I really like the idea of making the tools of our trade super cute and fun! You may recall the candy cane inspired hooks Manda and I made a little while ago, and also the blinged out crochet hook tutorial with Elsie. I wish we could keep churning out the candy cane hooks, but they are quite time-consuming to make and sell at a reasonable price. It’s still a fun project you can try yourself, though!

You could also purchase  rainbow plastic hooks, but whenever I use them, I snap them in half. There are also the super cute Hamanaka hooks, but they have the Boye-style crochet hook that I can’t seem to keep any yarn on!  So I stick to my good old metal Susan Bates with the bamboo handle. It’s not PRETTY, but they are my favorite so far.

I still love to think of ways to decorate crochet hooks, though, so the other day, to prep a booth space for Yummy You! at a licensing show, I busted out my nail polish and my washi tape.

I used plastic crochet hooks as a base. I feel like the plastic WHITE hooks are a bit stronger/sturdier than the clear rainbow ones. I covered one (already blue) hook in glitter polish, and I wrapped washi tape around the other and painted the top of the hook with red polish.

Maddy tried wrapping her hook in washi tape as well, but she said she had to take it right off (at least it’s easy to remove!). I haven’t actually tried crocheting with this hook yet, so maybe it’s for decoration only and not for actual usage!

I just thought I’d share some of the hooks I’d modified with you guys for fun :). There are also some pretty cool polymer clay-handled hooks on Etsy you could check out on Etsy for DIY inspiration or purchasing!

Guapo, Manda, and I used to have a Sunday brunch club. I love me some brunch, and sometimes we would try to get together at different places around the Bay Area to brunch together. This was years ago, and now we suck and don’t commit to anything!

My brunchy go-to is eggs benedict. It always seems very extravagant and indulgent to me, and it also reminds me of my dad, cuz he would eat it for breakfast a lot at home!

Anyway, my longing for Sunday Brunch club reminded me to bring back some fried egg brooches in the Etsy shop!

This is my new favorite dress. My new favorite thing for summer is to buy DIY dresses from Etsy made of vintage sheets. You might see this dress a lot. I wanna wear it EVERYDAY!!! Even though the bust part is really bubbly and weird. OH WELL.

I wore this outfit to have lunch with Vivs a few weeks ago at the Ferry Building. It was the first time we had hung out outside of craft fairs. I heart her!

Fun Fact: I have a really ginormous phobia of my dress getting stuck to my butt and revealing my underwear. I often wear bloomers underneath my dresses.

Here’s an EXTREME CLOSE-UP to show the cute Little Miss Delicious necklace I adore. (p.s. I always wondered if polymer clay jewelry could survive the shower. This one can. Bonus for lazy people like me.)

Deets:

Dress: ShopEBV on Etsy // Necklace: Little Miss Delicious // Tights: Pamela Mann on eBay (p.s. I already busted a hole in mine by jamming my thumbs in too deep while putting them on at a later time. I’m a brute!) // Shoes: Doc Martens

I’ve always been sort of AFRAID to collect things.

When I was little, I hoarded A LOT of stuffed animals. At a certain point, I vowed to stop collecting them, because they ended up in big black Hefty bags in the attic, and it made me feel really sad!

In college, I experienced a grand nostalgia for Care Bears and started collecting them on eBay like craycray. I had a book shelf dedicated to them, and at night, they would CareBearSTARE at you creepily and silently in the dark. During a room-rearrange, they ended up on my bedroom floor in a big pile for a while, and when I went to clean up this pile, it appeared that many SPIDERS had made a nice home out of this dark and cozy mountain of rainbow fluff. This only further proved that collecting things led to DUST AND SPIDERS AND YUCKY THINGS.

So, I never had a doll collecting habit, and I’m really careful about collecting too many tchotchkes, but when I saw this collection of Momiji Dolls, Dippy-D, Bakey-C, and Cuppa-T,  I KNEW I HAD TO COLLECT THEM ALL. It’s kind of like …. I WANT TO BE THEM ALL.

It looks like they are available from this site in Canada, but I can’t seem to find them available from a U.S. website. If anyone knows how I can get my grubby paws on these adorable morsels, please let me know!

You guys!! I’m so excited to finally show you the new site re-design!!

Please note that the blog page has a new URL now: blog.twinkiechan.com (it used to be www.twinkiechan.com/blog). The old url automatically forwards to the new url, but as far as your RSS feeds or blogreaders go, you may want to update the link. Sorry for any confusion!

I needed and wanted to change the site design because:

1) The previous design was super cute and fun, but not easy to edit. So, for example, when my book came out, it was not easy to add a new book icon to the animated refrigerator to link to book info. I needed a layout that would be more flexible for me to change around when new exciting things happen that I want to share.

2) For years, Hairy has been hassling me about how having Flash on your site is no good, because people on iPhones/iPads can’t view that Flash. I was always kinda like … “Too bad for those losers!!!” I kid, but you know what I mean. I wanted an animated fridge, and Flashdarnit, I was gonna have one! As luck would have it, this new design does not have any more Flash, but I will always love opening that refrigerator door, animated by my beloved Kei of SuperGood.

3) Some of you may have noticed in the past month that my blog and other parts of my site were giving you an “attack” warning, because my site got hacked. We kept finding the bad code and fixing it, but then new bad code would pop up again! It was an endless cycle of ARRRGGGhhGHGHGH and really made it obvious that it was time to sweep out the old and build the new. (p.s. clicking on the BOOKS link will still give you an attack warning, but my webguy/brobro assures me the bad code has been fixed, so we’re just waiting for it to register or whatever.)

4) Change is good! When I first started my site, I wanted everything pink and girlie and filled with hearts and rainbows. Then, I thought, that everybody’s site was pink and girlie and filled with hearts and rainbows, so mine had to be different. I also tried really hard to sort of make my site unisex, so that dudes wouldn’t be afraid of it. But I finally gave into my girliepink tendencies. Dudes, don’t be afraid. It’s the dawn of a new age.