Renegade L.A.

I have been wanting to go to the uber-cool Renegade Craft Fair since I went to a screening of Handmade Nation last year. You can watch a clip here. And so I finally went last week in L.A.! It was great to go and be surrounded by clever and creative people selling their wares and walking around in a dirt lot looking at good, fresh craft. Mainly, I saw tons of letterpress stationary people, some sewing, some great printmaking and a whole bunch of mild-mannered and commonly bearded weirdos- weirdos just like us (me and my husband.) Weirdos in the normalest of ways. Minivan-driving mom and pop creatives. Same-same-different. That felt good. I didn’t really go to shop- more just to soak it in. But I did find a few great people. I really liked this bay area printmaker named Jen Hewett. You can see her etsy shop here. She is lovely and talented and her images tell simple, graceful stories. I bought cards like these:

And I almost forgot to mention the bestest part of the day. After Renegade, I wanted to go check out the now-defunct Home Ec craft lab in Silver Lake which was great and the women were so nice and they will still have a web presence (the brick and mortar was killing them.) So, on the way there we were wondering what to eat and I mentioned seeing some sort of a taco food-truck on the Food Network but I couldn’t remember any more than that. I just remembered that no one ever knows where it will be and the company tweets and blogs about their location then people flock to them and wait in line. So, lo and behold, after searching for parking in Silver Lake for way too long, we passed a graffiti-covered food truck followed by long line of very patient folks and my man recognized the name on the back of the truck as Kogi Korean BBQ! The very same truck for which we were wishing! The doors of the universe swung wide on their hinges for us that day. We sat on dirty steps in a parking lot and ate beef and pork tacos- infused with chinese five spice but served on a corn tortilla. If you go, get one of the amazing daily-changing desserts. read more