Two weekends ago, Hairy, Manda, Renee and I drove north to the redwoods to go hiking. The neat thing about hiking on the California coast is that you can see big tall redwood trees and also go to the ocean.

I uploaded a video/vlog to my YouTube channel, which you can check out here:

I saw this log on the beach and had to Costanza on it.

Then I insisted that Renee and Manda pose saucily on the same log.

You will not ever be catching Hairy posing on any log, but we did ask him to take photos of the 3 of us, just being… us.

Anyway, after wandering around the beach and watching the waves and the tide come in, we started to drive back to 0ur hotel, and found some neat wildlife on the way! We pulled over to check out this herd of elk chillin’ in a meadow.

We would also later have a very close encounter with a big ol’ daddy elk near the beach, and he was just munchin’ away on some grass and didn’t seem to mind us very much at all.

We decided to drive away from the elk meadow when we discovered we were under heavy banana slug attack (you have to watch the YouTube video if you want to see the banana slug tshirt that Renee made me buy).

The next day, we had a big ol’ breakfast and then went on a short hike and then a long hike.

In one of the groves, we saw an old “save the trees” photo with a bunch of serious people holding hands around a tree, so we attempted to re-create this ourselves.

Pretty much what you’re learning here is that the trees need to be saved FROM US.

Our second hike involved a waterfall, and I don’t think I got very many photos of it, just video, but here are Manda and Hairy looking very adventurous.

After this hike, we drove to a different beach, where we saw two sea lions pretty close to the shore, ducking in and out of the water. It was really cute! I unfortunately could never time my video correctly to catch one for you guys!

There are some other hiking stories that I talk about in my video that I didn’t get photos of to post here, like the other animal encounter we had, and why we eat kipper snacks on long hikes!

Hi guys! Some of you have been writing to me and asking if everthing is ok after last night’s earthquake, and one of you suggested that I maybe just write a quick blog entry :).

All is good! Nothing even fell over. It wasn’t the strongest earthquake I’ve ever experienced, but it was definitely longer than the average rumble. This one was a 6.0 (I think? I didn’t check again today) out of Napa, which is a little bit north of us here in San Francisco.

The dogs were a bit scared apparently, but everything is 100% a-ok!

Love you guys!

I’ve been working on a fun re-cap of our trip to the Redwoods last weekend, and I’m also going to launch a new giveaway this week (hopefully) for a handful of crocheted baby Groots, because I don’t intend to sell finished ones, and a lot of you keep asking if I will be, but I do not have permission or a license to do so. Stay tuned!

Cindy, from A Little Geeky, who is one of my blog sponsors this month, sent me this really cute cheeseburger apron to show you guys!

She designed the yummy burger print and sewed up this lil half apron nice and sturdy. It has 3 big pockets, and as you can see, I can fit my iPad Mini in it to run my credit cards at craft fairs!

I can also stick pens in there, or, you know, a real corn dog for when I get snacky.

These are really handy for craft fair of flea market vendors, cuz table-space can be limited and get squishy, and you don’t have a lot of room to spread out all your doodads and gizmos! Now you can just have everything on you, and it’s super convenient!

It ties in the back with grosgrain ribbon. I snapped a photo of that, but it turned out super blurry! Sorry!!

We are currently offering a matryoshka apron in our August blog sponsor giveaway, but the apron also comes in lots of different prints, so you should check out her shop, too!

(p.s. this sweatshirt is by Lazy Oaf from a few years ago. I don’t wear it because it makes me too hot, and it also fits me really weird ((why did I buy a small?!!??))  but I just can’t let go of it yet! It would be a pretty simple hoodie DIY tho, so, I should get on that…)

Hi! It’s the 16th of the month, so it’s time to launch a new blog sponsor giveaway! I know I usually launch these on the 15th, but let’s blame my friend Renee who is staying with me, and we ended up going to lunch and hanging out in Japantown and then running other errands all day/night!

Thanks so much to my generous sponsors for offering us these wonderful goodies! One lucky winner will receive:

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(You have to watch this .gif while listening to Awesome Mix Vol.1) I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last weekend because Manda and our friend Ehren both wanted to see it.  A lot of my friends have been over the moon about it, but I’m really not a comic book person, and the trailer wasn’t really catching my attention. I said I would see it if someone bought my ticket :P.

My takeaway from the movie was that WE ALL NEED A BABY Groot, so here is your free crochet GROOTORIAL! If you haven’t seen the movie, Groot is this tree-like alien who is really big and strong and can grow stuff off his body and is basically like the Giving Tree on steroids.

I don’t want to spoil why there is a baby Groot and why people are going crazy about him if you haven’t seen the movie yet, so go see it and then it will all make sense!

I put pipe cleaners in his arms so that he could “dance.” I tried wiring his body, too, but was running into complications with figuring out how to put stuffing in him AND a wire….plus the pipe cleaner wasn’t really strong enough to support his head and body and pipe cleaner was all I had in the house… so I need to play with that more at some point! Anyway, now you all can have your own baby Groot! And I am sure you guys will each put your own little spin on him!! I used online images of the Funko bobble head as my inspiration, cuz I think it’s super adorable!

Also, here is a step by step video tutorial on YouTube to accompany the written pattern below.

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