Category: Blog

HOT!!!!!!! Shrinkle and myself, elated about aging.

I always feel like daylight hours are for e-mailing, errand-running, and phone-calling. Night time is when you make magic. So I am still up at 4am even though I have to wake up at 7am to meet the floor guys who’ll be sanding the floors at the new house. Not the smartest move, but when you gotta paint. You gotta paint! I’ll show you the finished project when it’s done! It’s nothing fancy. I’m not a painter nor much of a graphic artist, but I had this idea in my head, didn’t have enough time to print custom fabric, and just decided to go at it with fabric paint, a black Sharpie, and a prayer!

Happy Bday to me!! I turn 34 in a little over an hour. (p.s. I feel like I need to say that Hairy bought me this Yoohoo on the road trip from L.A. to S.F. as a joke. I don’t really endorse drinking corn syrup and water! Hehhe.)

I couldn’t wait to post my crappy video and photos from the craft fair :P. I don’t know why the video ended up so low in quality once uploaded to YouTube…I gotta try to figure that out for future posts. I created a new YouTube account for my Twinkie Chan videos: TwinkieChanTV. I had a plain old TwinkieChan account that I mostly used for Bibi videos (hehhe) but I will now post my people videos to the new account. Anyway, here is a video snippet from the show. Sorry again it’s so fuzzy. Also sorry again for the shaky, nausea-inducing, Blair Witch camera work. I get self-conscious about shooting video of my own booth, and I do it as quickly as possible! 😛 We went with a food cart – theme. I put most of the scarves in a chaffing tray and a lemon slice scarf in a pitcher :). The table display itself could use some fine-tuning, but overall I think we did a great job considering this was all put together in like 4 days after work! Here is a funny sketch I made of the cart before we built it! We shared our booth space with Elsie, Emma, and Red Velvet Art. They are cute as can be, and so super sweet. They are very special gals, and I was so excited to meet them even though I was cracked out on sleep deprivation and could not form language very well! You can see Elsie’s photos and thoughts on the fair here for DAY ONE and DAY TWO. And now…. my photos!! I made my banner out of felt and glue at 10am after an all-nighter. I’m shocked you can recognize the letters! Hehehe. We made this little chalkboard sign out of two pieces of wood, some hinges, and chalkboard paint! I was kinda like, “Ugh, I don’t have the brainpower to deal with this little project!” but Hairy insisted and it turned out super cute. Here’s a side view of the cart. As it turned out, the rear/tail-lights end of the cart was more visible in our final configuration. We had headlights in front! 😛 Here’s the other side. You can sorta see me and Elsie chatting inside! The front! And Elysse’s BUTT: Blurry pic of my cupcake tower of coffee cup cozies. As it turns out, the cupcake had angled surfaces and this was not a stable platform for the cozies, so they kept tumbling down… I recently became obsessed with shopping for vintage lucite beads, and I made some stretchy bracelets on Friday before the show. A lot of my favorites were purchased at the fair, but there are some left overs I think I may keep for myself! Heheh. I never made rings before, but I am kind of into it!!! Espesh if they look like jello! CutieDynamite came by for a visit and gave me a little piece of hair candy. It put it on right away!!! So sweet! Here’s a pic […]

We had 108 entries, and I used random.org to generate our winners! Congrats, Corinna & Star!!!!!!! I will send your goodies out on Tuesday, when I get back from Southern California!! If you read this first, please EMAIL ME twinkiedink at gmail dot com with your mailing addresses, and also please let me know again the color and thickness of your hair, so Jules can determine which formula is right for you :). I haven’t even packed yet for my trip, hehehe, but I will find your emails in WordPress somewhere if I don’t hear from you :). Have a great weekend everybody!! xoxooxo

(click for bigger image) Just finished this last night! Phew! I am hoping to debut a couple burger scarves for sale at Renegade, but we’ll see how much time I have! Eep! Workworkworkworkwork. (p.s. if you haven’t seen the hair product giveaway yet…click back to this entry!)

EDIT!!!! THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED!!! THANK YOU!!! OOOooh I have been waiting to announce this!! My awesome hair stylist Jules Chan has just launched her first hair care product! It’s the TEXTURE Powder Styler and you can get some at her website here where she also maintains a fun blog about hair. Her focus is Asian hair, but her knowledge and hair product covers any kind of hair! I have known Jules forever. When I finally wanted to chop off my life-long long hair in the late 90s, I had no idea where to get my hair cut. My mom used to cut it for me, or hair salons at the mall, and a few times, I even asked my little brother to do it just for fun! But when I wanted to go short, I knew I had to call in the experts! I was watching E! channel one day and saw a local hair makeover that took place at Architects & Heroes salon in San Francisco (it no longer exists now). I thought the people who worked there looked really “cool” and could give me some “cool” hair (incidentally, the colorist on the show ended up being my colorist for many years until she moved to the UK!), so I called them up and asked for a stylist who knew a lot about Asian hair. And that’s how I met Jules! She was the first person to ever tell me that I had to use product to get the hair that I wanted. This is a blessing and a curse as now I am a hair product ADDICT!! I have followed her from salon to salon, and now she is the founder and co-owner of her own salon, Dekko, which happens to be walking distance from my house! (Altho we’re moving soon, so that is moot, hehehehe.) Here is a recent article in the SF Examiner about her and the salon! Anyway, Jules is super awesome and has offered to giveaway TWO bottles of her new product to my blog readers, so we can have TWO winners! It comes in a light formula for light colored or fine hair, and a darker formula for darker hair. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment in my blog (don’t leave one at Livejournal or Facebook, or else it won’t count!) with your email address and the color and texture of your hair! To earn an extra chance at winning, either Tweet or re-blog about the giveaway, and post that link in a separate comment here on my blog. Easy peasy! I’ll select two winners in one week. So you have until Thursday, July 22nd, to enter and spread the word! We’re leaving to drive to San Diego Comic Con that night, so I’ll probably draw around 6pm California Time 🙂 I absolutely could not wait for this product to come out. Since I am rockin’ the bangs these days, my bangs are the first to get oily on my […]

I just finished this Loopy Cuppycake Scarf for Mike of Twink, the Toy Piano Band! We did a little creative swap, and hopefully soon I will get to show you more about that! I haven’t made one of these loopy scarves for a super long time, and it was really fun!!! I have a lot of stash I can bust by making more of these, so I think I will after Renegade Craft Fair and Magic/Pool Tradeshow are over! I bought some heart sunglasses for another project and wanted to see what they looked like on my face. I ended up making this funny thing which reminded me of a cheesy photo in an 80s teen magazine. As real as it may seeeeeeeeeeem, it was only in myyy dreams!!!

Don’t hire this girl to scrape your paint.

On Monday, Hairy and I went with my pal Margaret, her hubby, and her dad, to Napa Valley. Her hubby is from Houston and had never been to wine country before, so Margaret asked if we would like to accompany them and have dinner. I won’t bore you with details, but we were starving, missed our tour of Rutherford Hill, and ended up eating nuts and berries from the Mondavi gift shop to stay alive. But the weather was perfect, the company was delightful. All in all a nearly perfect day outside. We ended up on a tour at Mondavi and tasted some vino. I do not like wine. I think it tastes like bowling ball cleaner and dirt and twigs. But I tasted a white, a rose’, and a red to play along. I enjoy the adjectives used to describe red wines like “insistent” and “muscular.” Sounds like a dude from Jersey Shore! “This cab sauv carries notes of dark cherry, thyme,  and The Situation.” We had dinner at Bottega, which Hairy was curious about since we see Michael Chiarello on Top Chef Masters a lot. However, it seemed from the menu that he is not even the chef there anymore? Regardless, the menu looked tasty. The best part was dessert: lemon curd with zeppoli (little Italian donuts)! Before dinner, we walked around this shop called Napa Style and I fell in love with vintage metal stepping stools and clear sea glass blue jars for drinking cups. If we ever make it out to the Alameda Antique Fair ( the next one is during Renegade! poo!!!!), I will def be on the look out for fun treats for our house. (oh, p.s. in the first picture, I was testing out a pose I stole from my Aunt Vivi. I saw an old photo of her from her early twenties, and she had the most awesome cheezy poses! I worship her skillz! I need to find more old photos so I can learn from the master.)

My highschool bestie is in town from Houston with her hubby, and my mom and I went to the new house with them. My friend studied interior design in school, so I wanted her opinion on colors for all the rooms on the main floor. When I went looking at fabric with Manda the other day for this fashion art project we are working on together, I found the above fabric and fell in love with it!!! (It is totally different than the art project, btw!)  I am now using this as color inspiration for the new house. It may not be what I had originally imagined, but I think it will work. There are a lot of elements I have to work around, leading to some compromise here and there, but overall, I have my fingers crossed it will turn out cute. I really just want to move in and skip the part where we have to paint every room and every baseboard, and pack up our loft, and set all our stuff up again! Right now, I am mentally frenzied with prepping for Renegade Craft Fair, as well as the outfit for the Sweet Streets II art show in L.A. that Manda and I are collabing on….plus I have to design a few more things for the next Yummy You catalog, all this month! Plus we are going to Comic Con in San Diego for a day as well as Disneyland after that. There’s a lot going on, but truthfully, I probably wouldn’t have it any other way!

I am about to update the shop. Give me about 10 minutes to fire away!!!

For Father’s Day, we went to Half Moon Bay to eat eggs benedict. The drive was really pretty, and it’s a shame I only had my phone cam to capture anything! We wandered around down town a bit, where I found an AWESOME yarn shop!! I need to go back and check it out more closely! We also wandered into a bakery where I bought this giant Portuguese sweet bread. I couldn’t stop eating it. I painted a couple closets in our new house this weekend with my mom. Hairy and I were over there tonight, finishing up some stuff, and Bibi and Bunny brought a gross Elmo doll from the yard INTO THE HOUSE! YUCK!! There is all kinds of garbage and toys and giant piles of leaves that needs to be cleared out of there. Who knows what else the dogs will find and drag inside! Just in case y’all don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I posted a sneak of a cupcake coffee cup cozy. They are all finished up (10, all unique colors/flavors!), and I just have to finish up a few more things before uploading to Etsy! Finally! I am thinking maybe getting stuff into the shop on Wednesday. I have a ton of house-related appointments this week!

I crocheted these funny birthday candles for a felted project. Cross your fingers they don’t melt and mutate in the felting process!!

Hairy and I went to Ikea today for some color inspiration. I didn’t find much there tonight, but we did come away with these cookies with the funny name! My life, among other things, is all about these right now: I’m not very good at visualizing color in a big space like a room, and I get really stressed out about it. I have to remember that it’s just paint, and you can always paint OVER it. Retro Minty Kitschen: Serene, Candy Blue Master Bedroom (I haven’t found paint chips I really like yet for this room. Everything I pulled was too baby-blue.): Girlie Barbie Bathroom: Bold Blue Dining Room: Sunshine Yellow Craft Room and Grass Green accent wall for Living Room: Hairy’s Man Cave with Bright Red Door Frame Accent: It looks like we’re moving! I’m partly excited, and partly overwhelmed. The only constant in life is change!

I had complained recently on Twitter that I couldn’t crochet for very long because I would start getting a sore spot or blister on my pinky. I then wrap it up in a bandaid for padding, but the Bandaid Method just seemed ridiculous. Elisha suggested I try out the Hamanaka crochet hooks, which you can find on eBay and Etsy. They are a bit pricey: $50 for a full set, so I opted to purchase just one hook off eBay. They sure are cute, tho! Pic taken from this Etsy shop. They are double ended, so you actually get 10 hooks altogether. I was hesitant to try out the Hamanaka because the hook itself is very different than what I am used to. I use a cheapo aluminum Susan Bates set. It’s what Grandma Wendleton started me on back in the day, and I have never strayed. The Susan Bates hook has kind more of a wedgey area for the yarn to get lodged into. The Hamanaka and Clover hooks have more a swoopy curvey area. This blog has a really good comparison photo, with my favorite Susan Bates style on the right, and the swoopier curvier kind on the left. I have tried using the Hamanaka on a few small things here and there…and my yarn keeps slipping off the hook! I will give it a little more time, but I wonder how difficult or important it is for me to change my crochet style to adjust to the hook. I have also seen crochet hooks covered in polymer clay, like this: So I wonder how much that helps in avoiding blisters as well. I actually bought a bunch of polymer clay for another secret project, so I might experiment. I’ll letcha know if I do, unless it turns out super ugly and I have to go hide.

We were just in Minnesota last weekend for Hairy’s cousin’s wedding. The wedding was on their grandpa’s giant lake-side property. There were clouds of mosquitoes and big bugs running all over the place. It was terrifying! But it was fun to meet more of Hairy’s peeps. People kept saying, “Don’t mind our crazy family!” Oh, everyone’s family is a liiiittle bit crazy! It’s all good… until someone starts yelling angrily and threatening to bust every window in the house (been there, done that). But there was no yelling. Just fun people, yummy food, and cute babies. Here’s the fun video montage!!!! A roller coaster ride inside the Mall of America is included for your barfy pleasure! Untitled from Twinkie Chan on Vimeo. And some photoz! I think this is the 1st photo I forced us to take by the lake. This is after I discovered the giant clouds of bugs hanging out by the lake. Here is us in a sculpture garden. I had to pinch and tickle Hairy to get him to smile. Also I need to stop opening my mouth for photos and video. It’s a weird instinct that must go away. Ginormous spoon and cherry sculpture by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje Van Bruggen. We studied Oldenburg – known for his giant soft sculptures – when I was in grade school, and we all made giant soft sculptures of our own. I made a giant squishy purple mailbox you could chillax inside of. I used it as a fort for a really long time. I made it purple so that it would match my bedroom…. He was so stern, he needed someone to be jumping around next to him. We had dinner with Hairy’s friends – Hilary, and Isara and their menz. It turned out that Isara’s dude and Hairy had the SAME WALLET!!! TWINZZZ. Finally, here’s me in our hotel room, cowing out over the best chips ever. Hairy’s fam was really nice and let me take home their chips! I brought the box home, too, and need to think of something funny to do with it….. Next entry: The greatest Gundam model-builder in the world. You’ll see.

Hairy and I are back from Minnesota! We were at his cousin’s wedding. I will have a lil video for it maybe tomorrow, but tonight I want to catch up on work! On our way to my parents’ house to pick up the pups, we stopped by Michael’s really quick. We saw some pith helmets & animal hats, and then we ran into the plastic-plants section to hide in the jungle and snap a pic. Good times! I’m the elephant who has been held in captivity too long and is going on a rampage! Son, this safari’s been CORRECTED. *elephant sounds*

I wasn’t sure whether to post this in my blog or not, but heck, here I go! I am looking for another crochet helper or two, based in Las Vegas. Why Las Vegas? My right-hand lady, Rita, lives in Vegas, and will be managing a Vegas crochet posse for Twinkie Chan. Rita has worked with me for a few years, is a delight, knows what I like, and is trying to help me keep my Etsy store more regularly stocked with goodies!! Customers: fear not. All designs are still 100% mine (I’m too much of a control freak to have it any other way!). All items will still go through me and will be shipped by me. I put finishing touches on a lot of the items, and I still create whole items myself all the time. But, you can see how empty my shop is at the mo, so we need a little help ;). I also want to devote more time to designing new and exciting items, but have old favorites for sale simultaneously! Interested hookers: again, please be in the Las Vegas area. This will make it easier for Rita to keep everything organized! Please email me at twinkiedink at gmail dot com, and I will forward everything to Rita. I would love to know a little about you, what kinds of stuff you like, favorite foods, favorite TV shows, etc, anything! If you blog or have a Flickr album with pics of your work, please include those as well. If you could also include about how much time you’d be able to devote to helping us out, that would be awesome, too! I know everyone has a life and a full-time job, but I also know that some of us like to be busy all the time and crochet in front of our evening TV! Speaking of ETSY, I DO have a bunch of fun items coming soon!! We have just been traveling so much, that it is difficult for me to finish all the items, but they will be adorable, and I will do my best to have them up this week. This weekend, we will be in Minneapolis for Hairy’s cousin’s wedding. I will get to see the Mall of America!! Hehe. Everyone else should go to the sparkle-fest that is occurring in celebration of JapanLA’s 4th anniversary extravaganza!

My hair is getting a bit longer than usual, so it acts kinda funky until I get it cut. Weird pieces stick out. I can’t tease it as well. Etc, etc, etc. Today I got really bored of my hair and wanted a baby bun on top of it my head. I curled the rest of it so I could poof and tease it, but it looked really bizarre. So then I twisted and pinned up one side and then braided the other. Now I have a mini bun side pony braid. Can’t decide if this is the worst thing ever, or kinda funny. Probably both. Oh, btw, the glasses tshirt is from AsiaJam. I get asked a lot where to buy tees, so, that’s where this one comes from! The hairbow is from Etsy.

I have had this sprinkley resin necklace in my faves from Stoopidgerl’s Etsy shop for a little while! I was so happy to finally make it mine! Today I also got my roots did. It’s the only moment in time you will see me with my hair flat or not in pigtails. I’ve been flip-flopping over getting a hair cut, or letting it grow out a bit. Then I thought it seemed backward to grow your hair out during the SUMMER!

I’ve been working on two of these for a commission. While sewing in the ends (the part I hate most about crocheting, espesh cuz I’m really anal about it) I stabbed myself underneath my fingernail with a small tapestry needle. Hurty! I’ve also been working on the design still for the Yummy You site and online shop, as well as working on an update to the Etsy shop. The mitts I’m working on for that update are soooo super scrumptious! I am also suuuuuper behind on some gifties I wanted to crochet for friends. Sadly, the gifties always fall by the wayside. I gotta make some time for that! It’s been a bit hard planning my booth for Renegade. I kind of want to focus on fewer types of items, but with higher quantities of each. It’s tough to decide which items to make the most of! I think I will have a handful of scarf designs, coffee cup cozies, brooches, tissue box cozies, zipper danglies, embellished cardigans, one special tshirt design, and maybe mitts? When I had mitts and cute-tility packs at Renegade last year, they did not sell very well….so I dunno if I should bother to bring them this time! I have a supremely fun idea for tote bags sewn from scratch. I better get on designing and ordering the custom fabric for that! Eep!

Last year, Hairy’s bday present to me was a lollipop tattoo. I then asked my friend Marissa if she could draw a few pieces for me. I’ve always loved her pieces that look kinda shiny and delicious. But I knew it might be hard to translate into a tattoo-able sketch. It kinda took me a while to get my schedule together with my artist Holly’s schedule, but I finally went in this weekend to get my lolli on! I don’t think I originally intended for this to cover so much of my arm, but to get a really good twisty lolli, size helps! I was super swollen yesterday, but it is much better today. I can’t wait for it to heal up! I have to admit that I feel somewhat more balanced now since I had one inky arm and one totally blank arm! I also booked an appointment in June to finally get to finishing my sleeve. When I was sitting in the chair on Saturday, I was like, “Why am I doing this to myself? This HURTS!” I thought more and more about how the needle was digging into my skin, depositing foreign debris INSIDE MY BODY. It got really disturbed by it all. No, I don’t regret any of it. I love all my work. I know I will have them when I’m 90 years old (my favorite comment from people). I’m just saying I think it’s kinda weird, too. Then I think about all the traditional, tribal, warrior-type tattooing that has happened all over the world for centuries. “Therapeutic” tattoos on a 5,000 year old ice man. Ritualistic and spiritual tattoos from Egypt to Japan. Etc etc etc. I don’t know where I’m going with this. My cutesy-poo art makes my day a bit brighter. I think that’s a powerful thing.