I think I have split personalities. At least when it comes to my personal style.

See, most of me likes kid stuff. I’m super-nostalgic and get a lot of joy from surrounding myself with toys and games that remind me of my childhood. I grew up wearing clothes other people described as “funky”: tacky plastic rings as big as my fist, polyester bowling shirts, patent leather sneakers, corduroy pants when tight-rolled jeans were cool. I’ve grown up a little since then, but I still like weird t-shirts, earrings made out of Barbie shoes, my bedspread covered in giant jewel-toned polka-dots, and my record player that looks like the hood of a 1950s car.

But a little part of me likes beautiful things, too. The brown brocade curtains my roommate and I picked out for our apartment, the vintage mink stole Kamran bought me two Christmases ago, lace dresses worn with crinolines, pearls and pearls and pearls. Part of me yearns to be someone people would describe as “put together”. But I’m too scared of being generic to shop for sweater sets and riding boots.

I reconcile these two sides of myself by buying frilly party dresses from little girl stores like Forever 21 and ModCloth, but I remain torn. When I go to all of these nice restaurants with Kamran, I feel underdressed in even my poufiest taffeta number. But when I’m out on a Friday night in Williamsburg or the Lower East Side, I feel overdressed in my satin-trimmed “Real Housewives of Orange County”-looking shirts. When I see older women on the bus trying to look like Betsey Johnson, though, it just seems so pathetic. I don’t want to still be wearing teenager jeans when I’m 50.

I want to look like the kind of girl who lives in NYC, dates a lawyer with a Ph.D., and goes to all of the best restaurants but can still hang out at a $10 rock show in the back of some ugly bar. Does that have to involve leather pants and six-inch stiletos? If so, I’m clearly a failure, because I tried to buy expensive-looking jewelry from Etsy for myself yesterday and ended up adding this to my cart:

Can my “personal style” be a mix of polar opposite things?

I recently decided that I like pretty things and went on a mission to find new craft/style/design blogs by women who suit my not-lame sensibilities. I like cutesy, and I like pink and sparkly, but I like them to be presented ironically, and I can’t handle middle-aged women calling themselves hipsters while living on the Upper West Side and wearing J. Crew.

So Liesi of the blog Too Crewel caught my eye, with her asymetrical haircut and her bearded boyfriend (or formerly bearded, at least) and her clever typography. Oh, yeah, and her crafting skills ranging from embroidery to crocheting to cooking, which somehow manage to interest me even though the closest I get to crafting is filling the refrigerator full of magnets to annoy my roommate.

This month, she gave sponsorship spots to Cassie and me and introduced us to her readers in this post, so I thought I’d return the favor.

Click on the button to check out Too Crewel!