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Closet core frank jeans + birks + a dive into papercraft
I just finished the Closet Core Frank Jeans! My sweet, thoughtful friend Heather sent me the pattern last week after reading about the Helene Jeans I made, which came out great but are more fitted than I actually wanted (I tend to keep sewing the equivalent of a Peg Bundy skin tight high rise non stretch jean when in actuality I want to wear something loose, classic and comfortable that still looks chic). Even though I literally just made the Helene’s, I didn’t hesitate to start sewing the Franks up right after, with only one quick batch sewing project in… Continue >
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a DesMond backpack for moi + some goodies
Years ago a company gifted me a “knitters’ backpack” that I absolutely adored and used frequently. It was made of a cool gray faux leather, and it had all these smart pockets and neat needleworking accoutrements designed into the pack, like a keychain hook attached to a piece of leather with 1” measurement markings painted on it, a metal yarn threader that would feed your skein from the pocket and through a hole so the yarn wouldn’t get knotted, and holders for a variety of hooks and needles. The gray wasn’t in my color palette but I didn’t care because… Continue >
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burnt soap & Parisian silk
Years ago I used to make all my own soap. I’m not exactly sure why- it wasn’t cheaper than store bought. I think I might have just gotten sucked into some kind of almond mom blog rabbitthole that convinced me that homemade soap was “better” than what CVS had to offer. At the time, I was also making my own natural deodorant, my own shea butter lotions and face creams, and my own sunscreen (zinc-heavy mineral sunscreen was the only kind available in the US market back then, leaving me with an awful ghostly white cast; the recipe I used,… Continue >
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artful things
I have abandoned my beautiful website in the process of piecing my life back together after some big personal shifts, but I haven’t stopped writing! In fact, I have been writing (and illustrating!) more than ever over on substack. The only reason I’m on substack is because people can follow/subscribe to my posts so easily over there, since I never started a newsletter for my website here. Maybe I should do that. I actually don’t love that the only option substack has to support their writers on that platform is a yearly subscription. It would be nice to have a… Continue >
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old chair new clothes
I first learned to reupholster about 10 years ago when we first moved to LA. After living in a pre-furnished home in Vancouver for years and finding myself unable to quench the DIY bug that had taken a firm hold on me, I hit the SoCal ground running and tackled every single project I had been dreaming about for the previous four years- woodworking, interior decorating, upcycling, DIY home goods and artwork, refurbishing vintage furniture, tiling, building- you name it! The (sadly) now defunct Design Sponge did a lovely feature on our home many years ago after we got settled… Continue >
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Snowbunny In the Desert
This is a two-for one post because the garments looked so good together I couldn’t bear to separate them! Let’s start with the jacket, which has inspired more ridiculous stories and posts on my instagram account than I ever imagined. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jasika Nicole (@jasikaistrycurious) The jacket pattern is Simplicity D0899 and I bought it shortly after I moved up to Vancouver this summer. The warm days and cool nights had me wishing I had a lightweight, long jacket that I could throw on over summer dresses, and I thought a linen or… Continue >
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Oslo Coat + Phillipa Pants + No Frills Sweater
Whoah! Long time, no blog, eh?? Excuse me while I get comfy and settle into these old digs… I will not bore you with what a busy, roller coaster of a couple months it has been, but if you are on instagram you will know that I have been busy making and planning and storying,…
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DIY Hair Gel
I have been really getting into instagram stories lately for some weird reason. It’s weird to me because I still don’t “get” IG stories. Maybe it’s because I’m in my late thirties and I’m just now about to enter that period of an adult’s life where your comprehension and appreciation for technology starts to wane, but I just…
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Embrace Octopus Sweater
I used to be pretty active on ravelry.com, taking photos of all my knitted projects and jotting down notes to include in my overview of the patterns and yarns I used, but now that I have my own blog and an instagram account, the effort seems tedious and unnecessary. Unfortunately, the result is that instead of…
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Constellation Quilt
I saw the pattern for this quilt on Cashmerette’s instagram last year and immediately wanted to know more. I looked up the company that makes the quilt patterns, Haptic Labs, and saw that they have lots of different designs, from maps of neighborhoods and cities to bodies of water to constellations in the sky. I…
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TryCuriousity and DIYing Your XMas
Hi, folks! There has been a really long hiatus from this here blog because 1) Claire and I haven’t made time to plan out photoshoots and 2) I have been neck-deep in Christmas present making for the past three months so I don’t have that many makes to share in the first place. I have…
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Quilting! Inspired by Quilting!
Like most of my creative endeavors, quilting is not something that I officially learned how to do. I was living in Vancouver and feeling miserable and bored because of the endless rain when somehow or another Claire and I stumbled upon a little fabric shop called Spool of Thread. It was bright and warm inside,…
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A Walk Down Knittory Lane
I got into knitting almost 10 years ago when I was playing the title role in a musical called Chasing Nicolette at the Prince Music Theatre in Philly. Some time before I was cast in the show, I had been gifted a hardcover knitting book called Weekend Knitting, and I was immediately drawn to the…
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New year, new rack.
COAT rack, that is! (ba dum ching) When we first moved to LA, my wife and I rented a really cute house across from a beautiful, hilly cemetery and started to try and build up our pitiful collection of furniture. We had lived in furnished spaces for our previous four years in Vancouver, and everything…
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DIYing It Up
Thanks to a blog post I read in November of 2012, I was introduced to a new book that had just come out, called The Handbuilt Home, by Ana White. It was purported to be a book that gave easy, comprehensive instructions to make furniture, no matter your experience level. On a whim I put…