Fandom crocheting

Okay, I've been making myself a scarf for the winter (if it ever gets here!). It's a Ravenclaw scarf of Silver and Blue. Yes, yes, the books call for Bronze and Blue, but I like silver better, so there. I'll stick with the movies' interpretation on this one. Anyway, I figure I should make a hat and gloves to go with the scarf. I found a couple of patterns for gloves that I like. No problems there. The problem is the hat.

I thought I'd just go with a generic skully-type. I just came across this site, with instructions for a crocheted Jayne Cobb hat. I'm tempted. Oh, am I tempted. It's just that doing it in yellow, orange and red would totally clash with the scarf theme I've got going on right now. So, maybe in silver, blue and another color? Maybe a darker blue? Of course, I'm trying to stick with all recycled yarns, so that would limit my selection. Also, this particular pattern calls for chunky yarn and I haven't come across a recycled chunky yet. It really should be a simple hat, so maybe I could work it out myself...

Temptation and fandoms. Now, if I could just find a decent winter crochet pattern to bring in Star Trek, Doctor Who and Stargate, I'd be thrilled.

Fearless Vampire Killers

I'm watching Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers.  It has some funny moments, but in general this is a very unfunny movie.  I must just not get this humor.

Cake!

I baked a cake.  It's yellow cake with chocolate funfetti frosting.  It's GF and tastes good!  Betty Crocker has come out with yellow and chocolate cake, brownie and chocolate chip cookie mixes.  All GF and made in a dedicated facility.  Awesome!

Of course, me being the crummy (no pun intended) baker I am, I nearly ruined it.  I put the butter in the microwave to soften it and started mixing the ingredients before I remembered it was still in there! 

Next time, I'm thinking Vanilla-Apple Cake.  Mix our homemade apple sauce instead of water, maybe some dried apple bits added to the batter and top it with the cinnamon apple ice cream topping we sell at work.  I think I need to go down and slice myself a small piece of cake before bed.

I just got my iPod back and it has sound coming from both headphones!  Yay!  Oh, and got my phone fixed, too.  So, now back to writing since I didn't at all yesterday.  I still need to crash some day this week.  I'm so exhausted.

8.4%

NaNoWriMo - 8.4% complete, 4195 done, 45,805 more words to go.

One of the shorts is done.  Two others are started.  I think one is going to be longer than a short story, maybe middle range.  I guess it just depends on what trouble Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson get themselves into.  I'm not yet sure what the mark they found on the chest at Anthony Gethryn's house means, other than a plane ride to another continent.  At some point they or another character from Elysia is going to have to encounter flying monkeys and a trebuchet, though.

NaNoWriMo started

Off to a decent start so far. I surpassed the word goal for the day. We'll see how well I can keep it up. However, I have to go do some chores right now. Ugh! I love laundry, don't you?

Heaven and Earth Designs is evil, I tell you. Evil!

HAED is an evil design company. I found a new pattern I really really really want and Mom already has whatever my Christmas present is on layaway somewhere. WAH!

Except for Celtic Cross, this is just the stuff I like from what they've added in the last month. I need to win the Powerball so I can Stash and S.E.X. and then quit my job and do nothing but stitch and read.

Sanctuary of Knowledge - New top of my HAED wishlist
Audobon - I like this one, reminds me of a Klimt painting
My Pretty Blues - I like the smirk on this dragon
Faux Fabulous - What can I say other than, "It's a frog!"
Fablemaker - I want to cover my walls with every single one of James Christensen's designs!
Tinderbox - I have no clue why I like this one, I just do.
Pescatus Mechanicus - Erin, you have to look at this one! Atlantean Steampunk? Here's the artist's site: Ciro Marchetti
Medusa - I've always felt sorry for her and this is an amazing rendition
Dreams of Gaudi - So maybe Marchetti will join Christensen in my "Everything done by them" list


Mom would love this one: Celtic Cross

Anger = exercise

Found a way to inspire me to go to the gym: get me so furious I can't even relax enough to read or stitch to make myself calm down.  It worked yesterday.

cell phone happiness

My brother got my nephew a cell phone for his birthday. We've been swapping text messages lately and now we're swapping voice messages. I love those little buggers so much, even if my nephew's first conversation with me was him pulling a very successful prank on me.

Lists

I've been seeing 101 lists all over the place and some are extremely profound.  I'd like to make one of my own.  I know I make a list of goals for myself each birthday.  I rarely fulfill them.  I've been working on the damned driver's license forever now.  Things are happening right now in my family life that will probably mean I'll have to get it as soon as humanly possible, though.  More on that after the 1st, which is when all of the information will become available to me and decisions will have to be made.

I keep telling myself the gym is important and it is.  Following a strict Gluten-free diet.  Going back to school and actually making something of my life.  Writing a book.  Publishing it might be nice, but the writing of it most important.  Maybe sell some cross-stitch designs.  Learn ASL.  Relearn German. 

I need to sit down and really think about this.  I wonder what it will tell me about myself.

PCStitch woes

Okay, I'm frustrated.  I wanted to do a new design.  Since I now have my computer, I wanted to put PCStitch Pro 9 on it, which is on Mom's computer since this one was acting up when I got it.  The disc has disappeared so I tried to copy the files from one computer to the other and now not even the old version of PCStitch I had on here will work.  Argh!

Time for major fiddling to figure out what's wrong.

Cross-stitch update

I have some pictures to show off.  I have a teeny little finished piece of a scooter that I'm going to make into a magnet using some old Red Barons fridge magnets.  (Name removed to protect the guilty.)  The scooter was in one of last month's British mags, the name of which escapes me at the moment, except that it was supposed to be stitched in pinks.  Ugh!  So, I converted it to greens.

The next pictures are the WIPs I'm actively working on right now.  Herbs & Spices will be going to my cousin for Christmas and should be finished and framed by Halloween.  It's from a very old Cross Stitch & Country Crafts, October 1988, in fact.

This is Crescent Dragon from Joan Elliott's Bewitching Cross-Stitch for my nephew.

And this is Growth Rings by the designer Ink Circles.  It was in one of the American magazines a few months ago.  I can track it down if someone wants to know.  I'm using DMC 4130 and 4140.

Stargate cross-stitch geekdom

One of my fellow stitchers on the LiveJournal Cross-Stitch community made a gorgeous design based on the stained-glass windows from Stargate: Atlantis.  I am so damned tempted to make a large design of the windows myself.  Not like I don't have a million other things to do, right?

Yippee Skippy!

I have my computer back and running!  She's awesome.  I've already done some research at the library and updated my iPod finally.

Now my goal is to clean all the sundry stuff off it and stash it and iTunes on my external hard-drive so my baby runs faster.  Life is good and it's time for me to get off the computer so I can finish cinnamon on my Herbs & Spices sampler.

Stashing

You know, maybe fixing my computer will be a bad thing. Using Mom's once or twice a week or so cuts down on the time I spend looking for more stash. I just made a wish list on 123 Stitch. Eep! It's huge.

But I'll let my family know about it anyway, just in case one of them wants to buy something on it for me. ;p

Saving change makes me happy...

I have enough saved to fix my computer finally! Yay! And it's all saved out of change, which I'll admit to dipping into on more than one occasion. Now to send the computer off on Monday and hopefully see it back here by the middle of next week.

Okay, time to get off the computer and actually do some chores.

We have a new car.  It's a copper Pontiac Sunfire, stick shift.  It'll be interesting to learn to drive on, if not as easy it would have been on the Civic.  I still don't want to learn how to drive.

Test post from mobile phone.

My Dragon ate my car and I had to kill both.

Well, we've lost the car.  It died last night while we were taking the kids home from another failed attempt to play miniature golf at the Red Barn Village in Clarks Summit.  It feels like everything is going wrong lately.  I can't afford to go to Dragon*Con.  I'm going to use the money saved in my special jar to fix my computer.  As for this PIA computer, I just spent an hour or two cleaning caches and getting rid of unneeded programs and such to clean up its performance.

I have a headache.

Beaker - Ode to Joy

You gotta love Beaker from the Muppets.

And just for fun, it's old, but still very cool.

Six Degrees of Star Trek

I've decided I need some sleep.  For the last two days at work, I have been amusing myself and keeping myself from falling asleep) by playing a Star Trek version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".  Strangely and scarily enough, I haven't failed to match a person with Star Trek yet.  I even managed to connect Bela Lugosi.  Bela played in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which has Vincent Price as The Invisible Man, who also played the inventor in Edward Scissorhands with Winona Ryder, who played Amanda Grayson in the newest movie.  So, Bela to Vincent Price to Winona Ryder.  Not bad.

Wendy told me I need a new hobby.  I told her I just need a nap.  I'm just too damned tired to sleep.  I watch too much TV.

Crochet fun stuff

Being newly hooked (no pun intended) on crochet, I've been looking at everything I can do with it. Here's something that looks like fun. It's a crocheted coral reef. briging together awareness of the dismal state of the coral reefs in the world, crochet and mathematics. How awesome is that?

Various amigurumi pages:
Flickr amigurumi pool
Star Trek Voyager cast
Spockboy Sackboy
Star Trek Mirror Universe cast
Harry Potter Trio
A dragon I like
Lemmings!

Iranian elections

Those saying our government needs to get involved in the election of Iran need to read this from Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic.

Bull vs. matador: Bull won

Apparently, a Spanish matador was gored during a bullfight on May 27th. AOL filed it under gruesome sports injuries. All I could say was good for the bull and too bad he missed the guy's heart. In the picture you can see blood all over the bull's hide from the swords sticking out of him. Sounds to me like a little payback was in order.

Star Trek Cross Stitch!

I found something online I really have to share: Star Trek cross-stitch!  She even shared the pattern.

Busy days - work, play and Star trek

I really do exist. Besides work, I've been doing a lot of crochet and glue gunning lately. The crochet for a friend's birthday and Mom's incipient Belle's Blankets and the glue gunning and quilting for a friend's wedding accessories.

Here's a picture of the accessories. I used white, blue and brown ribbon with freshwater button pearls as accents. For the pillow and book I quilted one layer with a design all involved seemed to like from the book 1,000 Great Quilting Designs using DMC 938 and 827. Thankfully, for my sanity's sake, they loved everything...and it was a beautiful wedding, full of laughter - perfect for them.

Here's my version of Dave the Barbarian's pet dragon Faffy. I used the pig design from the book Toys to Crochet and just kind of "winged" it for the alterations I had to make to make it a dragon. Thank the gods for felt. The wings are orange felt in a vague wing-shape stitched onto pipe cleaners and sewn like there's no tomorrow into the back of the dragon. The patches are just single crocheted circles sewn onto his back. Horns are rolled up tubes of felt, sewn like crazy and the eyes, tongue and nose are glue-gunned onto him. Ben really liked it and actually recognized it without any prompting.

As for Belle's Blankets (named after Grandma), Mom wants to start a group of people that make afghans and throws for the vets at the VA hospitals around here. I figure I'll do a massive granny square and use up the rest of some of the skeins of yarn I've managed to collect in the past couple of months. Oh, I also have my Grim Reaper nearly finished. He needs his accessories and a face. I'll take a picture of him when he's finished. For an idea of what he should look like, check out the lower left-hand corner of the cover of Creepy Cute Crochet. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to alter Cthulu to make him into a Ood for Dragon*Con. It shouldn't be too hard. Oh, I also get to try to catch up on my neglected stitching.

Mom broke her ankle and my new camera on Easter. It's healing nicely and I had to buy another new camera, which is regrettably bubble-gum pink but will do what I need it to do. She's healing fine. We got new cell phones and numbers. I've somehow managed to resist killing my co-workers these last two weeks. Did I mention I got my driver's permit on Friday? We'll see how long it takes for Mom to nag me about the lessons. I may have a week's grace. I also saw Star trek on Friday. It was really good. I'm still in a little shock over some things they did with it, but it was really good. Go see it!

Promiscuity and gay rights

Okay, there's a poll out there asking if legal marriage will reduce "gay promiscuity".  Forgive me if I'm asking the wrong question, but when did it ever reduce straight promiscuity?  Some of the straight men I know are bigger sluts than gay men I know.  Seriously, in the case of men, it's still encouraged to have all the lovers you can get away with.  Look at one of the icons of the last century and beyond, James Bond.  How he's walking around without some terrible STD, I'll never know.  Hell, he even got married once.  Of course, we have to assume he would have been faithful to her since she died so quickly after the wedding, but with him, who knows.

Promiscuous people (gay or straight) will be promiscous no matter what laws are enacted.  Separate that issue from that of pure civil rights.  Yeesh.

Costuming Dilemma

I have a dilemma.  I can make one of two costumes for Dragon*Con.    I can either dress as Donna Noble from the the Doctor Who episode "Fires of Pompeii" or Stella Mudd from the original Star Trek episode "I, Mudd."  Donna's costume will be a lot easier to do, especially given the odd fabric I'd need for Stella's costume, but it would be a heck of a lot of fun to randomly point at some poor schmuck and screech out, "Harcourt Fenton Mudd!"  Maybe I can hold off on Stella until next year.  That should give me plenty of time to either find or hand-dye the fabric for the pantsuit and coat.

Anyone have any ideas?

Donna's costume is the one she's wearing when she's about to be sacrified in this trailer.  Stella's costume is on this clip.

Travel snarl

Mom and I got cought in this traffic nightmare yesterday when we tried to take a quick trip down to Bethlehem to visit the Banana Factory.  We drove up 209 after Saylorsburg and tried to get back on 33 too early and ended up traveling 191 down to Bethlehem via Nazareth.  We went home via 22 and then 309.  Oy!

The Shower and DC

Mom and I had a lot of fun in DC over the weekend.  We got in Friday night and just vegged.  We went to the pool where the chlorine in the water stripped out most of my new hair color.  I tried not to let it get wet at first, but couldn't resist going underwater.  Mom likes it better even if I don't.  I like it bright red!

Saturday we went to the Crime and Punishment Museum.  It was really cool.  There's even a puzzle for you to solve while you're touring it.

Mom stayed at the hotel when I went to the shower.  Her costume for me won the best costume contest!  Everyone kept complimenting me on it.  I even managed to stay in the four inch heels for three full hours before having to take them off.  I had a lot of fun.  I can finally show off the reason I was going so crazy about learning crochet.  Amigurumi Sunni and Brian!

My computer is back for the moment!

I love my computer. I actually managed to get it working for the last few days. I love it as much as I hate my mother's computer! I still have to get the powerport fixed, but if I can keep it working until my friend can find the time to fix it, I'll be okay.

I've gotten into amigurumi and have finally managed to figure out crochet. I've only tried it on and off for the last 20-odd years. Mom has tried to teach me a bunch of times. I guess it just took me really wanting and needing to know how to crochet so I could make my cute little dolls. Once I get better at it, I'm going to try to figure out how to make my own patterns for some Harry Potter, Velgarth and Tammy dolls. I guess making sweaters and such just never appealed enough for me to want to learn it right. Oh, the link I found was of amigurumi lemmings!

Mom has pneumonia and is really being kicked in the ass by it.

I've started going back to the gym so I can lose a little bit of weight by Sunni's wedding. I've resigned myself to looking like a 50's style Blob for her shower. According to the pattern we got for the dress, I've somehow managed to balloon back up to size 26, while still wearing sizes 18-20 normally. Between that and trying to find undergarments that might make me look a little less lumpy, I was actually in tears. I've been mentioning duct tape. I think everyone thinks I'm kidding. I'm not.

Migraines, S.E.X. and obit

I hate migraines.  I really hate migraines.  I ended up calling off work today because of one that started yesterday. 

When it finally got to the low-level pain range Mom and I went out to the bank to set up the tax savings account and Mimi's Attic where we spent $40 at a half-off sale.  I bought a design I might make for Sunni's wedding.  I'm going to ask Sheri if she thinks Sun and Brian will actually like it first, though.  If she does, then I'll play around converting colors to bronze and blue.

I've been staring at the screen for about an hour now and my eyes are starting to go a little buggy, so I'm off in a minute.  I just want to mention one thing.  Julia Guddy died on Wednesday.  She was Grandma's roommate at Allied when she died in November and was always really nice to her and concerned about her.  Julia's daughter made a very nce blog for her mom: http://www.juliaguddy.blogspot.com/  She was a nice lady.

family

I do still exist.  I've just not been on the computer for at least a week.  I just had to wade through 478 emails. 

My niece and nephew have been in since before Christmas.  Mom and I drove out to Missouri (she drove, I rode) to pick them up.  We're doing it again on Friday when they leave.  I know I'm going to miss them.  I love having them here. 

My brother is talking about the possibility of them moving back here in the summer for good.  I hope it happens, the school they're in right now is terrible.  They haven't even been taught cursive writing yet and my niece is not reading at the level she should be or speaking correctly. 

If it does happen, I'll be watching them after school on the days my brother is working.  He's talking about putting them in the school my aunt teaches at.