I just took this photo five minutes ago. My craft room has been a hot mess since the beginning of December. I mean, it could be worse, but for me, this is pretty bad. I also left out the part where there are now a bunch of boxes in the dining room, too…

I really do not like the site of cardboard boxes. The plastic bags don’t help either. The big problem is that I have all this stuff, but there’s nowhere to put it. This frustration sends my anxiety through the roof, and then I just have to walk away and re-focus my energy on the projects and deadlines I have in the meantime.

I basically closed my Etsy shop this month to help me catch up, and while it has definitely helped, I still feel behind and in a frenzy. This constant, mentally-manic feeling has made me re-think a lot of things about my business and how to make everything run as smoothly and smartly as possible.

But while I’m thinking about that, I’ve always been curious: what drew you to my blog? What keeps you reading here? Are you only here to see crochet-related posts? Are you un-interested in crochet and just more interested in random life-style stuff? Are you only here for Bibi?

Lemme know! While I’ve always stressed the importance to me of blogging for me, I’m definitely interested in how I can blog for you! Let’s clean this place up! (metaphorically… I have to deliver a project by Tuesday, write a new pattern by the end of the month,  draw some new graphics for another top secret collab, and crochet a scarf sample for a different top secret collab…)

We had a lot of Yummy You! fun on Monday night in L.A. with models Jessi Jae Joplin and Stephanie, and photographer Irene Yuen at the super cute Cafe50s. I felt super duper lucky to be around such a gracious and cheerful group of ladies, and the staff at the restaurant were also amazing and upbeat and didn’t yell at us or get mad or anything!

I was in town for the Craft & Hobby Association show for a meeting and asked Irene as soon as my meeting was confirmed if she thought it would be possible to also throw together a last-minute photo shoot while I was there.  I am a big ignoramus when it comes to organizing a shoot, because I’m usually just shooting myself with a remote in my house! It was a little crazy on Monday afternoon, trying to coordinate the shoot while also at the CHA show, but everything turned out really well….EVEN after I failed to give Jessi and Irene the address to the cafe so they ended up at a different Cafe50s. DOH. MY BAD!!!

Here are just a few behind the scenes Instagram snaps from that evening.

Here we all are after the shoot!

I took this one right after asking them if they had decided what to order. All good photoshoots involve french fries and milkshakes!

Earlier on, Irene had txtd that she didn’t know whether to eat before the shoot or not, because she wasn’t hungry but knew that shooting in a diner would make her hungry. I told her I would feed her french fries while she shot. Also, I felt it would be proper for me to wipe her brow.

Here’s a pic I stole from Stephanie wearing her cupcake scarf!

The really surprising part of the evening for me was that when diners had to pass us on their way out, they all were curious about who we were and what we were doing, and they all commented that everyone looked really cute and wanted to know where they could buy the goodies. I was paranoid that they would all hate us for ruining their meals or something, but as it turns out, the whole thing was just a big happyfest. Yay!

Stay tuned for the legit photos! They are gonna be ridiculously cute!

So Hairy’s bday is today. I have a few, fun presents for him, but I also wanted to try baking something he would like. He is a big fan of red-velvet-anything. Red velvet is not my fave, so I wouldn’t know a good one from a bad one ….. but I do know this: my cookies ended up looking like alien cow patties.

Sorry about taking photos with the flash, but this was at 7 in the morning so there’s not a lot of natural night!

Yesterday, I was rushing to shoot photos and send samples to Michaels, and then I had a 2 hour time window to sneaky-bake before we headed down to Manda’s birthday dinner. I used this recipe for red velvet cookies from Joy the Baker (which is actually a Rachel Ray recipe) and this recipe for cream cheese frosting also from Joy the Baker. I was surprised that the amount of food coloring called for in the cookie recipe equaled a whole little squeezie-tube of food coloring. So. Much. Food. Coloring. But what I really liked about the recipe is that it’s supposed to be for 10 cookies, which is not a humongous amount of cookies to have to get rid of at the end of the day.

I am pretty sure I made my cookies too big by trying to use a 1/4-cup measuring cup as a scoop. Then I started using my hands, and, well, I wish I had three hands at the time, cuz I would have loved to have taken a picture of my hands covered in dark blue sludge.

So I figured if I made my cookies too gigantic, that they should stay in the oven longer, but this was a bad move, as my cookies ended up with an odd crispy crust on the bottom, with the tops of the cookies remaining fluffy and cake-like. Oops.

I have never made frosting before, so that was pretty fun. It actually tasted pretty good, even though I didn’t have time to sift the powdered sugar. After hiding the frosting in the fridge overnight with a sign on it that said, “Top Secret. Eat and Die,” I feel like I can taste the grainy-ness of the sugar. Boo. I hid the cookies in the craft room under a poncho. While wrapping Manda’s presents, I opened every window in the house to try to get rid of any cookie-baking smells or suspicious heat from the oven. It was actually pretty lucky that we had dinner with Manda, because Hairy had not much reason to poke around in the fridge, where there was a carton of BUTTERMILK <– very suspicious. At 7am, I frosted them and set them out by the coffee maker, only to realize, how truly hideous my cookies ended up.

Here is my friend Angel’s take on the matter:

AHAHA! I love her.

Well, now you can see why I don’t cook. *salute*

I watch a lot of TV. I like having it in the background while I work. Not all of it is good, but not all of it is bad.

Have you guys ever seen Catfish the TV show on MTV? Did you see Catfish the movie?

If all of this sounds like a mumbojumbo, here’s a quick recap. Catfish the movie came out a few years ago, and was allegedly a documentary about a guy who fell in love with a girl online and decided to go meet her, and his brother went along and filmed the whole thing. But she turned out to not be who she claimed to be… They kind of promoted it as a thriller, which was weird, but maybe genius, I dunno. The team who shot/produced the movie is the same team who does the Paranormal Activity movies, so that sort of makes sense. Anyway, there is a guy who explains at the end of the movie what the whole “catfish” reference is about:

“They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin. ”

Catfish the TV show is about the guy from the movie, Nev Schulman, and his buddy Max, traveling around the country and helping other people meet their internet bf/gf’s in person for the first time. The big concern is that people are not who they claim to be, and on this show, they usually are not….

What I like about the show is that it doesn’t demonize the people who lied. Nev tries to find the silver lining, to explore why a specific person did what they did, and to even still foster a friendship between the two people.

As a super introvert, I have met a lot of people from the internet, starting from good old Teen Chat rooms on AOL. I can’t say that I’ve ever had an exciting catfish experience, but it makes me laugh inside to think about meeting my buddy Alek in 1994 and finding out he was a 40 year old woman named Cheryl.

Here is my favorite episode so far, Episode 6, Kya and Alyx.

Oh gosh. Sorry I haven’t blogged for a bit. I have been busy doing a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make for very interesting blogging or photos since it all kinda has to stay under wraps for now.

Some secret stuff:

– I just submitted fresh new art for Yummy You! 2013-2014 school planners. Stay tuned for that! I’m hoping we can stock them in our online shop!

– I just agreed to contribute a new pattern a super top secret book project with a deadline before the end of January. I gotta get crackin’ on that after I…

– Finish and submit my TWO new patterns for February for Michaels.com

– There are also some super top secret exciting Yummy You! collaborations I have in the works with other fun brands.

– I’m taking a quick trip to L.A. next week for a dream meeting. I hope one day I’ll be able to announce something from that.

So the only visual I can share right this second is this:

Manda and Hairy’s birthdays are a day apart and this week! Manda chose an afternoon of archery for her bday activity, and Hairy chose bowling. Are we so old and nerdy or what!!!

Anyway, it was clearly important for me to carefully and thoughtfully create some professional-looking graphics to accompany their Facebook events.

I know you didn’t want to miss out on this work of photoshop genius.