Cathy of California tipped me off to the new World Famous Crochet Museum, curated by Shari Elf, on Highway 62 in Joshua Tree. I’ve always wanted to go out to the national park, and never had a chance yet in the year and a half we’ve been living in LA, so now we’re definitely planning…
Last month my friend Alexis and I stopped by ReForm School in Silver Lake for the first time, and within minutes I spotted the Jill Bliss address book I’d been coveting. I also fell in love with a bright, beautiful papier mache bowl from Wola Nani, a collective of women artists in South Africa living…
I got to stop by Susie Ghahremani‘s opening at Giant Robot on Saturday night, which was amazing. Her beautiful paintings were gorgeously arranged on every available wall space (150 is a lot of pieces!), and people were snapping them up at a dizzying speed. I looked at everything and saw that my absolute favorite piece…
It’s no surprise that I love cool handmade stuff, I’m sure, but I haven’t had a chance to spotlight most of my adored pieces over here yet. So I’m doing a new little series: Own It Love It, featuring some of my most-prized crafty things, new and old. I went to Felt Club on Sunday…
After a weekend of back-end updates and migration, etsy is back in its brand-new v2 incarnation! The site has been overhauled and reorganized in a million different ways — I won’t try to cover all the changes, but here’s a thread with some info and a comparison chart if you’re interested. I love etsy, but…
This Saturday night is Susie Ghahremani’s Bird Call opening at Giant Robot — I can’t wait! I love her work, and there will be a lot to see — she’s showing a series of 150 paintings, from “mini to not-so-mini” in scope. Click the link above for a gorgeous sneak peek. The show will be…
Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives! I couldn’t be more thrilled that a woman will be leading the majority party in the House for the first time, starting in January. This LA Times article from 2003 is a fascinating look at her life, from her childhood…
Today is finally election day in the U.S., and I’m on pins and needles wondering about the results tonight, especially on Measures 43 and 44 in Oregon — I got to vote by mail last week. If you haven’t made it out to the polls (or stopped by the ballot drop box, for my fellow…
As the nights get longer and the days get colder, a whole new round of crafty books are popping up — just in time for you to start thinking about all the cool holiday gifts you might want to concoct… or the cozy scarves you want to piece together… or the trash you’re ready to…
I celebrate Day of the Dead every year, but today was really amazing — I spent most of the day on Olvera Street here in Los Angeles, looking at beautiful shrines and colorful Dia de los Muertos trinkets of all kinds, and took lots of pictures. I put them all in a flickr set here,…
This is my first Halloween in Southern California, and I have to admit that it was kind of strange to carve our pumpkin in 80-degree weather this weekend. Andrew handed the design and execution over to me (he did all the scraping out) and instead of a spooky face, I thought — I love so…
I read a really intriguing article in the L.A. Times last week about Derek Luke and how he prepared for his new movie, the anti-apartheid drama “Catch a Fire.” He describes all the intricate work he did to play the role of “real-life South African hero Patrick Chamusso, who, after being arrested and tortured for…