Category: Blog

After giving Bibi a bath, I decided to paint my nailz! I’d been wanting to try a jawbreaker-inspired mani. If I did this again, I would use fewer flecks of color and leave out the pink. Sorry these are horrible phone cam pics, and sorry I didn’t clean up the messy nail polish yet! I am going to L.A. tomorrow for 24 hours just to see the Sweet Tooth show, and I haven’t really packed or prepared yet and it’s 2am!  I also JUST realized that I accidentally booked a SMOKING room and they are already out of non-smoking! Crossing my fingers that when I arrive there, there might be a cancelation or something… Okay back to the nails! This mani is super duper easy peasy. A couple coats of white for the background. Red, yellow, and blue polish. A couple toothpicks. And you’re set! Just dip your toothpick into a color and then tap and drag it in dots all over your nails, some big, some small. The messier the better, I think!  You don’t even have to wait for the first color to dry because even if the colors mix a little, it’s ok! As easy as this is, my right hand still looks a thousand times crappier than my left hand. Oh well! Enjoy! I do know there are glitter polishes out there that are meant to resemble jawbreakers as well. After picking through some images online, I ordered two! We’ll see how it compares! Don’t forget to come say hi at Backside in Echo Park tomorrow for the Sweet Tooth show 🙂 8pm! Please forgive me if I smell like a thousand cigarettes :(.

Dear Blog, We can die happy now. Love, Me. I still have a few more episodes to complete before the big finish, but I have 4 crochet paintings to finish in 24 hours. I’ll see you on the other side!

Even though I have been DVR’ing Craft Wars on my television, I have also been buying episodes off Amazon.com, so I can play them on my computer and get screenshots that way. It’s much easier for me than taking photos of my television! Each episode costs $1.99, so you can see how much I care about you guys. Two dolla! On with Episode 6! Meet your craftestants. NoFoofin’: She doesn’t over-foof, and she likes to keep it clean. RiskyBusiness: He likes to take chances. PrettyFurniture: She blogs about home design, and there are lots of photos of pretty furniture in her intro. Pop Craft Challenge: Make a lamp out of eye wear and magnifying lenses. I was really smellin’ what PrettyFurniture was cookin’. She started painting lenses with varied mixtures of ModPodge and Rit Dye so the lenses would dry clear but colorful. JUDGING BEGINS. RiskyBusiness was up first. He created a drum-shaped hanging lamp with a flattened-lens mosaic. The judges all seemed to feel that RiskyBusiness had great ideas but was lacking in the execution department. PrettyFurniture was going for an industrial feel, with the highlight being her amazing sea glass made of lenses. Ombre! All the judges were wow-ed by her sea glass concept, but she clearly had not put on as many as she had planned, plus, Stephen felt that the black ball base could have been ombre-fied as well. My thought was that since ombre has been so trendy, that this would have made her a shoe-in to win. NoFoofin’ wanted to represent the nature-y feel of her hometown and grass and flowers. Her lamp looked finished and it seemed like she had executed everything she had planned. I am a bit surprised nobody said anything about it’s slight Tiki vibes…. In the end, PrettyFurniture had to pack up her glue gun. Frankly, I was a bit surprised. I know she hadn’t really finished her lamp, but I thought her technique was really cool, and I would’ve loved to have seen more! Master Craft Challenge: we’re giving you a mattress and a wall. Make a bedroom in 5 hours! Oh yeah, and also use these zippers. K thanks. NoFoofin’s planned theme for her bedroom was “Smoke and Mirrors.” I can’t recall if RiskyBusiness announced a certain theme, but he wanted a 4-poster bed and a zipper rug. Hey check this out: are the judges going to give NoFoofin’ grief for making a pillow with hot glue? Cuz, like, you would probably not want a pillow made with hot glue in your bedroom? Answer: nobody said anything… although I did notice RiskyBusiness using fabric glue instead (FabriTac?) on his rug. Point: RiskyBusiness! Okay check this other thing out: you gotta love NoFoofin’ patterning clay tiles with the bottom of her freaking SHOE! Here’s RiskyBusiness tufting a head board with nuts and bolts and washers. NoFoofin’, are you gettin’ foofy with those turkey-feather flower embellishments? JUDGING BEGINS RiskyBusiness is up first. He explained that he borrowed design elements […]

Meet your craftestants! Peaches: Ok, I know those are probably oranges on her apron, but “Oranges” is kind of a terrible nick name. Her outfit is so sunshiney and cute! Mr. Vivs: This guy is from San Francisco and crafty, so clearly, I made him Vivianna‘s husband. Lady80s: She mentions she has been crafting since the 80s. Me, too! Since this episode is the Christmas Craft special, we were gifted with some costumed carolers. Let it be known, internet, that those genius lyrics were mine, not theirs. Pop Craft: make a wreath out of winter-wear in 1 hr. Let it be known, internet, that those were HER exact words. She has a mouth, and I love her. I wish I understood what Mr. Vivs’ design strategy was. He mentioned he was gonna make cones and put them on an embroidery hoop, but I couldn’t quite put it together in my head. Btw, that is Tori crossing her fingers AND toes for Mr. Vivs. The judges were simply shocked by his change in plans with less than 30 minutes to go. BALLSY. And…. I don’t want to talk about how Team Vivs wasn’t sure if “HOLIDAY” had 2 L’s or not. I get it. You’re stressed out. Your brains are all over the place. I’ll say no more. Let’s turn everybody’s frowns upside down and talk about Peaches’ hot pink finger condoms to protect against hot glue. NEED THESE! STAT! JUDGING BEGINS. Peaches’ wreath was up first, with rolled fabric roses, yarn pom poms, and a lil bling. (I don’t know why my screenshots are so bad….! Some of you are saying that you don’t need to watch the episodes because you enjoy my re-caps, but they seriously don’t do the craft projects any justice, visually!) Mr. Viv’s wreath was next. He ended up wrapping his wreath in fabric and gluing some stuff all over it. Stephen: Crafting is knowing when to take a risk and change your plan. Up next: Lady80s’ wreath: rosettes made of layered sweater, tulle, and newspaper, with sweater rosettes. Erica said, “Your roses look like a ball of socks.” But in the end, it was Mr.Vivs who packed up his glue gun. See you at Zeitgeist, dude. Master Craft Challenge: Make a Christmas tree out of shipping supplies and wrapping paper. Tori intro’d the segment with, “Everybody likes to get packages.” The judges seemed to think this was hilarious. Was that guy the boom mic operator? Was he somebody’s husband? Was his line a funny improv? So mysterious! So, Peaches’ plan was to make a 4-sided tree out of shipping styrofoam, with 50s/60s colorful ornaments made of Christmas cards and more styro, with wrapping/tissue paper roses as the highlight. Lady80s ALSO planned to make 4-sided tree, but made of wood, covered in chalkboard paint, with a skirt made of Christmas cards sewn together. Here’s Peaches painting styro ornaments with a “pouncer (?)” to paint dots. LOVE THAT TOOL. Never heard of it before. Pounce pounce pounce. […]

Ok, these photos are gonna be weird. I took them while sitting on the floor in my livingroom, as I do, in real life, cuz I don’t like couches (I know…), so you will be seeing the tv from my real life perspective since I’m too lazy to stand up. Awesome, right? Let’s go! Meet your craftestants! Giggles: I met Giggles at RenegadeSF. I couldn’t help but notice how cheery and bubbly smiley she was throughout the whole episode (except during The Candlestick Debacle when I could tell she lost her shit for a second). Needles: She mentions in her intro that she always has a pair of knitting needles on her, and her dream is to open up a yarn shop. (Hire me, Needles! p.s. sorry your eyes are closed here…my bad.) DollarDiva: She calls herself Krafty Kathy, but this is my blog, and I give you your nick name! She says that she once decorated a wedding with just stuff from the dollar store. Pop Craft Challenge: Make a keepsake box for kids out of locks and keys in 1 hr. (Everybody kept saying, “WE GOT THIS!!!” on this episode. Everybody got theses, beezies.) Judging begins! Needles is up first. She made a keepsake box inspired by a sandcastle with a bunch of keys on top looking all spire-y. Judges: NEEDS MORE COLOR. TOO MUCH LIKE REAL SAND. Next: DollarDiva. Her keepsake box was inspired by the tooth fairy to put your tooth in. She kept calling it a One Stop Shop for Tooth Loss.  She made her tooth fairy a little tiara out of keys, there was a pillow inside, and there were keys and locks kinda glued on the whole thing. JUDGES: YOUR WINGS STINK. YOU JUST GLUED SOME THINGS ONTO ANOTHER THING. Next: Giggles. Her keepsake box was inspired by a little gnomey-cottage, and half of the roof hinged up to get into it. Judges: YOUR GNOME-HOME IS EMPTY INSIDE.     …   LITERALLY. In the end, the judges felt that Dollar Diva had not used the keys as well as the other ladies, and she had to pack up her glue gun. Master Craft Challenge: Blue jeans, borrowed candle sticks, new invitations, old baby blankets. Create something for a wedding in 5 hours using all the materials. Needles planned to make a photo booth, and Giggles planned to make a wishing tree that would take the place of a guestbook. Needles started to use the jeans to make decorative garlands by cutting out jean circles and sewing them together. Giggles used the invitations to also make decorative garlands and was also cutting out paper circles with a paper punch. Giggles used her jeans to decorate the trunk of her wishing tree, but it was looking too jeany and not so dreamy…hence….solution! Okay, so here is the aforementioned Candlestick Debacle. Giggles’ team was making this message-holder thing by gluing candlesticks together, and her assistant accidentally knocked it over. Giggles was all, “ARE YOU FREAKING […]

Okay, so as I mentioned in my last post, today they are airing the last two episodes of Craft Wars for the season, so I am going to have a crazy blogathon of recaps today! Meet your craftestants! Mini-Me: For obvious reasons, obviously! Actually, also, during RenegadeSF, a girl peeked her head into my booth and asked if I was that girl from CraftWars. Asian, glasses, pigtails, I GET IT. And coincidentally, also from San Francisco. We should never meet. The time-space continuum would implode. SlumberParty: He makes a lot of neat mini-castle club-houses for little kids and the ultimate SLUMBER PARTY. GlitterBeast: Okay, this is not meant in a derogatory way AT ALL. I mean “Beast” as in “FIERCE.” She says she loves her some glitter. Watch her throw them signs! Pop Craft Challenge: Make a toy box out of toys, in 1 hr. Okay, so, SlumberParty was working FURIOUSLY, talkin’ fast, sweatin’ up a storm, super high energy… part of me was like, “Wow, this guy is really into it!” and the other part was like, “What drugz is this guy on!?” He was like a crazy nail gun maniac when Tori came to check out his work. She had the best reaction ever. Onto the judging! SlumberParty was up first. His toy box was kinda weird. I can’t even really describe it. It was like a sort of cube shaped thing with stuff all over it and a flap top. Okay, shows you how much I pay attention sometimes…this whole time I thought that the blue shape in the back was a weird mutant person with funky hand syndrome, but it’s actually the word “TOY.” OKAY DUH, ME! He had covered the sides of his box with felt, and the judges are always getting on people’s cases about how they should stop avoiding paint. GlitterBeast was up next with her Robbie the Rainbow Robot toy box with storage in body and in head. I think Stephen was feelin’ those glittervibes BIG TIME. BUT, he hated her use of spray glue to adhere the glitter. He suggested white glue was best. Jo:”I’m not concerned. It’s just glitter!” Erica: “I AM CONCERNED. GLITTER WILL GET EVERYWHERE.” Stephen: I grew up with glitter all over me, and look how I turned out! Erica: EXACTLY. MiniMe made a box that looked like a monster, so that kids could have fun feeding it and clean up at the same time. Again, the judges took issue with her using felt to cover a surface as opposed to painting it. Also, they never understand why people use spray glue instead of fabric glue when gluing fabric. PACK UP YOUR GLUE GUN, SLUMBERPARTY. We don’t like sarcasm around here. Master Craft Challenge: Make a pet mansion out of pet stuff in 5 hrs. P.S. Tori’s REAL pet CHICKEN Coco is judging you. MiniMe’s plan was to make a modern multi-pet condo. GlitterBeast’s plan was to make a glitzy princess pet castle. I liked this little […]

Best mail in the history of mail!!! Thank you, Gabby! I want to hire Gabby to design t-shirts. She has that real-deal Girl Magic! p.s. Tomorrow they are airing the LAST 2 episodes of Craft Wars. The season is over already, and I only re-capped the first 2 episodes? AHHHH. BLOG FAIL. Tonight my goal is to bang out a re-cap-athon and get you all so super pumped to watch the last 2 of the season. Let’s see if i can do it! The longest part about doing the re-caps is getting the screenshots and putting captions on them. Ready set go!

I sent in my entry for the Lion Brand Bonbon‘s challenge today! It took me a long time to even decide what I wanted to do. I finally narrowed it down to two projects: little sparkly gummy bears, or, a sparkly gum-ball birthday cake tissue box cozy.  A quick Twitter poll yielded 100% votes for the gummy bears, so I listened to the people!!! Hairy said that it was a different project than I normally make, which was a good thing. But I said, well, everyone makes amigurumi so while I don’t normally do it, it’s still pretty normal! I figured LB contacted me so that they would get a weird, wacky, wearable project, but I could not deny what The People wanted! Plus, you know me, you can stick a hair clip or pin on anything and wear it! You could make a head band, garlands, pencil toppers. Really, the possibilities with small amis are endless! I also really liked the idea of creating a project in which you could use all the Bonbons in a single packet and feel like you got a good bang for your buck. (But if you want a yellow/gold gummy bear, you are gonna have to spring for a second pack!) The tricky part of this project for me was making sure he looked like a gummy bear and NOT a teddy bear. I looked at zillions of pics of gummy bears online, and really, there are all different styles and kinds. But the kind that stick out in my mind are the ones that are kind of long and rectangular and really look like blobs, so there was that fine balance to achieve between blob and bear. I think he came out great! I’ll post the pattern if LB doesn’t end up choosing it, so you guys will get the pattern regardless :). Stay tuned! p.s. here’s a pic of some early incarnations while I worked out my plan of attack…  

On Saturday, a bunch of us got together at Alamo Square Park (the one from the opening credits of Full House) to have my birthday picnic! It was low-key, everyone shared food, people came and went, it was good times. We should picnic on the regular! Here’s a funny pic from the start of our day. Get out of bed? No thank you! Setting up! Yes, Hairy brought fake grass to put on top of the real grass. And there’s my nifty new picnic blanket I got off Etsy made out of vintage sheets on top and a water proof vinyl backing on the bottom. Nerds, we! Manda bought me that polka dot parasol for my bday, and I bought her those donut sunglasses just for funz. TiffanyStar! El Guapo! And Rick in the background. Bella! Oliver Eatin’ stuff. Afraid of the sun’s mighty rays! At a certain point in time, it actually got REALLY COLD and windy, and you could see the fog shooting over the sky, so we packed it all in! Champagne, napoleon cake from the Russian bakery, cheeses, berries, cupcakes, brownies, perfect perfect picnic!

There is a ROSS right next to my post office, and I always sort of ignore it. I have nothing against Ross. I grew up shopping at Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, all that stuff. I just always feel like Ross has such LONG LINES! Anyway, a few weeks ago, I went in on a whim to see if I could find props for some photos I had to take. I FELL IN LOVE WITH ROSS ALL OVER AGAIN. You can get so much great stuff for like 5 bucks. Like this five dollar vinyl table cloth that looks like lace. I BOUGHT TWO. SOLD! My mom said to go back in and buy more!!! (Haven’t done that yet…) Yep, that’s plastic. That little pie/cake jug is also from Ross and also five dollars (I think?). The pear was made by my friend Marissa, and the little ceramic lemon is from Williams Sonoma and is supposed to smell like lemons, but it really doesn’t so much. I crocheted the roses for the photoshoot as well and plan to make more to fill that vase! I don’t know why I am so damn amazed by this vinyl lace stuff, but I just had to share, so you guys can go and run and get your own vinyl lace table cloths! They come in round and rectangular! Of course, the dining table never stays clear for more than a day. Now it has crap all over it. Such is real life! (p.s. sorry the table cloth is wrinkly. Not quite sure yet how to iron VINYL.)

Crafting is INDEED a beach, and I have been terribly remiss in my Craft Wars recaps!! I wasn’t going to bother trying to catch up or keep up, but after receiving encouraging comments from two Craft Wars crafters and meeting two others in person at Renegade, well now I feel it’s my duty! Let the Craft Wars Re-cap Marathon BEGIN! Let me re-state that it has been a few weeks since I’ve actually seen this episode, so there will be a lot of paraphrasing fun! The craftestants for Crafting’s A Beach were BlogGirl, CraftMyAssOff, and PowerTools. BlogGirl has … a blog. The fact that she referred to her BRAND really stuck out in my mind. You may recognize the guy in the middle as the one who was like, “IM GONNA CRAFT MY ASS OFF” in the teasers for this show, and that’s something you can’t un-hear. PowerTools mentioned her helper was really handy with…power tools, and that’s the only thing I can remember right now. The 1 hour Pop Craft challenge: Make a bird house out of stuff from a junk drawer. BlogGirl took one look at that drawer and said, “What am I supposed to do with a drawer full of CRAP?” and proceeded to whip off her scarf cuz shit was about to get SERIOUS! CraftMyAssOff worked on LIGHTING his birdhouse. WIN! PowerTools wielding a power tool. I was seeing a LOT of glue gun here. I AM LOOKING AT YOU, BlogGIRL! Unfortunately, whenever Tori goes to speak to the craftestants, I feel like this is pretty useless footage. She doesn’t have the same nuggets of wisdom that Tim Gunn has on Project Runway, or that conversational zazz that Alton Brown has on Top Chef, and then the craftestants always look so hurried that they really can’t hold a decent conversation anyway. She does seem very caring and concerned, but it’s too bad she can’t give them little helpful hints. Now let’s get to the judging. Tori and the judges were very concerned about the fact that the birdhouses needed to be functional, i.e. water proof, sturdy, etc., like you would use these in REALITY. PowerTools was first with her playing card bird house. It also had a cluster of keys underneath for wind chimes. Stephen took issue with a bird house having wind chimes. Jo was very concerned about the playing card shingles and their lack of weather resistance. Ok, I didn’t know that Outdoor Mod Podge existed either. Preach it, Jo! (Jo actually always seems really nice, like you’d want her to be your grandma. I like making her sound super tuff, tho. OUTDOOR MOD PODGE. I BUTTAH MAH WAFFLES WIDDIT, SUCKA.) Next up was CraftMyAssOff with his nod to “mid century modern.” If you use astrotuf, you win in my book. I believe Jo did not think the v-shape of the roof was very practical for the rainy season. I didn’t take a screenshot of further commentary on this bird house because I was […]

So heeeeere’s the booth! I’m sorry I only have bad phone pics! I didn’t take a real camera! The idea was to create “Twinkie Chan’s House,” and while we sat at the table, it would look like we were sitting in the couch. Manda sewed the walls out of heavyweight shower curtain liners from Target, and then I outlined the drawings in yellow Sharpie (which the paint didn’t cover up!). I was reminded how sucky of an artist I am, and I couldn’t draw a straight line! I needed Manda to stand back and guide me while I drew, to make sure all the proportions were approximately right. I was like, “HOW DID THE MASTERS DO IT?!?!?” And then she, Ben, and I painted the walls the night before the show at my parents’ house in the driveway. We were painting until like 1 or 2 in the morning. Then I drove home (about a 45 minute drive) to pack up the other booth stuff, take a shower, and then nap for a whole 20 minutes before I had to get up, get dressed, and drive back down to my parents’ house to take apart and pack up the booth because it needed those few hours to completely dry. And then drive back up to the city to get to Fort Mason and set up the whole thing again. The show started at 11am. I don’t think we were done setting up until like 1pm because we had arrived pretty much an hour or two later than we had planned. C’est la vie. I was freaking out because we were late, the paint was peeling off the walls, we brought the wrong Astroturf for the floor covering, it was 80billion degrees in there, and I felt like everything was going wrong that could possibly go wrong! In the end, it turned out ok, but I am sure the sleep dep was not helping! I had not gotten hardly sleep any week for a few days. I am surprised I could form sentences still!   Our booth was pretty much always busy. A LOT of people came through on Saturday, and by the time we were able to drink the Frappucinos that Hairy had brought us, they had returned to a liquid form. I hadn’t had any time to plan out the table displays, so we just sort of winged it. One of the legs on our small table ended up being wonky, and we were afraid that it would fall over the whole time. My usual red checkered table cloths were still in LA from Anime Expo, and I didn’t have time to shop for fabric for new ones, hence, blank white wrinkly table cloths! I did somehow make time to create this odd little holder for the new honey bear coffee cup cozies. Here’s the blog entry about them in case you missed it! So, we have 10 ft by 10 ft for our booths. My house was 10 […]

Okay, not so random. Remember when I made these extra short cupcake scarves? This is where one of them ended up! I don’t normally make scarves for kiddos, because I like for grown-ups to have the fun, and kiddos get all the good stuff already, but when it’s your cousin’s kiddos, you make exceptions! Ok I’m gonna go print more photos for my booth!

Yesterday Manda came over to my parents’ house and we spent the day improving the craft fair booth structure and trying to make it more stable. Check out the humongous pipe-cutting tool that Manda is wielding. We were trying to decide whether or not this would be a worthy investment…AND IT WAS. IT’S OUR NEW FAVORITE THING. It makes cutting our pipe so much easier than with a PVC saw. It’s kind of scary, and you could probably cut your hand off, BUT WE LOVE IT. When we were looking at it at Home Depot, this big muscle-y dude walked by and was like, “That’s impressive. That even impresses ME.” SOLD. Also while in Home Depot, I was walking through an aisle and saw some random monitor/screen turn into a camera displaying video of me walking, so then I started jumping and dancing in front of it in case someone was monitoring it, and then I kept walking and noticed an old man staring at me, disturbed. Thanks so much to a friendly stranger on Facebook for  messaging me with ideas for making our structure less wobbly! It’s awesome! We now have 4 days to complete this thing. It seems impossible to me, but we’re going to keep trying!

I am freaking out, guys! If you are in the Bay Area, please remember to visit Renegade Craft Fair July 21-22, 11am -7pm at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We’ll see if I manage to finish everything I hope to finish! EEEEP! In the meantime, here’s a crappy phone pic of the postcards I made for the show. They just arrived today! I was kinda trying to evoke actual postcards that are like, “Greetings from Palm Beach!” I know I need to take more updated photos one day. After Hairy set up his man-cave, my lights and backdrop moved to the garage, and I never really got into the habit of shooting in there. It’s cold!  Anyway, I need to work on that! Here’s the back: If I run out of these discount cards at the show, I’ll start putting them inside the packages I ship out. These are part of the grand scheme I hope to pull off for my craft show booth. Cross your fingers! Hold onto your butts! I can’t wait to show you, if it works!

Hey gang! I had this idea for my Renegade booth to put product photos in picture frames and sprinkle them throughout the booth (it goes with the general theme). But all the photos I have are mostly of ME, and I don’t want to bombard my booth with MY FACE. I know you some of you guys have sent me photos before, but if you could do it again, so I have them all in one place, that would be awesome. The higher resolution the better, for a better print out. The photos won’t be humongous. I bought some cute 4×6 frames from Target for them. If you don’t want your face in my booth, I totally understand! But if you do, that would be rad!! You can email them to me at twinkie @ twinkiechan.com or leave a link here in a blog comment or my contact form. Thanks, guys!!!!!

Email sent to Manda early in the a.m.: Sorry about all the typos. I think I sent it at like 6 in the morning after crocheting a painting all night. Txt sent to Manda early this evening: So I have this dream idea of what I want my booth for Renegade SF to look like. I had a few options. Buy an already-made set-up and customize it (for more money), or try to build one from scratch (for less money). Manda and I got really ambitious one day and decided to try starting from scratch. At this point, I feel like maybe this was not the best choice…but… we are 2 weeks out from the event, and I think we have to stick with the plan! I am going to buy fabric to make walls tomorrow, so I wanted to try to put up the PVC frame in the backyard and trim everything that needed to be trimmed. On the internet it’s like, “PVC is awesome and you can just cut it with a saw!” I found it really difficult! We are using 1 1/4″ pipe, and after trimming 8 poles, I never want to saw through PVC ever again! I didn’t have a great set up, though. I was on the ground in the yard, sticking the end of the pole over a dirt ditch, sawing with my right hand, holding the pole with my left hand, kneeling on my right knee, using my left foot to step on the pole to stabilize it while I sawed. I wish I had a photo for you guys, but I was by myself! I tried putting the frame together. And realized that 8 feet tall is REALLY REALLY TALL, so I trimmed the vertical poles down to 7 1/2 feet so I could at least reach the top on a step stool. However, I couldn’t figure out how to put the whole thing together alone without having poles fly everywhere. At some point, I tried to roll it over on its side, and all the poles started going every which way, and, as I mentioned above, some of it crashed into the lemon tree. At this point, I decided to stop!!! So I still have no idea how strong or how weak this thing is. I don’t want it to come crashing down on people at Renegade!!! We’ll keep working on it!

I was texting my buddy Alek yesterday (apparently he was in Daiso, and clearly that means you text your Asian friends with pictures of Asian things), and I mentioned I had this blog entry queued up in my Drafts, but I hadn’t hit “publish” yet, because, while it felt good for me to write it,  it also seemed like a RANT that nobody else would give a flying fishfinger about. But that’s sort of what the whole blog entry was about, too….so I decided to push the button! Anyway, it’s Saturday. Most of you are probably outside enjoying the real world! *** In the very early 2000s, I had a deskjob. I was an assistant, and I answered phones all day, took messages, faxed things, wrote letters, and read manuscripts. I’d often be the only person in the office, and I’d listen to my CDs quietly – Kitty Craft, Dressy Bessy, the Gerbils, to set the scene. I was a very GOOD employee. I didn’t surf the net on personal adventures, and I hardly used the computer at all. But I remember Yahoo’ing something for work (we used Yahoo then not Google!) and randomly stumbling across somebody’s Diaryland diary. It was bland, written poorly, and completely inane. I WAS HOOKED! What was this? People sharing their personal lives on the internets? Everyday, boring-ass people nobody would care to read about? You ate chicken today? I FIND THAT VERY INTRIGUING! I was in publishing. I was looking for GOOD writing not CRAP writing, but I was totally intrigued by the REALNESS of blogging. Who was this person? Why were they eating chicken? Would I blog about eating chicken? I signed myself up. My blog had a bright yellow background, plain black Times New Roman text, and no pictures. We didn’t have pictures back then. Blogging was about writing. My best friend at the time had moved away. I thought this blogging thing would be a cool way to K.I.T. with all your pals. You could share a story once and keep it fresh and funny and not have to repeat it over and over to different people. I was an English/Creative Writing in Fiction major, and blogging also seemed like a good way/excuse to exercise the muscles everyday, even if you were writing about the stupidest things. Well, I’ll tell you: NONE of my “IRL” friends read my blog in the beginning. It just became something I did to entertain myself, make myself laugh at my own self, and maybe draw strangers in to laugh with/at me. It was fun to form little blog posses (that word looks really weird right now…did I spell that right??? POSSIES?? POSSEEZ?) and keep up with the adventures of your invisible internet buddies (Carlyn of Canada….WHERE ARE YOU NOW!?) who were probably all 45 year old men. Back then, I was trying to out-me me. I wanted to be the funniest, smartest, wise-crackingest me, the cleverest me. I’d write about a night of drinking on […]

Hey guys! Now that it’s summertime, it’s your last chance to grab a crocheted chain link neckwarmer or heart chainlink sweater from the collab by me and Michael Shirley of Doctor Couture. You’ll have until July 11 to put in an order, and then they will  go bye-bye forever!

So I used to work in publishing. When you work in publishing, the joke is that you never actually read real books because you are so busy reading manuscripts. When I left publishing, I thought a new world of reading would open up to me, and I could fall in love with books again. WRONG! Working for yourself means you might have ZERO free time. (I know, I know, “make time!” but what I’m saying is, I don’t.) So the only time I really read books is when I’m getting my hair bleached and colored, but even then, if I have a pressing work deadline, I’m the nerd sitting under the hair-heater with a yarn bag, crocheting away. One of the things my brother wanted last year for Christmas was the Kindle Fire. I was a bit inspired by this request and also decided I wanted a Kindle (albeit Fire-less). So then he gave me an Amazon gift certificate to cover part of a Kindle. Truth be told, I kind of kept forgetting to order my Kindle…..UNTIL NOW. SIX MONTHS LATER. But don’t worry. It’s ordered now. It’s done. I’m getting it. July 10! And now comes the even MORE fun part! Shopping for a Kindle cover! On Etsy, of course. There are cool ones made out of real books, like this: Ooooh, The Giving Tree! Yes please! Are you guys really reading a lot of werewolf smut? My Neighbor Totoro in vinyl: Oh my. “Cute Hamster” indeed! Okay, this embroidered Kindle cover is nothing short of AMAZING. The whole shop is amazing. This Chewbacca one makes me giggle. Ok, I’ve skimmed through about 70 pages of Etsy listings and am a little burnt out! I might end up making my own, but due to having LOTS of projects already, I may still keep hunting around!

Did you guys catch Craft Wars on TLC last week? Since tonight is the 2nd episode, I thought I would show you what the first one was about in case you missed it. In a nutshell: it’s not bad, but it’s not great. The show tries really hard to squeeze drama out of something that is not that dramatic. I am interested in what the crafters end up making, but the editing of the show seems weird to me, like a lot of things that people say sound canned and rehearsed and pre-written, and sometimes too catch-phrase-y and pun-y. I think if you watched the show on mute, you would still enjoy it. The show is hosted by Tori Spelling, who is apparently a long time crafter with her own craft line. I never watched Tori & Dean, so all I know of her is DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES! Truth be told, I don’t keep up with the who’s who of the crafting world and haven’t heard of the judges or their companies (aside from Michaels, obvs), but then again, judges on a lot of cooking shows are not household names to me either, so I don’t hold that against these guys. There are three contestants, and the show is divided into two parts: the Pop Craft challenge, which is like the Quickfire Challenge on Top Chef, and then the Master Craft Challenge. In last week’s episode, the pop craft challenge was making a duffel/sports bag out of sports equipment in one hour. They also have access to a bunch of craft supplies sponsored by Michaels, as well as a construction zone with wood and stuff outside. The Michaels wall had shelves that went way up high to the ceiling, and people had to climb on ladders to reach the stuff they wanted. This seemed very scary and dangerous to me!!! The crafters got to bring a helper, who ended up being all men, two husbands and one dad. A huge point of dramadramz seemed to be HOT GLUE. One lady was making a gym bag with a tennis racket on the bottom for ventilation, and she was hot gluing the racket to her bag, to which Tori seemed extremely concerned, as the judges DO NOT LIKE GLUE STRINGS!!! NO THEY DO NOT. To which the crafter replied: I thought E6000 was the duct tape of the crafting world? Ok, here are the bags. This first one was very colorful and full of balls, plastic toy balls accenting the shoulder strap, and pom pom trim also accenting the shoulder strap. One of the judges commented on this, and I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was like, “I just don’t want all these BALLS FLYING IN MY FACE!” The big no-no on on her bag seemed to be that she used ballet shoes as pockets (those yellow things on the sides of the bag), and that they were NOT practical because stuff would just fall out of them. You […]

A couple months ago, my brother asked if I’d be interested in seeing part of the U.S. Olympic Gymnastic Trials in San Jose.  I said sure! As it turned out,  I went with my mom, Manda, my sister in law, and her mom, so it was a ladies gymnastics weekend. I am one of those people who love to watch gymnastics in the summer and figure skating in the winter, so it was really neat to be there, watching it all happen! My mom is super funny and will point out which boy gymnasts she thinks are cute or handsome. Unfortunately, none of her cute or handsome favorites made the team! I didn’t really take many photos or videos, as I’m sure you can find that online or on TV. I haven’t been keeping up with gymnastics at all, so this was a great way to get acquainted with the names and the faces and make watching the Olympics more fun! At one point, while we were waiting for them figure out who was going to be on the ladies gymnastics team, the crowd started doing the wave. When you were younger, did you ever dream of being in the Olympics? If so, in what sport? There was a moment in time that I wanted to be on the equestrian team, since I used to ride horses up until I went to college. So that’s definitely one of the reasons why I’m glad that NBC is livestreaming all the events. The equestrian events don’t often get a lot of coverage on regular TV. Longtime blog readers (LJ!) will recall that I was lucky enough for my Taiwanese friend to hook me up with tickets for the 2008 equestrian events in Hong Kong!

I was about to wind some Malabrigo up into a ball, when I noticed all the green stuff in my craft room right now. Just thought I’d share!   1. Malabrigo in Sapphire Green 2. Vintage apple green cardi 3. Jar of Plush Pickles bought from  Schmancy (sorry I forgot the designer’s name and the plush are not branded!) and a peek of my plush terrarium made by My Paper Crane 4. 70s inspired floral purse I started making for myself a few months ago using this pattern 5. Lucky charms

Hey guys! Don’t forget that Anime Expo is this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Info here. I will have a bunch of goodies for sale there with the Brands Boutique pop-up shop along with a bunch of other cute L.A. designers/artists/crafters. This is the first time I’ve tried shipping items in a box and having someone else set up my stuff, so if you are able to go and happen to pass by booths 339 and 341, please snap some pics! I printed a new sign for it!