Flying during these trips is a perfect way to catch up on all my magazine reading. There’s nothing like reading about how to prep a mouthwatering Thanksgiving dinner to take your mind off turbulence.

I’m jumping out of my skin and my curls are frizzing out! I have three great stories to share.

SPOONFLOWER NOW OPEN TO ALL

Spoonflower is a genius project: a website that allows you to upload fabric designs and have them printed for you. The site was beta-testing in May 2008, and would only print fabric by invitation. I signed up, wishing, hoping I’d get an invite. I thought it was too good to be true! I finally got an email that made me squeal, because it said this:

We are writing to thank you for signing up for the beta version of our site, but more importantly to thank you for your support and help as we have tried to turn a fabulous idea — affordable, on-demand fabric — into a real, functioning company. It’s not that we don’t still have a lot to learn (note that the site still says beta), but once you have over 10,000 people signed up as testers you may as well open it up to everyone.

My mind’s spinning. The possibilities! Girl With A Curl dishtowels, anyone?

JAY MCCARROLL DESIGNS FABRIC FOR FREESPIRIT

Project Runway Season One winner Jay McCarroll has cobbled two fabric collections together for FreeSpirit Fabric Designs. I’ve been kind of stalking Jay online because he was my favorite contestant from that season of the show, and partly because he and I share the same name! (I’m silly like that.) His two lines (Woodland Wonderland and Garden Friends) are whimsical and remind me of printed Japanese fabric.

Jay says:

My mother had a delicious hall closet stocked with remnants of fabrics and tins of buttons and bags of yarn. This was my favorite place in the house.

It would be mine, too!

SATC- IT AIN’T OVER

And to put the FAB in these Fabricated News tidbits, did you hear about the definite sequel to the Sex And The City movie? I admit that, even as a fan of the show, I have my doubts. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’d enjoy all the new fashion that’s bound to be in the movie but, story-wise, what more can they possibly write/tell? Maybe, then, I should just prepare (but not expect) to be pleasantly surprised?

And since I have quotes for the two previous stories, I’ll end this with of my favorite ones from Carrie Bradshaw (a curly girl herself!) :

Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been given, and accessorize the outfit we’ve got.

You have a fab day, folks.

Nothing beats getting off work and getting sloshed on a cup of tea and a good book as you wait for a friend in a coffeehouse.

Currently getting drunk on Sarah Addison Allen’s “Garden Spells.” Enchanting and cheesy in all the right places. I’ve been sucked in because the main character runs a catering business and uses edible flowers and other crops she grows herself (rumored to be magical) to bake and cook with. This book is like Laura Esquivel, Alice Hoffman and Joanne Harris all sharing a pot of Earl Grey together.

Hope all your hours are happy today.

So, remember that post where I explained how absolutely infatuated I am with fabric by Marimekko?

Guess what I found out as I trolled the web at 2 am in San Francisco (I was there for work) because I couldn’t sleep in my blasted hotel room?

That the famous Finnish textile-arts company has teamed up with Avon for these gorgeous, limited-edition face and eye palettes.

And that they’ve also teamed up with Manolo Blahnik for a Marimekko-themed line of shoes.

It may have been the wee hours of the morning when I unearthed these pieces of news, but my eyes were THIS BIG while I was reading them, and my heart was racing. It’s like, somewhere in the dungeons of that design house in Finland, someone had read my mind. (Well, except for that third shoe on the right. It looks like a cow sat on some pink bubble gum!)

Have you heard the news? Julia Child was apparently an operative for the CIA before she became The French Chef.

According to NPR.org:

The National Women’s History Museum exhibit, Clandestine Women: The Untold Stories of Women in Espionage, also features the story of another unlikely operative, Julia Child.

Decades before becoming a famous chef, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services. (The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA.) She was assigned to solve a problem for U.S. naval forces during World War II: Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting them off and warning the German U-boats they were intended to sink.

“So… Julia Child and a few of her male compatriots got together and literally cooked up a shark repellent,” that was used to coat the explosives, McCarthy says.

I love her! Can you imagine the kind of espionage tactics she may have employed? The secrets in her souffle, the mysterious meanings in her marinade?

With this news, I’m eagerly anticipating the release of the movie Julie & Julia, based on the book of the same name. The movie’s being directed by Nora Ephron and will star Amy Adams as Julie Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child (hmmm). The book, as you may know, is based on a blog by Julie Powell, who endeavored to make all the recipes in the famed cookbook Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, and posted tales of her culinary adventures online. I think it was one of the first blogs that saw the light of print.

I, on the other hand, have a hankering to cook something very French all of a sudden. Like a clafouti with fresh cherries, or a beautiful quiche with summer vegetables. Ok, now. Need. To. Stop. And. Sleep.

Zzzzzz.

Yawn, good night, all. Happy weekend.

You could be in Vickie Howell’s next book!

And I have to tell you that the DEADLINE’S TOMORROW (AUGUST 15)!

I only found out about this today, so I apologize for the short notice. Still, there’s enough time to cobble together a profile about yourself as a crafter. If yours gets chosen, you’ll be featured in a book Vickie plans to put together called Craft Corps, which hopes to “…focus on the community perpetuated by craft and the designers and hobbyists who feed it.”

Vickie is the uber cool, ultra-hip author of Knit Aid, Not Another Teen Knitting Book and New Knits On The Block. She’s also the host of a knitting TV series called Knitty Gritty on the DIY Network.

Here’s Vickie’s call to crafters:

As part of the content, I’m hoping to include 50-60 short profiles of crafters of all types. If you knit, crochet, embroider, decoupage, paint, sew, bead, tat, work with ceramics, collage, etc.—I want to hear from you! Whether you’ve found success selling your handmade sock monkeys on Etsy or you crochet chemo caps for charity, I want to know who you are, what you craft and why you do it.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE PROFESSIONAL CRAFTERS (in fact, it’s preferable as the book’s other content will focus on that)!

I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to receive e-mails from people all over the world, sharing their favorite memory of crafting, what crafting has done for them or what got them started and how they’ll never stop. These stories–from hilarious craft mishaps to touching crafty life stories– have inspired me to collect more to share with the public, handmade community.

If you’re interested in possibly being a part of Craft Corps, please fill out the following questionnaire, cut and paste it into the body of an e-mail, and send it to: craftcorps@gmail.com as soon as possible (but no later than AUGUST 15th.)  If we’re able to use your profile, an editor will contact you directly with more info.

Thank you so much for participating! xo, Vickie

Craft Corps

Crafter Profilee Form

Name:

Age:

Location:

Profession (If you’re in school just put what level of student, ie College Student, Middle School Student, ect.):

Craft(s) of Choice:

Blog (if applicable):

Memory, Story or Anecdote related to crafting in your life (no more than 250 words):

It’s easy and painless! Here’s mine, if you’d like an example.

Name: J. Ana Fuentes Flores
Age: (Aha! I’m not posting this!)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Profession: Copy Editor
Craft(s) of Choice: sewing, quilting, jewelry-making, crochet, knitting, embroidery, fabric arts, baking and cake decorating
Blog (if applicable): www.thegirlwithacurl.com

My Crafting Anecdote (248 words):
I’m the 36th grandchild of a quilter who lived to 102 years old. Growing up in the Philippines, I watched my grandmother piece her pinwheels and Dresden blocks on a manual sewing machine until she was about 98. Many of her 12 children were crafters in one way or another, and most of her 36 grandchildren, especially the women, followed suit. All these numbers convey how, as the youngest grandchild, I often felt dwarfed by the crafting skills of the women in my family. I couldn’t start a project without thinking about how precise Tia Deding’s piecing was on her latest fan quilt, or about the delicate hand-drawn threadwork of Tia Etta’s table napkins.

For a long while, I was stumped, too intimidated to follow in their footsteps.

It was only when I came to the States five years ago that I welcomed my crafter self. As an immigrant, I came here with very little STUFF to remind me of an old life: some photographs, an old journal or two. In those early days of patching together a new life, I discovered what WAS rich in me: a history of hands picking up needles, quilting, knitting and purling, bending the will of fabrics. I finally embraced being cut from the same cloth as all the crafter-women in my family. Crafting, in all its forms, became my new home. I hope I live a full, long life just like my grandma, crafting to the groove of my own needles.

If you craft in ANY way, do it! And good luck to you!

Yes, guilty as charged. I stayed up past 1 am to finish reading Breaking Dawn. The Twilight book series is finally over. It was bittersweet, those final moments with the book, with me in bed in a ratty old nightgown (Ross, it’s the white one your Lola made) and a flickering book light. So today finds me prowling the net for a vampiric fix for my fangirling, and these were “exactly my brand of heroin.” All these are on zazzle.com, designed by crazies like me (I’m too chicken to design anything myself!) (Those Twilight cupcakes are from Cupcakes Take The Cake.)

Which one’s your favorite?

I have to say, that last book made me squeamish. All that talk about sipping blood through a straw and half-vampire babies eating themselves out of wombs has cured me of the need to eat anything that breathes. I’ve been eating nothing but Skyflakes crackers, vegetables and fruit for the past three days now. Does this mean I’ll lose weight? Haha. Maybe, MAYBE this means I should go make a vegetarian quiche or something. Or when my stomach can take it, a tart with fresh blood oranges would be OME-lovely.

Oh. My. Gulay.

How cute are these? Gah! Pure crocheted genius.

I came across these via a Cinematical.com post sent to me by my brother. I mean, my Dark Knight anticipation is already reaching a fever pitch, and then this! Deadcraft’s creativity almost made me keel over.

She has even more fascinating dolls on her Etsy shop. Please go there, so you can gawk the way I did. And, AND, she’s from Manila!

My favorites:

Edward Cullen, from Twilight

Mr. Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice

Yoda, from The Greatest Movies Of All Time (ok, getting carried away now…)

Dead, if you ever read this, isa kang henyo.

Lumping all these together in a mishmashy, hodgepdogey post, because they’re all bits ‘n pieces of good things that I’ve kept in a virtual pile. Time to weed out the good ones and share!

1)    Lotta Prints
My brother’s been on my case forever about going to a basic printmaking class because of my fascination with fabric patterns and design. I’ve decided to see if I like doing prints myself by taking baby steps with this book! I love Lotta Jansdotter and can’t wait for this to come in the mail.

2)    Panda Bear Skillet
This reminds me of Ross, because she has a panda trash basket, and I think this will be happy in a kitchen with a trash bin like hers! It’s adorable. I can see myself making scrambled eggs with chives in it for breakfast.  Interested? Get it from Fred Flare.

3)    Childhood In A Bottle
There’s a European deli called Sainsbury across the street from my office. Oddly, it has all these confections and such that I grew up with. Stuff like Smarties chocolate candy, Violet Crumble, and Horlicks, which I discovered last week. Oh joy! I had to stop myself from eating it all, straight from the bottle with a spoon!(By the way, I don’t remember it ever being marketed as a sleep aid when I was a kid.)

I also discovered that the malt-candy version is still alive and is available online. Lord help me.

4)    Ticonderoga Sensematic Pencil
It looks like it’s the standard-issue yellow-barrel kind, but it’s actually made of plastic. And, get this, it has something called a Sensematic tip, which is just like a mechanical pencil’s tip except it’s “intelligent” and always stays sharp, with no need for the whole clickity-click action at the other end (they call it an “automatic-feed” pencil). I love this review of it by “malfouka” on Amazon:

I don’t know where these people get off calling this a pencil! A pencil has to be SHARPENED. This so-called “pencil” can’t be sharpened, the “lead” just comes out automatically. I don’t what this world is coming to, first you have computers and now THIS!

5)    And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon
I want this for the office because I eat cereal for breakfast at my desk (sad, I know) and I hate wasting the disposable paper bowls that the office supplies. Thanks to Nina D’ Lizard for introducing the Uncommon Goods store to me. (Ms. Nina, the summer sale on the site is on, but you probably already knew that!)

If you can, head over to the Uncommon Goods site for other goodies like this awesome Udon Bowl.

Have a curly rest of the week, folks!

I had to laugh when I read about the movie Namets! (which means “Yum!” in Ilonggo, a Filipino dialect), soon to be debuted at Cinemalaya 2008. The chuckles are because I just wrote a post on a feast in the making for an upcoming all-American holiday. Just as I pictured how my Peach Pie’s crust is going to turn out, the trailer below fed my hungry (and homesick) eyes with images of native pastries lovingly done by hand in Negros, where I grew up. How truly strange and wonderful to be a baker from both worlds.:)

Carla Gomez of the Visayan Daily Star says this of the movie. (Here’s the full article.)

“It’s the most Negrense film that I have ever known.”

That is how Negrense director Jay Abello yesterday described the movie, “Namets!,” that he is currently filming in Negros Occidental.

The main character of the film is the food of Negros Occidental, it is filmed entirely in the province, more than 70 percent of its cast and crew are Negrenses, and the dialog is in Ilonggo, Abello said.

“Namets! is a colorful celebration of food as well as love, and the love of food above all, which is central to being Negrosanon, and being Filipino,” Palanca Award winner Vicente Groyon, who wrote the script, said.

“Every region in the Philippines has a cuisine unique to it, and the island of Negros is no exception. Forget your diet if you’re planning to visit – from piaya to chicken inasal to guapple pie to kinilaw, Negrosanon food is irresistible,” Groyon said.

If any of you catch this, let me know if it’s worth seeing.

Argh. What I wouldn’t give for chicken inasal right about now!