Category: Blog

I’ve been working on a tutorial for a wonderful blog, and I busted out some of the fancy sprinkles for that project! I keep waiting for a nice day to shoot photos of the finished product, but it has been pretty rainy and yucky here in San Francisco, so I think that whatever weather we have on Saturday, I’ll just have to go with it and shoot photos regardless! I also finished up a fun wholesale order for ShanaLogic so stay tuned for that! While I was working on these projects, I decided to see what it would look like to put sprinkles all over a swirly whip cream blob. Looks pretty yummy on its own! But maybe a little weird as a brooch or hair clip. I’d stick a cherry on top, too, but I think it would look too much like a boob :/.

You guys. I’m SO excited for my pal Elsie and the gals at Red Velvet. I remember chatting with her about her wish to design a dress line, and now it’s here! (A) I want to buy everything. (B) How truly inspirational to see someone turn wishes into reality??? Check out the adorable lookbook video. I melted. It’s all so exciting!    

Maddy received her box o’ Xmas/Valentine’s Day goodies, so I can share with you the surprise prezzie I popped in for her! It’s a super cutesy wutesy Valetine brooch and hair clip. It has a ton of heart-shaped and regular shaped beads and cabs all over it. I will definitely offer these before next Valentine’s Day, and maybe even just soon/whenever, cuz I think they are a sweet little way to say I HEART YOU!!! A few days ago, I got my hurrr cut by Jules. We were trying to figure out how long it had been since I’d gotten it cut, but it was definitely time, and my head feels so much less bulky and shaggy! We didn’t change anything major, but I think I will probably want my bob back in the summer! She also said she would pretend not to notice the giant chunk of bangs I had cut out of my head on my own. DOH. Today we drove to Sacramento with the doggies to visit Hairy’s family and his new baby niece. I didn’t take pictures, though, cuz I’m sensitive about posting pics of other families on my blog. I did snap a pic of the cardi I wore, though. I clearly can’t let go of the Valentine’s Day spirit! It’s from Forever 21. Hearts hearts hearts!!! Oh! For those who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I also uploaded the popcorn garland pattern to Etsy, as well as the electronic/PDF version of my Sugar On Top Mini book. I will be making more of the actual mini book as well (gotta pick up my copies from the copy place!) and putting them on Etsy, but you can save a few bucks by assembling your own if you buy the PDF 🙂 Check it out! Just a note: this doesn’t mean I will start posting patterns for everything under the sun!!! I think for now, I only intend to post the occasional pattern for projects I know I probably don’t want to sell finished products of myself. For stuff like the cupcake coffee cup cozies: I’m still making them and selling them, so I probably wouldn’t post the pattern just yet. I’ve already been fielding a few questions like these, so I thought I would just bring it up! 🙂 But I WILL be sharing a VERY cute coffee cup cozy pattern with you guys via a SUPER rad magazine that I adore. I will let you know when that is out! OKAY! Stay tuned for Monday! I will be announcing a pretty cool giveaway with a fun new item, and there will be 10 winners! 🙂

Apparently I was nominated for Best DIY Fashion Book of 2010 by About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards, so who ever helped in doing that: thank you!! I have never really been nominated for anything before, where people can vote for me online, so if you feel like clicking a button in the name of all that is wonderful and Twinkie Chan, please VOTE HERE! I have no idea what the voting rules are. It looks like I was just able to vote for myself without signing up for anything. And it seemed like I could vote for myself again, although that doesn’t seem like it should be possible? In other news: Happy Valentine’s Day! I am just lazing about in a sweatshirt, jeans, and my house-only polka dot faux-Uggs. I have been working non-stop and am now taking a little breather after the trunk show I did at Hairy’s gallery on Sunday. I DO have leftovers, and I WILL be posting them to Etsy, hopefully tomorrow! 🙂 More pretty bow wrist corsages, convo heart fingerless mitts, aaaaand…. a crap ton of cupcake coffee cup cozies! YAY! Rocking my heart-patterned friendship bracelets from my girl Maddy! <3 <3 <3 Put a deer on it. (Sweater from H&M)

Err Sorry the images are so tiny! But they are clickable and go to the event’s Facebook page :). I will be participating in a handmade trunk show happening this weekend at Hairy’s art gallery/studio, Big Umbrella. It runs Saturday and Sunday, but each day has different artists vending and different food carts selling numnums, and my day is Sunday, from noon to five!! I am bringing mostly Valentine’s day themed goodies, so swing on by for last minute cute stuffs for your valentine or for yourself! 🙂

Cupcake Takes the Cake posted a super nice tidbit about my stuff and my book. Check it out! 🙂 Also in today’s news, I got accepted to Renegade Craft Fair in AUSTIN. I have never traveled with my booth and stuff before, so if you have any pointers, I’m happy to hear them! 🙂

I know it’s SUPER LAST MINUTE!!! I just can’t keep up! 🙂 I will be queuing up my Etsy listings in just a few minutes, so please check the shop in a bit! Here’s a sneak!

Hey UK! I am coming to London at the end of March to meet up with family. I am trying to see about doing a book signing or class or something while I am there. Which of these shops would your recommend most for me to approach? iKnit London Mrs. Moon Loop All the Fun of the Fair I know my cousin has shopped at All the Fun of the Fair. What do you think?

The candy bows I made with Onch are now available for sale at his site! Shop shop shop the adorableness!!! Click on the preview pic to shop! Really limited quantities of each colorway, so act fast! 🙂

For a Christmas present, Hairy gifted my brother and his wife a homemade dinner. Tonight they cashed in, and my parents came, too. Hairy had been menu-planning for weeks, and he cooked over the last two days. He prepped 11 different dishes. I failed to photograph the 2 appetizer dishes (fresh mozarella balls and sundried tomatoes wrapped in prosciutto, and an amazing spread containing anchovies, bread, and parsley, served with crostatta.) Mussels and clams in a rich savory broth with pancetta, shallots, garlic, white wine, clam stock, butter. Milanese Risotto. Saffron, parmesan, chicken stock. (I helped stir for 2 seconds!) White bean and fennel gratin. Provence tomatoes. Porchetta, pounded pork rolled up with parsley, sage, rosemary, lemon zest, olive oil, and feta. Trout cooked on a cedar plank on our grill in the backyard. Served with lemon confit. Apple, fennel, and celery root salad. Braised kale with feta. Dessert was with pain perdu, with mascarpone, berries, and rum carmel. There are tons of leftovers and I can’t wait to eat risotto for dayzzzzzz!

When we were in LA last week, Hairy met up with a buddy in Santa Monica, and while waiting for him, I shopped around H&M and grabbed a few cute pieces. While shopping, a gal asked if I modeled for ShanaLogic. She was like, “Your face is all over her online ads!” I apologized for invading her internet! 😛 I have a very tough time associating the word “model” with myself. I do not consider myself one at all. I am in fact a TERRIBLE model. If someone else points a camera at me, I am pretty much useless, and as a result, I feel like the photos are 100% uglytown. I much prefer taking my own photos cuz nobody sees the weird outtakes, and nobody sees that it takes like 200 bad shots for me to come up with 1 usable one! I photoshop my eyebags out. I photoshop a dark spot out of the whites of one of my eyes. Zits, of course, gotta go. When Amy‘s bf did me a big favor and photoshopped some of my photos for Yummy You posters, he asked if I wanted him to fix my armpit fat. YES. YES OF COURSE FIX THE ARMPIT FAT!!! I am pretty average-sized, not tiny as some people may think, and my bell-bell is starting to show through in my tshirt pictures. It’s all going down hill! 😛 On a side note, I ordered a bunch of clothing recently from a website in Asia, and none of it fits me cuz my arms or my torso are too big. AWESOME! I vent about this mostly for people who never fancied themselves pretty. I was definitely the smart one growing up, NOT the pretty or cute one. I carry this mindset to this day. I’m often surprised that some people out there think I look ok, ok enough to ask me to take photos in their cute products. I’m a late bloomer. There are a lot of us out there! My face is plastered all over a lot of the Twinkie Chan and Yummy You stuff, since it’s now just part of my branding. But when I first launched my website in 2005, I hadn’t even planned to model my own scarves. I wanted to be in control of the photography, so I asked my bestie to be my model. Well, I woke up on the day of our shoot, and she had already left the apartment, TO GO TO THE BEACH WITH HER BOYFRIEND!! AHHHH!!!!! The rest is accidental history! I guess my point is that if you ever felt like a big weirdo, or ugly, or awkward, or un-stylish, you are not alone. We’ve all been there and are still there! Just keep doing things your way, dress to make yourself feel awesome, do things that are fun to you. It all works itself out in the end. Do you refuse to leave the house or answer the door without eyeliner? Me, too. *high […]

$400 and a week later…. my laptop screen is fixed! YAY! I am going to try really hard to catch up on all my blog stuff this week, including my book tour, Christmas, Disneyland, hiking in the woods, and Onch’s EAT IT ALL launch party in L.A. But right now, I gotta deal with some fun tax stuff and shipping out orders. And don’t worry. As per usual, I will be busting out some Valentine’s Day themed stuff at the last minute…. Also for those in the Bay Area, Hairy’s art gallery will be having a 2-day trunk show the weekend before Valentine’s Day, and I will be vending from noon to five that Sunday. More deets when we get closer! Fun opportunity to perhaps partake of Hairy’s new food cart “Underbelly” and do some last minute Valentine’s Day shopping! Here’s what today’s workspace looks like: a hot pink mess! You can also see my box full of tonight’s snack: Purple Yam flavored CRUNKY chocolates with krispies inside!! I like to pick Japanese snacks based on oddness. There needs to be more purple food in the world. p.s. If you are still reading, my comment/reply thingie broke, and then we installed a new one. With this one, you need to click a box to get a notification in your email when I reply to your comment, otherwise, if I do reply, you won’t know unless you check back on the blog page. It will only notify you when people respond to your comment, and it won’t spam you with all the other comments to the blog post. K, thank yoooouuu!

Well, just as I was taking a poll about blogging more, my laptop decides to die!! Sorry for the radio silence! My computer has been in the shop since Saturday. I think I have to buy it a new screen. Bummer! You never really plan to spend $400 on stuff like that, but there it is. I am hoping I get a call soon!!! This weekend we also went for a hike in the woods in our 90s overalls, and Hairy had his first night out with his food cart (which seemed very popular!). Lots to blog about when my computer gets back! Also we saw the Green Hornet. I love me some Michel Gondry, but I didn’t go into this movie with much of an expectation. Usually when that happens, I can avoid disappointment. It was an entertaining movie for what it was. It made me want to have a cappuccino. I stabbed myself under the thumbnail this afternoon while assembling some biz card/buttons. You can see this purple line going all the way to the center of the nail. Pretty gnar gnar!! I am hoping they will make it to L.A. in time to go into gift bags for Onch’s launch party. If you are in L.A., you should come out on Thursday evening and say hi! I made a bunch of delicious hair pieces for you to purchase, in collaboration with Onch!

I am running on 2 hours of sleep! I pulled an all-nighter, took a two hour nap from 11:30am – 1:30pm, and worked and worked and worked until flying to FedEx by 5pm, only to find out the deadline is actually 7:30pm for the West Coast deliveries! Doh! Anyway, I have no idea why this particular project took so long, as each piece was actually quite simple. I did make 42 pieces though so may be that’s why. You’ll see next week after we come home from L.A.! Here’s a photo right before I ran off to FedEx. I felt very triumphant because my hair has not been long enough to put up like this until now! I almost chopped up my bangs again just then, too, but held off. I should probably make a proper hair appointment as my roots are also gross, but I can’t seem to get my hands on any Atomic Pink right now! Little hair bon bon was a prezzie from CutieDynamite. The rest of my night will be cleaning up my giant yarn mess, starting another secret project that will go in a prize bag for a contest, and plotting possible Valentine’s day items! I think I am also going to be part of a small trunk show at Hairy’s art gallery right before Valentine’s Day! No rest ever! 😉

Someone on Formspring recently told me to blog more. (Was that you, McKayla? :P) I thought for a bit about why I find it harder to blog everyday these days. 1) If I’m working on secret stuff, I can’t share WIPs or fun photos along the way. 2) I start to worry too much about whether my blog entry is read-worthy or comment-worthy. I should just blog about whatever, right? 3) I Twitter a lot, so I figure if I’ve already posted links and photos on Twitter, that I don’t want to be boring and repeat it over here. Is there much cross over? Should I still post that stuff to the blog, too? Just thinking outloud! It’s 7:30am and I haven’t slept yet. I’m still sewing a bunch of my clothing labels onto a big box of stuff I’m sending over for Onch’s party. I’m excited to see it all come together! Everything took a bit longer than I thought it would to make, but doesn’t it always?! Here’s me and some epoxy the other night. That experiment didn’t go very well…

My hair goes in a cycle. A few days after a cut, it freaks out a little and looks kinda bad. Then it relaxes and is awesome for a few a month or two. Then it starts to grow out and look hideous and I think about cutting it. Then it somehow starts to look good again cuz I figured out another way to style it. Then it looks bad again cuz all the layers are completely funky. I have been able to cycle in and out of okay hair and terrible hair for quite some time now, but the last week or so has been rough!! I know it’s just hair, but bad hair can really bum you out!! I keep thinking it’s time for getting it chopped again. I almost cut my bangs myself earlier today, but held back and ended up sticking everything up in clips. I hope we don’t have to see anybody tonight!! HEhehhe. In work news: I have been a busy busy little bee, and I can’t wait to show you all pictures of everything. I’ll be able to post photos of some cute stuff after Jan. 27! I need to overnight everything tomorrow so today is workworkwork! While playing with ideas for this project, I ended up developing a cute felted belt! I will probably develop this belt idea further and post a few on Etsy. It won’t necessarily be food-related, but just a cute piece that I would want to wear myself. But felting things has become more tedious since I can no longer do it in my washing machine (we have a front-loader now!), so I probably won’t make that many. We’ll see. I’m focusing on some cute Valentine’s Day ideas this weekend. I am also working on adding to my Twinkie Chan team so I can have more fun goodies in the Etsy shop more consistently! Sorry for all this text! If you’ve made it this far, here are some cute pics of a baby chinchilla and its mommy I saw in a pet store the other day. I was surprised that chinchillas would still breed in a pet store environment. They always seemed so sensitive and fragile to me.

Just a little light online shopping at PurlSoho.com for personal projects later! Mom’s bday is comin’ up soon! I ordered this after coming home from ImagiKnit, too! Yes, I definitely have a yarn problem! While at ImagiKnit, I bought this amazing sparkly, bulky, slubby, minty green giant skein by a brand called Knit Collage. I went online to check out their site, and I found their blog to be pretty interesting. Not just free patterns and pretty pictures of yarn, but a sneak peek into the life of a small yarn company and sourcing and production and stuff! Pretty neat!

I’m still inside a yarn rainbow!! I love being surrounded by these colors. I’m still working with them and feeling inspired by them. Sorry I still can’t show you the last 2 projects I’ve been working on, since they are for other companies/magazines. Soon soon I hope! p.s. Saturday is going to be interesting. Hairy wants to go play badminton at the badminton club for his birthday with some friends. I plan to wear my rompicorn and knee socks. The last time I played badminton was in jr. high. I won 2nd place in the badminton tourney and lost to my best friend. It was the stuff teen movies were made of. Except the nerds never became cool and didn’t have boyfriends until they were 21. p.p.s speaking of birthdays, mine is in August and I will be turning 35!!! I should start planning NOW!

I will be attending this party later this month to celebrate with Onch! He and I will also be collaborating on a few fun pieces for this party! I’m keeping the pieces a secret for now. All you get is this, and this isn’t even all of it…. RSVP and come observe the adorableness!

I put a few more ice cream scoops on Etsy. Chocolate and vanilla! Go shop! I need to shoot some good photos of yarn, because we are going to have a limited pre-order – maybe 20 to start – of custom cupcake coffee cup cozies on Etsy. Stay tuned! I still haven’t figured out my color profile issues when I upload pics to Etsy. They all look really dark and gross and depressing to me!! Someone suggested editing photos in Picnik, but I just have this hope that I can resolve the color issues in Photoshop! Anyone have Photoshop, a MacBook, and some answers? 😛 Uploading to Flickr usually doesn’t affect anything. Just pesky Etsy! And I feel like that’s where you want your product-related photos to look best!

I have been liking other people’s year-in-photos blog entries, so I cooked up my own! January I shot all the photos for my book in my livingroom at 3 in the morning on a deadline. My favorite out-take is me in my bathing suit with my blubber hanging out! YES I photoshopped my muffin tops a little bit in the book. I have some shame. Surprise! February Pool Tradeshow in Vegas, Feb 2010 from Twinkie Chan on Vimeo. In February, I went to the Pool Tradeshow in Las Vegas to debut Yummy You! by Twinkie Chan. It has been my dream to make my pieces more affordable and accessible, and Yummy You! has definitely been a labor of love. It has had its ups and its downs, and I still hope that it will become the brand that I dream it can be! March In March, I met Cuppy for the first time in real life. She is amazing and sweet and cute and makes the yummiest cupcakes. We had the pleasure of hanging out with her and Moofs again in Seattle in December (which I never blogged about yet…) and this employee at Elliott Bay Books thought that Cuppy was the author of Twinkie Chan’s Crochet Goodies! April I’m noticing I don’t blog as much as I should! There’s not a lot to choose from in these entries!! HEHE! It would appear that my favorite photo from April is this purikura tidbit with Hairy. I wish I could blow this up and make posters of it! As I read through the entries, I also realize how much time I had been putting into Yummy You, especially drawing and designing shirts and patterns that have yet to see the light of day…. Maybe one day! May Okay, May was a good month. I have to pick two memories. First, my lollipop tattoo. It was a bday present from Hairy and my pal Marissa drew it! Also Hairy and I went to NYC and Boston for fun, and met so many great people, and ate so much great food! Here’s me and Kerin Rose after eating the healthiest lunch of my life followed up by Pop Rocks chocolate. She’s a superstar and you need to know her. June Untitled from Twinkie Chan on Vimeo. Hairy and I went to his homeland, Minneapolis, for his cousin’s wedding, and I rode the barfiest roller coaster ever at the Mall of America! July We decided we were going to move, and I went crazy insane with paint colors and fabric inspirations. Unfortch, we didn’t end up using this fabric for anything! And I know I haven’t really done a house-tour yet. Seriously, the house still isn’t really decorated! We suck! August Okay, August was also really good, and I can’t just pick one photo. I met Elsie and Emma when we shared a booth at Renegade Craft Fair. Lucky me! Plus an extra dash of Vivs is always a bonus! September We went to […]

Okay. I am officially super behind on blogging. I have yet to blog about my Seattle and Portland trips. I have yet to blog about Xmas. And I need to blog about our New Years Disneyland trip! But first! Here’s a taste of the trip we just came back from. At first it was iffy on whether or not we were really going to go, but it turned out to be great, except for the closed roads and 12 hour drive home. More on that later… Here’s some puri!!!!! Hairy is a good sport. This is probably the least dude-ly thing a dude could ever do. We also really suck at using these machines. We are not good at posing quickly, and we have no idea what we are doing with the decorating pen! Enjoy!

After every holiday, my mom usually sends us home with most of the leftovers, because we’re the only ones who will eat them! Hairy already made a delicious turkey noodle soup a few dasy ago, and tonight he chucked the rest of the leftovers into this pie crust. And it was T-riffic!