Category: Blog

Yaga from Switzerland asked if I wanted to send her “5 important things” to be included in her Monday Friend blog feature, which includes a cute sketch by her of you and your important things. It’s up now! Thanks, Yaga!     P.S. Only one more day to enter the giveaway! I’m going to select winners tomorrow!

There’s a zipper up the back. I should have tried to see if I could get inside of it. I probably could if I cut the feet off! I’m not sure what this was even for. The seller predicted that it was the cover for an inflatable chair, since the tag says “inflatable.” But it’s not really in a chair shape, ya know? There are so many possibilities with this thing that I don’t know what to do with it. Suggestions welcome! I thought of just stuffing him and using him as my new scarf model! Or driving around in the car with him, buckled up like a human, buying him a latte, etc. Hairy thinks he’s creepy, but I think that’s just the jellymonster talking.

I have a very cute giveaway for you guys! Joyce Wan’s board book “You Are My Cupcake” (ages 4-8) is coming out this August, and she offered to give three of my blog readers a copy of it! Described by the publisher as, “A scrumptious board book, filled with sweet terms of endearment. This bite-sized board book is an ode to all the names we call our children: cutie pie, sweet pea, peanut, pumpkin. With a candy-colored palette and irresistible art, this is the perfect baby shower gift!” The book will retail for $6.99 and will be available August 1st wherever books are sold. Publishers Weekly also just released a delicious review of the book: “You are my cupcake… My sticky little gumdrop… My mushy little sweet pea,” coos this plucky board book featuring terms of endearment based on cutely personified foods. Embossed for a satisfying tactile effect, Wan’s digitized characters, reminiscent of Japanese animation, have chocolate-brown eyes and rosy cheeks. “Baby, I could just eat you up!” concludes the adoring final spread. All that’s left of the cupcake is its smiling, green liner. Presumably, no actual cupcakes were harmed in the making of this crowd-pleasing plum.” The companion book called “We Belong Together” will be coming out in the Fall. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment :). You can earn additional entries by linking to my giveaway on Twitter or on your blog, and you must put either of those links in separate comments, since I will just use the number of blog comments to determine the winners. If you leave a comment with two links in that same comment, that’s just going to count as the same entry! I used to edit and separate links and comments for you guys in the past, but it’s too time consuming, so if you don’t end up doing it properly, then I’m afraid I can’t count it correctly. I’ll run the giveaway for a week, so I’ll use Random.Org to choose the 3 winners on Tuesday, July 19! If you have a wee one who is just learning to read, or you need to get a present for a friend with a kiddo, “You Are My Cupcake” will be a yummy surprise! EDIT! P.s. Joyce told me that since the book doesn’t come out until August, she will not be able to ship the winners the book until the last week of July. Hope that is ok!!!

I thought I would share some snaps from our backyard. When we first moved in, the yard was a complete wreck. There was a huge slab of old, beat up concrete in the middle and tons of overgrown trees and shrubs. Branches of one really big tree were so heavy and overgrown that they almost dropped back down to the ground. Last year, we had a gardener come in and trim everything, leaving the backyard very bare and hideous. But I don’t have a green thumb and didn’t feel like putting much effort into that area. Besides, it’s the dogs’ toilet!!! Anyway, my mom has begun a campaign to beautify the garden. The concrete is still out there, but we are getting quotes for removing it and maybe putting in a little bit of lawn, or maybe just newer concrete. I dunno. Right now it’s like putting flowers into a prison yard, but the pops of color are actually nice. We had a 4th of July bbq and ate for the first time back there after putting all the plants in that day. We still need to go to the nursery and buy more! My favorites are our new blueberry bush, our weird muppet-like fern, and the flower arrangements I put together in pots. Having to water the new transplants every day was wrecking my shoes and my pants, so I pulled my cupcake rainboots out of the closet, and they are now my trusty gardening galoshes!

Today Hairy and I trekked over to Fort Mason to check out the first day of Renegade Craft Fair. It’s also open tomorrow, so you should go have a shop! I also met my lawyer for the first time! She flew in from NY to check out the fair, so that was cool to hang out with her in person. We also met up with Tess, so I got to have TWO rounds of shopping through the fair, which is a rare treat considering I’m usually vending now and just do a quick 5 minute walk around the place! They’ve also started to step up the food situation at Fort Mason. It used to be turkey sandwiches and hamburgers and hot dogs, but now they have shawarma and knishes and fancy cucumber beverages. Thumbs up! Since I am a big lame-oh, I didn’t take an pics at the fair, but I thought I would share some of my fave shops, or, at least shops I remembered to grab business cards from! Rusty Cuts It looks like she pulled most of her handmade from her Etsy in order to sell it at the show, but I really loved her handmade/upcycled dresses! I was very tempted to get a Star Wars one! w.ho made it It also looks like her new collection is on the table now and not so much in her Etsy shop, but I instantly fell in love with these neato jewelry holders made from tea cups and stuff. The knobs on top are magnetic for easy on/off! I Adorn U Apparently these arrow bracelets were so popular today that she already sold out! I met Mary Beth on Etsy after buying a few of her cute bunny jewelry holders, which don’t seem to be in her Etsy shop right now. Tess bought a jewelry holder today as well! They come in tons of cute colors! Bossa Nova Baby Okay, her Etsy shop totally does not represent all the cool designs she has at the show! I LOOOOOOVE this cardigan she sells that has a cute little whale on it. I was VERRRY tempted! Knickerocker That is actually a pic I took of the underwear I bought today! She has sooo many cute undies designs that are not in her Etsy shop, including this amazing pair of rainbow undies with tiers of rainbow ruffles on the bum!! If you go to the show, you HAVE to check them out. Lemon Bird So, Hairy loves fancy jams and pickles, so this was the booth for him! He bought a strawberry with lemon basil jam, but they had all kinds of cool yummy stuff. Wood Thumb Wooden ties! Ties made out of wood! Nice This shop had a ton of cute stuff in it, but I was particularly drawn to her upcycled lamp shades that looked like they were made from vintage doilies and other stuff like that. Skeletal Dropkick I seem to be running into this issue a lot in […]

Remember that banana split tank top I made for Onch’s Eat It All Party? When Hairy asked if I wanted to participate in a “fashion meets art” show at Big Umbrella, I immediately thought of the banana split tank top. However, when I wore it, I found it was really heavy, too big for me, and ill-fitting. If I were to put this banana split on display, for sale, I wanted it to be 100% awesome! So I thought for a long while about how to re-purpose it and still make it wearable. I have been seeing a lot of DIY’ing of denim, with a heavy punk influence and metal studs. I never was really punk, so I wanted to think of a way to embellish a jacket my way. DIYummify! I kept thinking about Madonna’s jacket in Desperately Seeking Susan. I love that movie! Obviously, there are not a lot of design similarities. I think I mostly internalized all the gold glitter! 😛 And making something feel mystical. Ice cream is VERY mystical, yes? Using my crocheted banana split piece as the main graphic, I then decided to ask Hairy help me think of a phrase or a lyric that would go with my ice cream as well as evoke something slightly rebellious and kitsch. He suggested “pour some sugar on me.” This lyric reminds me of my buddy Elysse and a gumdrop nipple, but I will say nothing more about that! I also threw in a bunch of different heart-shaped cabochons. The word “SUGAR” has iridescent glitter on it, but I couldn’t capture it in photos. Sadly the jacket is waaaaay too big for me. It’s actually Manda’s old jacket. I txtd her last night to see if she had a jean jacket she didn’t want anymore, and lo and behold she said SHE DID. If the jacket doesn’t sell at the gallery, I will post it on Etsy! I used Simple Times as a giant weight while I waited for the fabric glue to dry on my crochet piece. I think Amy Sedaris would be proud of this usage of her book. (Also I sewed the edges of the banana split down after I used glue as an achor.) I wanted to stuff some items into the pockets of the jacket in case someone ended up buying it. While I don’t smoke or condone smoking, I just felt it seemed appropriate! If I could have found candy cigarettes in the neighborhood at midnight, that would have been ideal. I have never bought cigarettes before and it was kind of awkward and I asked the guy at the store to pick a brand. I also got a pack of matches and had Hairy right “Dez”‘s phone number on it, Dez being a character from Desperately Seeking Susan. I also included some gum and some money. I tried to crumple everything up to make everything seem “used.” If you are in SF, you should come out for the show […]

My buddy Kim of Finest Imaginary is having a blog party week, all about working for yourself, since she just decided to quit her day job and work on her own business full time! She asked a bunch of cool peeps to share stories and tips about being your own boss. Check out my guest post here or click on the banner below. Leave a comment for Kim and wish her the best of luck with her new adventure!!  

We went out with some friends tonight to celebrate “Life” as Manda told our server. Our friend Ehren got in a motorcycle accident and busted his shoulder, so Manda and I decided to take him to dinner! And some of our other dude pals came, too, which is cool, cuz we don’t see them very often. We had enough people to order TONS of food at Bucca di Beppo AND dessert. We never get to order dessert cuz we are always so stuffed. EXCITINGGGGG!!!!

  In the midst of powering out more samples for Yummy You, I took a bit of a crochet break today to start sketching colors and ideas for my next crochet painting! My buddy Marissa is commissioning a project from me for her baby-to-be’s room! She told me what her baby’s name will probably be, and I picked a pea theme. She also mentioned she loves bunnies, so I thought hey, why not smash them together? The bunnies will be a little bit 3D so the outer edge of the pea pod will be draped over them like a blanky. I started sketching this out to determine shapes, placement, colors, eyes open or eyes, closed, and this gif sort of came together. So sorry for the really crappy renderings… hehe… they were originally only meant for me to use as a reference for the crochet! Touchpad love.

I added these cozies to the Etsy shop! And also some more cheeseburger fingerless mitts! Go check ’em out! Also my my crochet painting is still available online from JapanLA if you were looking for something sweet to decorate your wall!

I did! At WarbyParker you can try on some glasses virtually by uploading a pic of your face, or you can have 5 frames sent to your house for freeeee to try on, which I did. Pretty cool! Check ’em out!! Sorry the audio is not synced well with the video. I guess that’s what you get for using Photobooth sometimes! p.s. thanks to Vivs and another blogger who I think mostly blogs privately for mentioning where they got their cute glasses!

Soo I’ve been idly looking for rugs since we moved into this house. Our living room walls are limey pea green, and so are our rugs!!! TOO. MUCH. GREEN. And a big brown couch. I am super over the lime-green/brown thing you see all over CB2. So I am looking for a rug to bring in new colors in order to buy new throw pillows and stuff to broaden the color palette of the room. Here are last night’s pickin’s. Hairy has his favorite. I have mine. They do not match. Hahaha. To be continued! And this one is just for funz! Bedroom maybe? I’m a mature lady! Also I saw this photo on Tumblr and squeed. The walls are a similar color to our living room walls, and I would LOVE to bring these colors into the livingroom, too. I just feel like for some reason I need to get my rug situation figured out first!  

Shopping for dads is rough! Luckily, mine enjoys amassing a giant collection of Blu Rays, so while I like to help add to his array of movies, I also like to try doing a little something extra. My pops LOVES his spicy food! So I thought I’d try – with Hairy’s help – to make some spicy curry popcorn to go with his movies! The cute little box is from Martha Stewart’s collection at Michael’s. If you want to see sort of a recipe (we winged it a little bit on the spot) and some photos of various steps, click to read more! The popcorn is super easy to make, super flexible as far as what you want to put on your popcorn, and there’s a fun part that even little kids can help out with (or at least people who do not know how to cook, like me!)

I’m back from the licensing show that took place in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas this week. I’m pooped! We took a lot of meetings, spoke to a lot of people, and have a lot of fun things in store, I think! I can’t decide whether or not to tell the story of why I randomly signed up for an AmEx card at the show…..I think I’ll save it. For now I have to start brainstorming ideas for various companies and also work on getting y’all some goodies on Etsy! Oh, also, I randomly shared a hotel room with this little lady. We are Facebook friends, but had never met before in person. I know. I know. Everyone was like, “UH She is gonna be crazy and steal all your stuff!!!” But no, that did not happen!! She is perfectly nice and cute and delightful! I should have taken a photo of us, DOH! One more thing!!! If you liked the “crochet painting” I made for JapanLA’s Kittens & Ice Cream art show, you can still purchase it online through JapanLA! CLICK HERE to browse the art!

I still haven’t uploaded photos from the JapanLA party last weekend. I’ll try to get those up soon! I’m still really bad at taking photos at events, though. I feel dumb going “Let’s take a picture! Let’s take a picture!” But then I feel even lamer when I come home with no photos :/ Anyhoo, today Cassie Wanda came over and put in some hair extensions! We ate Nabisco snacks, watched Friends, and gabbed. Good day! In case anyone was wondering/curious, she used micro links to put the hair in. It’s real hair so I can curl it and shizz. I better learn how to curl my hair right… I will keep you posted on my continued adventures with fake hair. I’m actually flying back to LA tomorrow for a biz meeting, but just in and out for the day!

No, I’ve never baked a real cherry pie. Crochet version will have to do! I actually started this like a year go and stuffed it onto the “finish me” shelf. The woven top took FOREVS to sew on. I need to think about a different way to approach it to keep the cost down. Oh wait. I just thought of one. Note to self!!!! I am going to put this up on Etsy next week. I’m considering doing a limited pre-/custom order on it. I can also offer bluberry pie! Like I might list 5 available and ask for 2-3 weeks to ship the order. What do you think? Also coming soon: more burger mitts!

So Amy texted me the other day asking me for my address cuz she said she’d found something cute and bought one for both of us. I fancy Amy as a mischievous little devil so I asked her if this was actually a prank and something poo-related. Here is the video of me opening this surprise! CUTE, RIGHT?! Lo and behold, I think it was the next day that we saw each other and decided to wear our matching pjs. looooo3 and her mister were in town, so we met up with them, Amy, Kevin, Jessica, and Greg at Straw which is a new little carnival-themed restaurant that Tiffany told me about. They have all sorts of yummy foods that are bad for you, plus they have a cute tilt-a-whirl seat that we wanted to take a picture in, but then some peeps actually sat in it to eat, so no photo! Then we decided to be super fatties and have dessert at American Cupcake, and Tess also dropped by to say hi. This is when I decided that Amy and I needed to document our matching pjs. This is also when we remembered we are really awkward, and you should probably never hire us to do much of anything. Here’s the winning photo: I know you’ll want that as your wallpaper for EVERYTHING. And here’s a fancy animated gif I made of our epic awkward that made everyone else feel extremely uncomfortable. We should probably be drunk next time for this to work better. P.S. If you want to turn your night-time wear into day-time wear, follow these tips! Amy: PUT A BELT ON IT. Twinkie: PUT A CARDI OVER IT.

Okay, first up, after much internet hassle, I finally updated my ETSY SHOP! I’m running a sale on most items for one week! My favs are the t-bone steak scarf, cherry zipper pulls, fridgie food pinback set, and raspberry mousse pastry hair clip. All scarves are $65-$85 right now.  A few of them are already gone! On to Austin photos! I had no idea where I put my point-and-shoot camera, so all my photos are from the iPhone. I also stole some photos from other peeps. If we took a photo and you’d like me to post it, comment on this entry, and I will edit! Also let me know if you want me to link your blog or your shop or something!   Here are some photos of the booth. I was freaking out over fitting everything in a suitcase. My cardboard display risers are the bomb! Sadly, my scarf rack didn’t fit in my suitcase, but LUCKILY, my trusty crochet elf Rita was already in Austin and bought us a rack from Walmart! The other cool thing about the cardboard risers is that you can hide behind them to eat, PLUS, you can store food in there! And also hide your money box! Here’s me and a bunch of peeps who came to say hi! Me and hinkle1999 Me and Kristine Me and CraftyMinx. Check out her blog! I’m amazed by her granny-square-a-day project! Me and Moonmist from Ravelry. Me and Anya Me and a gal who said her friends in San Jose, CA had some of my scarves! I came back from the ladies room and Hairy was taking a picture of this dude. I was like, “Huh?” And Hairy said he wanted to capture a photo of a dude rocking one of my crocheted items. Awesome! Chain wallet charms! I met a bunch of other people but of course I don’t have any more photos! Here’s us getting doughnuts at Gourdough’s upon Rita’s recommendation. VERY YUMMY VERY INDULGENT!! We didn’t have a good camera. All the pics of the doughnuts look gross, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. Check out the menu, though! Here’s me and my friend Margaret in front of the Gourdough’s truck. I’ve known her since highschool. She got married and lives in Houston now, so she and her hubs drove to Austin to meet up and hang out! I heart them! So yeah, that pretty much wraps up what I got as far as photos. I had good times meeting Crab Apple Design, The Funky Skunk, grrfeisty, Katastrophic Designs (I bought this from her, it has GLOW IN THE DARK GLITTER STARS!), and Sweetie Pie Press. Also it is always lovely to see Heidi and her hubby from My Paper Crane, and we had random fun visits from Elsie and her new hubby Jeremy on their honeymoon!  

Hey, dudes! So Etsy has made some changes, and I can’t really queue up all my listings like I could before, so I’m slowly just adding and posting listings, and people are already making purchases. I probably still have a good hour of listing to do, but I thought I would give you a heads up! SHOP SHOP SHOP

Always put some eyeliner on before leaving the house … cuz you never know who you are going to run into at the grocery store! In real news: my first order of business is to pick up the craft room and the house a little. It exploded in the last few weeks or furious crafting. Then: I’ll shoot photos of the Renegade Craft Fair leftovers and put them on Etsy, with my usual post-craft-fair-week-long sale :).

Hey, Texas! Come visit me at my booth this weekend at Renegade Craft Fair :). If you’re back at home in SF, this weekend is also Maker Faire/Bazaar Bizarre! I probably won’t be blogging much this week due to being crazy with prep and travel! I also am making something for Japan LA‘s 5th Anniversary “Ice Cream & Kittens” art show and party which is due for shipping before I leave for Austin!! EEEP! I’ll leave ya with some snaps from my Instagram in case you don’t follow me there! 🙂

I decided to get my teeth whitened. I have been thinking about it for about a year, and then my dentist brought it up, so that seemed like a GO. My teeth aren’t TERRIBLE, but if I try to wear a lipstick instead of a lipgloss, I can super tell my teeth are not the right color… Also since I end up taking a lot of photos for work, I don’t want to offend the innocent public with my weirdnesses. I asked my dental hygienist, whom I LOVE AND ADORE (her sister also cleans my teeth and they are so nice and funny), to run down some options with me, with as much honesty as possible (as I know they would probably want to push the dentist’s offering which was bleach trays). Surprisingly, she told me that the home whitening strips’ “chemistry” was getting better and actually not a terrible option. However, they are probably only best for touch ups, and not for an initial whitening, as it’s difficult to obtain good coverage and you might get zebra stripes! She said the un-fitted trays you buy over the counter are fine, but you’ll get the goo all over your gums, and that’s not really where it’s supposed to go. My gums are already sensitive and testy, so that didn’t sound like an option for me. My bestie got the laser whitening a few years back, which sounds cool cuz it’s a one-time thing, but my hygienist said she’d seen a case where the lady got laser whitening and some of her tooth sheared off and she also needed like a kabillion root canals. Granted, that was probably a one in a million case, and maybe affected by other things, but…. I don’t need to go there. So bleach trays it is! Today I got my impressions done. WHICH SUCKS. I have a really sensitive gag reflex. I gag when I brush my teeth or try to pick popcorn out of my molars. If you have to get your impressions done for trays or a mouth guard or braces, here are a few tips I’ve been given. – Ask if they can mix the goo with warm or hot water. This apparently makes the goo set more quickly so it spends less time up in your mouth parts. – When they do the upper impression, which is the suckiest one, ask if you can lean forward instead of leaning back. This is so you don’t feel like all this crap is going to creep down your throat, plus any errant saliva can run forward and not back. I always feel like if I swallow, my gag reflex will go cray cray, so I’d rather drool all over myself onto some paper towels than wretch up some bile on the nice technician. – They always tell you to breathe through your nose. I also like to go into a meditative stare to try to go to my Happy Place. I have sensitive […]

My mama is Type 2 Diabetic and has to really watch her sugar/carb intake. So for presents, I often try to bake her low carb/sugar-free goodies. Recently, Hairy and I went to a farmer’s market and bought some cookies that were gluten/flour-free with no butter and made with almond flour. I LOVED THEM. THEY WERE SO GOOD. I decided I wanted to try to make a sugar-free version of this using a sugar substitute for my mom. Becky once blogged about using Xylitol as a sugar substitute, so I decided to try to bake with that for the first time. The cookies turned out a bit wetter than I thought, which is good because they are moist, but I was hoping for a crispy outside and chewy inside. I’ve never made the recipe with regular sugar, so I’m sure the consistency would be different with that, too. Xylitol is supposedly a 1:1 ratio with regular sugar in recipes, but I felt that my cookies turned out too sweet for my taste, so I would probably cut back on the sugar. I’ve baked with Splenda in the past and there was a yucky aftertaste, but Xylitol has no yucky aftertaste at all! I got the recipe from this site, but if you are too lazy to click, here it is: Ingredients: * ½ C + 2T blanched* almond flour (meal) * ¼ C +2t granulated sugar* 1 large egg white * ¼ t vanilla extract * tiny pinch of salt I also got a small handful of pistachios to crush and sprinkle on the tops of the cookies after baking. Preheat the oven to 300º, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Or grease the baking sheet well. Since these don’t have any added fat, they tend to stick. I love using the parchment paper: they come off easily and cleanup is really easy.   In a separate bowl, beat the egg white, vanilla, and salt with an electric mixer until it forms soft peaks. This is pretty quick. Fold the egg white mixture into the almond/sugar mixture. Drop by spoonfuls onto the lined or greased baking sheet. They will spread some so be sure to leave about 2 inches between them. (Mine actually didn’t spread very much.) Bake for 30 minutes. If you don’t have an oven thermometer, and aren’t sure if the oven temperature is accurate, set your timer for 20 minutes. If they are getting brown the oven is too hot, and they’ll need less time. (Mine needed a little more than 30 minutes.) Remove the Italian almond cookies from baking sheets to a wire rack to cool. ** This recipe is super easy, super fast, and super yummy if you are an almond freak like me!

You may know today as Cinco de Mayo, but today is also a very special lady’s birthday. I tried to call her at work, but nobody picked up!