosting before, so that was pretty fun. It actually tasted pretty good, even though I didn’t have time to sift the powdered sugar. After hiding the frosting in the fridge overnight with a sign on it that said, “Top Secret. Eat and Die,” I feel like I can taste the grainy-ness of the sugar. Boo. I hid the cookies in the craft room under a poncho. While wrapping Manda’s presents, I opened every window in the house to try to get rid of any cookie-baking smells or suspicious heat from the oven. It was actually pretty lucky that we had dinner with Manda, because Hairy had not much reason to poke around in the fridge, where there was a carton of BUTTERMILK <– very suspicious. At 7am, I frosted them and set them out by the coffee maker, only to realize, how truly hideous my cookies ended up. Here is my friend Angel’s take on the matter: AHAHA! I love her. Well, now you can see why I don’t cook. *salute*

I watch a lot of TV. I like having it in the background while I work. Not all of it is good, but not all of it is bad. Have you guys ever seen Catfish the TV show on MTV? Did you see Catfish the movie? If all of this sounds like a mumbojumbo, here’s a quick recap. Catfish the movie came out a few years ago, and was allegedly a documentary about a guy who fell in love with a girl online and decided to go meet her, and his brother went along and filmed the whole thing. But she turned out to not be who she claimed to be… They kind of promoted it as a thriller, which was weird, but maybe genius, I dunno. The team who shot/produced the movie is the same team who does the Paranormal Activity movies, so that sort of makes sense. Anyway, there is a guy who explains at the end of the movie what the whole “catfish” reference is about: “They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin. ” Catfish the TV show is about the guy from the movie, Nev Schulman, and his buddy Max, traveling around the country and helping other people meet their internet bf/gf’s in person for the first time. The big concern is that people are not who they claim to be, and on this show, they usually are not…. What I like about the show is that it doesn’t demonize the people who lied. Nev tries to find the silver lining, to explore why a specific person did what they did, and to even still foster a friendship between the two people. As a super introvert, I have met a lot of people from the internet, starting from good old Teen Chat rooms on AOL. I can’t say that I’ve ever had an exciting catfish experience, but it makes me laugh inside to think about meeting my buddy Alek in 1994 and finding out he was a 40 year old woman named Cheryl. Here is my favorite episode so far, Episode 6, Kya and Alyx. Catfish: The TV Show – Full Episodes