Here’s a quick snap of a fun custom order I just completed. She wanted crocheted cup cozies to store her corn dog pens in, so we met up downtown so she could give me her glasses!

Happy mid-month! It’s giveaway time, and also time for me to say thank you to all my wonderful sponsors! One lucky winner will receive:

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Fully moving into my new craft space – since switching it to my dining room –  has been kind of a process of fits and spurts. One of the last things I needed to do was hang my art, but it never really seemed that pressing and important compared to other things on my to-do list. However, a camera crew is coming through soon, and this prompted me to ask Manda to help me hang everything.

I’m not a really good spatial organizer, and also, I don’t really care so much, so I asked Manda because that kinda stuff is really important to her, and I figured her opinion on how to arrange everything would be helpful. We decided to start with my BANANA collection (which is looking kinda puny and sad right now….. I NEED MORE NANNERS).

After breaking the ice with the nanners, we started creating other vignettes until they all sort of melded together.

These are just quick iPhone photos that I snapped. I know my house is super cluttery, but that’s just sort of the way I am: not a minimalist, and always working on stuff!

Manda did all of the hammering and everything, and since there is a table in front of the wall, she did some crazy stretching  and lunging to get all the nails in. That’s what BFFs are for! She was like, “How do normal people hang art!?” And I was like, “I dunno. THEY HIRE SOMEONE.” It’s not perfect, but there is a definitely a good feeling in the room in real life.

Once I get everything done in there (need to hang some curtains to hide ugly things like storage and supplies) I will definitely film a room tour for YouTube! I think I want to crochet a cozy for my desktop monitor, too!

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that 2 weeks ago, I filmed some crochet videos with Creativebug in their studio, which conveniently, is also in San Francisco! Creativebug is a how-to/crafty website that is subscription-based. It’s only $4.95/month for access to all the classes on the site. That is pretty nuts, if you ask me! All the videos are high quality, beautifully edited, shot from various angles, and taught by awesome instructors. Hopefully my presence does not lower the bar on that instructor part :P.

They pulled items from my craft room to dress the studio. Some of what you see there in the background will be projects in my book :). I don’t think that the projects I wrote and filmed for them are top secret, but they haven’t posted anything to their Instagram yet, so I won’t until they do! My classes will be available in 2016, and I will definitely let you guys know when they start rolling out!

I was super nervous about it all before going in. Usually when I film tutorials for YouTube, I’m just by myself. If I say something stupid, I can edit it out (or keep it in). If I have to say something 100 times to make it sound right, nobody cares. If I start a project at noon and can’t finish filming until midnight, no big deal. I can angle and adjust my camera or laptop around a window or light until I feel like I don’t look gross. I am in control of all these things, but when someone else’s camera (or 3 cameras, rather) are on you, and there’s a schedule, it’s kind of a lot of pressure and also hoping you don’t look like a bridge troll!

I did have a few moments where my brain stopped communicating with my mouth, and all sorts of random weird things would come out, but the crew was really awesome and patient, and the whole experience was really fun. It was definitely hard work, especially for a night owl and a hermit, but the people at Creativebug made a huge difference. They have an amazing team!

One of my infamous stories is that many many years ago, I was asked to appear on HGTV for the show Uncommon Threads. I have always HATED seeing myself on camera, have always felt extremely not-cute because I only have one cute angle, and I said HECK NO!! Everybody was mad at me, but I was steadfast. No. Appearing. On. TV. EVER. At least HGTV asked if I could send some samples for a short segment, so my work got to be on HGTV, just not my face. Doing my stupid vlogs – and now my Youtube tutorials – allowed me feel more comfortable with being in front of a camera and sort of comfortable in front of somebody else’s.  I’ve never felt like I was a natural for videos or even teaching in general, but I tried really hard to get better at it (smile more!) and feel better about it, and now when I’m asked to appear on camera, I’ll usually say yes, but still cringe when I watch them. I’m not saying I’m going to actually watch my own Creativebug videos, so I’ll leave that to you guys :P. Baby steps!

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A few behind-the-scene moments:

1. I GOT VERY HOT AND SWEATY. Which means, my hands got sweaty. Which means, someone got powder for ol’ sweaty-palms over here. I’m a lady, through and through. When one of the camera guys said, “Hey do you want some powder?” I was like, “Is that a hint, like when someone offers you gum?”
2. Creativebug shares an office space with Crunchyroll. They have giant wicker-y pieces of furniture which were apparently NAP PODS, and I forgot to ask someone to take a picture of me in one.
3. I hardly ever work with a stitch marker, and I just count in my head, but I wanted to use one in the videos to help beginners, and there were a handful of times that I had to be like, “STOP. I FORGOT TO USE A STITCH MARKER THAT WHOLE TIME.” My bad.
4. Sometimes one of the camera guys who would have an itch, like on his belly, and while talking about crocheting, I could see him scratch his belly REALLY SLOWLY so that it wouldn’t make any noise, and it was so hard not to look at that or laugh about it because it was right in front of my face.
5. Loud noises we’d have to stop rolling for: office dog-barking (you know I just let the dog barks slide when I shoot at home), office laughter (NO LAUGHTER ON MY SET), construction sounds (welcome to downtown SF).
6. The bathroom was on the opposite end of the studio where I was shooting, and the floor is REALLY LONG. As a visitor, I was supposed to have a badge, and I needed this badge to go to the bathroom, because I passed the front desk. I would be like, “Oops, I forgot again,” and the desk guy would always be like NEXT TIME. Also, I never had any pockets, so when I’d go to the bathroom in the middle of shooting, we put my mic cord and everything in a ziploc bag. So I had my bathroom badge and my bathroom baggie.

Hope you have a happy Halloween!! Here’s my super quick and dirty “costume.” Years ago, I asked one of my crochet elves Lizi to help crochet me some green elephants to mimic elephant topiaries. I always wanted to do a little Edward Scissorhands-inspired photo with crochet hooks on my fingers, but it was one of those projects that always took a backseat to more important things. I finally took about 20 minutes to snap some iPhone photos and sloppily Photoshop some images together. It’s just for fun. Maybe one day I’ll try to do a better job of it! 😛 I do really really really like topiary, though!

I’m actually staying in tonight. I had a really long and tiring week, crocheting on camera, which I’ll tell you guys about next!