Congratulations to Sheng, Abbie and Jeanny!
Sheng, you’re getting the TechTote Tutti Frutti. Abbie, you got the TechTote Slim! And Jeanny, you’re going to get a custom pair of earrings made by me. 
I’m e-mailing the winners separately to get your info so your prizes can be shipped to you. Thank you all for joining, and on to another year of curliness!
Can you believe my very first post on this blog was a year ago today?
I can barely believe it myself! When I started writing for The Girl With A Curl (GWAC) I merely just wanted an outlet to do that—write. Over the past year, though, this blog became more than just a repository for words. It became a creative mechanism that prompted me in surprising ways to cook, sew, decorate and craft more than I ever have in all my years as a crafter. I used to think maintaining the blog would be chore, but I’ve often found that if I didn’t have GWAC, I don’t think I’d have my marbles all together. 
To celebrate my first year in the blogosphere, I’m thanking all of you who have dropped by to read a curly post or two over the past 365 days with some awesome prizes. Thanks to my fellow curly girl and talented friend (of over 10 years!) Via Perlas, I have two new products from her uber cool TechTote line for the giving! Via’s laptop bag and sleeve designs are both inspired and functional, and are equal parts useful and yummy!
First up is the TechTote Tutti Frutti. Made of sturdy polycanvas with a detachable padded sleeve, outside pocket and inside compartments for power supply, pens and other knick knacks. For 13- up to 15-inch non-widescreen laptops.
My next prize (which I want for myself!) is the brand-new TechTote Slim, a handled laptop sleeve made entirely of canvas and lined with sweet pink canvas. Fits a 13-inch laptop.
A third lucky winner will get a pair of earrings handcrafted by me in his/her colors of choice. They’ll be custom-made in either silver or gold, and I have beads and gems coming out of my curls, so we can talk about whatever you’d like when you win! Here are some samples of earrings I’ve made in the past, to give you an idea of all the curly possibilities.
For a chance to win any of these, just leave me a comment on this post, and I’ll draw a winner randomly on March 29, 2009 at 10:00 p.m. PST. If you’d like to carry on celebrating my Curlyversary in your neck of the world wide wods by telling your friends about it through your blog, I’d appreciate it, but it’s not necessary for you to join the list of hopefuls.
Here’s a list of my Top 5 favorite posts from GWAC. Feel free to revisit them with me as I celebrate a great, curly first year!
1) Kalamay
Good luck to all and thank you from me and my curls!
Watch this space tomorrow for some exciting news.
See you in 24 hours!
Stay curly in the meantime.
We could call it the One-Hour Blankie, but we don’t want people to think we’re not spending enough time over the new crafty gift for their precious bundle! This project is so quick and easy, it’s almost embarrassing. I made it for my friend Bona, who we threw that Baby Bump Surprise Party for. (Go HERE if you want to see the cute favors and cupcakes we made!)
What you’ll need, as seen above:
- Cute fleece material
- Satin quilt binding in complimentary color
Curly Notes:
• The binding goes around the blanket, so make sure that your fleece is cut to size so that all the sides, when added, equal to about 8-10 inches less than your binding is long. (You’ll have to account for a bit of extra material as you round the corners.)
• I used Wright’s Satin Blanket Binding. I found this at a local Jo-Ann, and it comes in many colors…
…and many types. The craft possibilities are endless!
What to do:
I didn’t quite have the time to document my own process, but it looked very much like this tutorial on the Wrights website. It was my guide as I made the blankie. If you click on the image below, it will bring you right to the tutorial as well.
I’m sure more experienced sewers can make this in under an hour, but I often get obsessed with mitering the corners perfectly, so that bogs me down. Oy.
Here’s how my blankie turned out!
I gave it to Bona before she went on her maternity leave. I forgot all about it, until last Tuesday when we paid her and baby Joshua a visit. I spied this at a quiet corner in her house, and it gave me warm fuzzies. The new parents are actually using my gift!
Sometimes people say handmade gifts are too much trouble, too much of an investment of time and effort. This one took only an hour, and the returns (warm fuzzies, happy smiles) are priceless.
Here’s to crafty gifts and I hope you get the chance to make one (or two) soon!
We decided to give Häagen-Dazs FIVE ice cream line a shot this weekend. The new series of seven flavors (mint, ginger, coffee, vanilla bean, brown sugar, passion fruit and milk chocolate) is described as a return to old-fashioned ice cream basics because it’s made with only five ingredients: sugar, milk, cream, eggs and whichever flavor a specific variant is. It’s a purist’s dream.
I fell in love with the brown sugar version because it tastes just like frozen leche flan. That comforting flavor of brown sugar reminds me of the syrup that bathes one of my favorite childhood desserts. And the vanilla bean version was nothing to sneeze at either: The flavors were pure, whole and clean.
Häagen-Dazs says this of the newest addition to their family of frozen treats:
All-natural ice cream crafted with only five ingredients for incredibly pure, balanced flavor… and surprisingly less fat!
There was something utterly yummy about knowing that a spoonful of the FIVE was nothing but unadulterated ice cream bliss. Even my favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor (and even the ones similar to those in the FIVE line like vanilla bean) has stuff called Guar Gum and Carageenan in it. The fact that those sound like characters from Star Wars rather than things I should be ingesting is a tad bit scary.
I was all set to declare undying love for the new Häagen-Dazs line. I wanted to hunt down all the flavors, even if it meant going to every grocery store in the city. Gimme ginger! Make room for mint! Whoa, passionfruit!
But then.
After perusing the Häagen-Dazs website I discovered something. Comparing labels and nutritional info for the FIVE variants and the original Häagen-Dazs flavors, I found out that for at least two of the flavors, it wasn’t ALL that different in terms of ingredients.
Original Coffee
Five Coffee
Original Chocolate
Five Chocolate
What gives? An evil marketing plot? Granted, there IS a difference in the fat content of each, but their claim of the FIVE line being new isn’t entirely truthful! Hmmmm.
Oh well. I’m now undecided about declaring undying love for FIVE. While I ruminate on these facts and try to come to a conclusion I can live with, let me take a scoop (or two) of the brown sugar FIVE ice cream, set it on top of a warm brownie, surround it with warm mango cubes cooked in syrup jubilee-style, and dig into it like it was going out of style. Yum! (Hee.)
At the LACMA today to visit my friend Simeen, who’s manning the haft-sin table at the Norwuz (Persian New Year) celebration that takes place next weekend. The haft-sin is a traditional spread of symbolic items to commemorate the new year. Haft-sin means “The Seven S’” as all the items on the table start with the letter S.
Norwuz is also signifies the first day of Spring.
A curly Norwuz to you!
I sort of had this good day with my craft corner—I had gotten all the stuff on it just SO which, really, is a rare occurrence for a crafter. It’s usually controlled chaos, with pieces of fabric in unidentifiable piles, balls of yarn afoot rolling this way and that and spools of thread threatening mutiny. So on that one day when I had time to tidy up and finally set up a corkboard as I’d been planning for months, I had to step back to admire my handiwork and take some snapshots.
I wish I had this massive corkboard for ideas and inspiration, one that would read like a story (or several novellas!) of all the crafty things that I knock around in my head. It would have souvenirs and sketches, swatches and samples, artwork and fashion torn out of magazines. But looking at my humble little corkboard now, I think I rather love it, just the way it is.
You’ll spy my Star Wars Convention pass (if you snicker, I swear I’ll use the Force to smite you!), artwork from the awesome Daniel Lim (who makes those ethereal Fawn Fruits illustrations), a logo from a fashion project, a recent sketch of a wool felt purse with silhouette cutouts and leather handles that I’m dreaming to make and Gillian Murphy of ABT in all her balletic grace. There are also hangtags from my favorite purses (George Gina & Lucy / Hayden-Harnett), a cheery new dress design from Marni, Keira Knightley in green plaid, and a pretend-shaman drawing for protection against things that go bump in the night from my brother. (I’m a total coward and get spooked by the littlest things, so he drew me a sort of anting-anting that’s supposed to guard me from ghosts and ghouls. And because I’m gullible, I believe him and have kept the thing for ages. Haha!) There are other bits and bobs, too: a princess place card, a Chinese ox carving for good luck from my friend Jen, my Instructables.com sticker for winning with the Vampie, an Etsy button, lovely notes and a dragonfly pushpin here and there.
My odd one-eyed pal to the right of the corkboard was designed by Creature Cobbler E. I hope to turn One-Eye into a felt monster someday. I’ll post pics as soon as I make it/him.
And to the right of my trusty Singer are some of my favorite craft mags: back issues of the now out-of-print Blueprint magazines, some Japanese ones called Cotton & Paint that I scored on eBay, an edition of Vogue Japan, FRUITS, Craft, a Martha Stewart, a Donna Hay and a dog-eared, particularly inspiring issue of US Vogue.
What’s YOUR crafty corner like, and what stories does your corkboard tell?
J. | 
03 30th, 2009| 