Category: Blog

So pretty much everyone has heard of this already, but I only just discovered it online recently: overnight oats. I’m addicted!!! You know I don’t like “cooking,” and when I do, it doesn’t usually turn out that well. I keep trying, though. And this recipe is more like mixing than cooking. Hey, I can mix! I followed the instructions from The Yummy Life. These are ingredients I have never before purchased in my life: real oats, chia seeds, and PB2. If you click on the Yummy Life link, you can read all about chia seeds and all the goodness inside of them. PB2 is apparently peanut butter with a good percentage of the fat squeezed out of it so it becomes a powder with lots of peanut butter flavor. Again, the link has 8 fun recipes for you, but the basics are you throw oats, nonfat greek yogurt, skim milk, chia seeds, honey (or whatever sweetener you like), and then other fruits and flavors like the PB2 or cocoa powder or vanilla extract, and real fruit pieces or coconut shreds, shake em up, and leave em in the fridge overnight. Done. I also like that you make this the night before so that the chia seeds and oats have time to soak, so if you are in a rush in the morning, you can just grab your jar and go. Some people on Instagram remarked that their oats turned out runny, but mine turned out pretty thick, almost too thick, maybe from the PB2. Hairy liked the consistency of his, though. I give this breakfast two thumbs up! Success! The only thing I would add, though, is that I would want bigger jars. 8oz jars are recommended, but this left very little room for my fruit. I don’t need more oatmeal, but I’d love to cram more fruits up in there!!! I’ll be looking for some 12 oz jars!    

I got some tiny nail polish brushes from Daiso a few months ago and never tried them out. I have finally concluded that my problem is not lack of tools, just lack of skill! I am terrible at nail art! I’m messy, sloppy, have no control over what I’m doing. It’s just not in my blood. It’s a good thing I never tried to be a surgeon. I may try acrylic paint instead of nail polish for my next nail doodles, but I dunno, I am not gonna assume that anything can save me! Also, I forgot that I shouldn’t paint my nails a light color right after getting my hair dyed. Now I have the dreaded PINK STAIN.  

Here is the outfit I (sorta) wore yesterday to shoot the jelly bean scarf. I ended up putting on black leggings and my trusty black cowboy boots because I forgot that I hadn’t shaved my legs and couldn’t leave the house in knee-highs! I also failed to notice that the little flappy thing on top of the bib of the overalls kept sticking out. I am proud to continue my tradition of worst outfit-blogger ever. I have been really obsessed with getting an overalls-skirt for a while now. I’ve been window shopping on Etsy, but I never find anything that I like that will fit my hips. I have a pair of stripey Osh Kosh overalls that I want to turn into a skirt, but, obviously, that project hasn’t happened yet. So when I saw these overalls on Urban Outfitters, I just kinda went for it. It’s a super easy DIY if you already have overalls, but sometimes I just gotta take it easy on myself with timesuck vs DIY and just buy the darn things. AND I LOVE THEM! Overalls: Urban Outfitters, Shirt: Forever 21, Socks: Sock Dreams, Shoes: bought them for Halloween on Amazon

So, this happened. Friends or enemies? Who’s to say?

While my parents are on vacay, Manda and I were assigned the duty of house and dog-sitting. Manda took the first shift, and I took the second, and we overlapped with a slumber party night, but everything went down hill when Manda locked herself out of her bedroom. She had googled all kinds of ways to pick a lock with no success. Then we asked my brother to come over and help, because this used to be his old bedroom, and we figured he might know something we didn’t. An hour or two later, all we had was a chewed-up expired AAA card, a chewed-up copy card, 3 bent kitchen knives, and the scent of WD-40 in the air. The night had turned into an EVENT. I said that we should create an actual event on Facebook really quick. “Twinkie Chan was at THE LOCK OUT.” Manda was like, “Amanda hosted THE LOCK OUT.” I like to think that we can do anything when we put our minds to it, but breaking-and-entering just aren’t going to be strong points on our resumes. We considered different ways to bust through the door like they do in the movies, but all I could imagine was my brother with a broken shoulder or his foot stuck through the door with splintered wood sticking out everywhere. We called a locksmith. He opened the door in 2 minutes. The entire time, I was dreaming about the mac n cheese that Manda had cooked. So with the whole door debacle, Manda didn’t have much time to pack her stuff up, so she ended up spending the next night, and the next night, and the next night. A key factor in dog-sitting is that my parents’s dog Domino starts howling and barking on the porch around 6:30am or 7:00am when he wants his breakfast. If you know me at all, you know that I’m generally not a morning person … ! On Friday morning, I woke up with Manda to feed the dogs. I think I had like 2 hours sleep. We were kinda just sitting around in the kitchen, because I didn’t feel like falling asleep just yet, and Manda joked that we should be naughty and get drive-thru breakfast. Another key-factor about me is that I NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT EYELINER. This simply just does not happen. It only takes me 5 minutes to put on my face, so it’s not like a big ordeal, but, I need my face did to enter the real world. But at 7 in the morning, I did not want to wash my face, brush my teeth, or put on real pants. Manda and I put on crazy sunglasses and just hopped in the car. This may sound very normal, but for me, this was absolutely insanity. We weren’t even wearing bras. I mean, that’s just criminal. We commemorated the day with dignified outfit photos in the cool morning mist. I couldn’t stop laughing when I took Manda’s […]

Hi Hi! I finally got around to listing the Push Pop Pets in my shop. Check em out! Strawberry Short Pup already found a home!

Soooooo, I am really really late to the game, but I just started playing DrawSomething. When it was popular, I refused to play it, because it seemed time-consuming and like I might get addicted to it. I’m not big on video games or apps or stuff like that, because I think people end up with their eyeballs constantly glued to their phones or computers or whatever. But for reasons I won’t discuss yet (or ever… we’ll see what happens!), I started playing a few weeks ago for research. I was immediately frustrated because I have terrible finger-control, and I couldn’t let go how of HOW AWFUL my drawings were! But then Manda agreed to play around on it with me, and it became fun. It’s actually a nice way to relax my brain for like 3 minutes and then go back to my business. When I was in college, I kept a sketch journal. I always made myself sketch something for only 5 minutes, once a day. 5 minutes, only. But every day. I preferred to use pencil and crayon (sounds classy, right?). I’m so not an artist, but at that point, I really liked making myself use my brain differently for a little bit. I’ll scan some images from the journal when I remember to! I have forgotten to save some of my most excellent DrawSomething work (sarcasm!), but here is a small sample of what I happened to catch.   This random person I play with, “Julia S.,” is actually pretty good. I messaged her once and was like, “Your finger control is amazing. Do you use a stylus?” and she responded, “Nope, just my finger!” And then we never messaged again, and just kept playing. I feel creepy now.

In anticipation of St. Patty’s Day, I put a few marshmallow charm headbands in the shop! Grab ’em quick! There aren’t very many! 🙂 Sorry again that things have been quiet around here. I haven’t quite found my groove yet after getting sick last week, and I have two gigantic deadlines this week. One is top secret, and the other is PREPPING MY TAXES. YUCK! I also need to make my house look less hurricane-disaster-y. I’m getting video-interviewed here on Sunday for something fun, and my craft room is still bursting at the seams. I’ll letcha know more about that video soon! It’s pretty cool!

  Yep, now you can make your own ice cream scoop hair clips. Available as a PDF for purchase on Etsy!

  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 […]

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!

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 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! 🙂

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 […]

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…)

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*