Did you know that the original name for Pac-Man was Puck-Man?

Woo! It's almost Christmas! Which means that it's time to catch-up with any TV series we're behind on so that we can make room in our Sky+ planner for all the Christmas shows and films we want to record. So I'm now completely up to date on Doctor Who (how amazing were Capaldi and Michelle Gomez in those last two episodes? It's a shame the story let them down a bit) and I believe that we're going to tackle American Horror Story tonight and tomorrow.

In non-fandom related life, I'm surprised by how on top of things I am. The Christmas gifts shopping is almost done and the food is completely done. There is a turkey in my fridge as we speak and I am in no way terrified of cooking it because it's the first time I'm doing it all by myself. I'm armed with my mum's stuffing recipe and I'm pretty sure that I'll only have to call her once, in tears because "the turkey doesn't look right and I've ruined it!".

Maybe twice.

Seeing as my shop closed a week ago, I thought I'd be raring ahead with the knitting in all this free time but I've decided to give the shop an overhaul in the new year so I've been busy coming up with new designs. So the knitting has been plodding along at the same old pace.

I really enjoyed knitted the striped colours design for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles square so when I saw that GAL had done a similar one but for the much beloved Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde I knew that I had to do that one too.

Square number 16: Pac-man

I'm really pleased with this square and I love the 'wrong' side just as much as the 'right' side.

I hope to get another post in on Christmas Eve but just in case I don't get a chance (in between all the crying and attempting to cook), have a great Christmas and I hope Santa brings you everything you want <3

When There's No More Room in Hell, the Dead Will Walk the Earth

If you go back to my post about the Arsenal square I knitted, you will see that one of my husband's five favourite things is zombies (seriously, zombies beat me and made it onto the shortlist...zombies!). So I knew that I had to do a zombie square but I had no idea how to go about it. I didn't want to go with a specific TV show or film because that would be more about the film than the zombies themselves. There are a few shuffling zombie cross stitch designs out there that I could have adapted but with only 45x57 stitches, I could've only fit one zombie onto the square and without the others, that's not a zombie - that's the outline of a man walking a little tipsily.

Then I found this little beauty, designed by Hyraea and turned into a cross stitch pattern by carand88. It's a zombie cat! And it's perfect (purrfect?) because I've been looking for a way to represent our cats in this blanket that wasn't too girly.

Obviously, I had to change it slightly so that the design was two colours, which took a little something away from the pattern so I added flies to emphasize the rotting flesh aspect.

Square number 15: Zombie Cat

Weirdly, I think it looks better on the reverse side with the red cat on a green background.

I'm not sure that this was a complete success but my husband likes it and it means that we got our cats on the blanket so I'm happy to leave it as it is.

You wouldn’t last five minutes in a Ninja pizzaria!

Time for square number 14 of the Blanket of Doom and I turned to the Geek-a-long.

I don't know about you but there was a period of time where every single day after school I'd have to watch 'Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles' on TV. It didn't matter how many times I'd seen a particular episode, I'd have to watch it again - you know, just in case I'd missed anything the twenty previous times. And I believe that it was the same for pretty much all the kids of my generation. What do I base that belief on? Probably the fact that  I can name three items of TMNT clothing my husband owns, just off the top of my head. It doesn't matter that we're (apparantly) grown-ups now, the turtles were such a big part of our childhood that we all still love them.

The GAL TMNT squares was one of the ones that first attracted me to the whole blanket project so it had to be done; even if the original plan changed from making a blanket for myself to making one for my husband, it still worked.

Square number 14: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I seriously love this square. When I first looked at it, I thought it would be more difficult than it was. I don't know why; when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that you're just knitting stripes as the contrast colour instead of a solid contrast colour. But even my best friend asked how I did it, then gave a slightly disappointed 'oh', when I told her. I guess it's just one of those things that makes you look like a Master Knitter when actually anyone can do it :D

If There Were No Luck Involved, I'd Win Every Time! [Square #13 and a free chart]

A fair few years ago now, my husband was really into playing online poker. In fact he became a bit obsessed with the game in general. He got some books by the pros and we'd watch it on TV a lot; especially the World Series of Poker. I even bought him a Phil Helmuth bobblehead for Christmas a couple of years ago.

The obsession's waned a bit these days but we still watch the occasional televised match, usually when Victoria Coren-Mitchell's playing because, let's face it, she's awesome.So it was a no-brainer to put some kind of poker-related square into the husband's blanket.

I decided to keep it simple and go for Pocket Rockets and obviously use 'the prettiest card in the deck' as one of them. Unsurprisingly, I couldn't find any poker knitting charts out there so I made my own.

Square Number 13: Pocket rockets (aka a pair of aces)

The cards are a little squat and fat, more square than rectangle, so maybe if I made them again, I'd squish the cards in a little more width-wise. Weirdly though, I quite like them looking squarer, there's something aesthetically pleasing about squares inside a square - but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, if anyone wants to make this, I've added the chart below. It's unaltered from when I originally made it so you may want to fiddle around with it to make the cards more rectangular. If you do use it, please credit me and I'd love to see whatever you've made.

Hey, listen!

I went back to the Geek-a-long blanket for the next square. I was in a videogame kind of mood because we'd just been writing our Christmas lists and I was getting all excited about Santa maybe bringing me Kingdom Hearts 1.5. So I went straight for the vidogame squares and zoomed on the Legend of Zelda one.

Funny story, me and my husband almost got Zelda tattoos this year. It was our 10th wedding anniversary and we wanted to do something special and meaningful and came up with the idea of tattoos. We didn't want actual matching ones but liked the idea of tattoos that were different but linked so our first idea was him getting an 8 bit Link while I got the heart containers. Then we toyed around with each having a different Katamari Cousin pushing a different katamari and eventually settled on and got Princess Bride tattoos (I got The Revenge with 'Inconceivable' and he got the Dread Pirate Roberts mask and crossed swords and 'As you wish'). But it all started with that Zelda idea.

Square number 12: Triforce

I love how bright this square is knitted up in golden yellow and kelly green. It's also nice to have a Triforce chart that's more than just the three triangles that you usually find. Good job, GAL.

The Happy, Froliking Reindeer *ahem*

I've finished that hat I was telling you about (and am now back to the Banket of Doom grindstone) so I thought I'd do two posts today; one for the hat and one for the next square.

Last winter my husband told me about a new jumper that Queens of the Stone Age had come out with "in that knitting type style, you know what I mean". This was before everyone and their brother had printed fair isle t-shirts so he had to pull a picture up on his phone for me and I saw this pretty hilarious jumper.

But I had the feeling that it would be even funnier if it was more pixilated and knit-like or, even better, actually knitted.

Then I forgot all about it until a few months ago when I was looking for a hat to knit for a friend and stumbled across Kat Mcab's Frolicking Deer Hat It was perfect and when I showed it to my husband he got that puppy dog look which means he really wants me to make him something. Of course, I was busy with the blanket and the giant queue of stuff behind it so I couldn't start it until last week when we went visiting the in-laws and I didn't want to take a huge bag of wool with me.

I went with a lovely wine colour and a contrasting silver grey. It took about a week to make as you're basically making two hats in order to make it double-sided. That was probably a good thing because it meant I only worked on the 'parental friendly' side of the hat while at the in-laws.

Here is the finished hat, modelled by my very camera-shy husband.

Parental friendly side of the hat

Non-parental friendly side of the hat

Kat states on the pattern page that this is an XXL hat but I found that the width was fine because the doubling up made the hat very thick and warm. It did, however, make the hat very long which looks good on my husband but I think I'm going to have to find a way to make the hat shorter when I make one for my father-in-law. Of course, because he asked me to make him one based on the fact that he'd only seen the non-naughty side, I'll have to come up with a new pattern for the other side of that hat anyway.

You are a Member of the Rebel Alliance, and a Traitor

I'm still working on the mischievous winter hat for my husband so I haven't knitted any new squares in about a week. At this rate my posting of the squares will catch up with my making of the squares and then I'll be in all sorts of trouble.

As you already know from my previous posting of my husbands five favourite things, he loves Star Wars. The fact that he's a Star Wars and I'm a Star Trek fan is probably the biggest point of contention in our marriage ;) But he did take me to see both of the new Star Trek films at the cinema so I guess I'll go and watch the new Star Wars films with him.

He's pretty firmly an 'Original Trilogy Only' fan and doesn't really stray into the expanded universe of the books and the rest (which turned out to be a good thing when they were suddenly declared not-canon). So when I drew out the design for the Geek-a-long's Jedi Order Square his comment was 'I didn't know the Jedi Order had a symbol'. Oops, I guess that comes more from the expanded universe? I really don't know. So, with all apologies to the Lattes and Lamas' girls, I had to leave that particular design and look for something a bit more recognisable.

To be fair, this is Star Wars we're talking about so it was probably less than 10 minutes of searching before I found Linda's cushion pattern.

Square number 11: The Rebel Alliance

My best friend's husband (who's an even bigger Star Wars fan than mine) usually ignores our BFF crafty squees chats but this time said 'You should make an Empire one too', so I'm counting this square as a win :D

Also, I don't know why the red looks hot pink in the first pic but it's definitely red and not the Disco Rebels insignia instead.

Say It Ain't So

I've been away again, this time visiting my in-laws, which is why I haven't posted anything here for about a week. I also didn't make any squares while I was gone because I didn't want to lug around a huge bag of wool in different colours for different squares - I did take two balls of wool though to knit a (slightly naughty) hat for my husband and I'll post pics of that when it's done.

On the plus side, as a result of being away, I have finally got around to watching the first three seasons of American Horror Story and can now get on with watching season 4.

Okay, back to the Blanket of Doom. When I first mentioned making this, I showed my husband the Geek-a-long page so that he could see examples and he excitedly exclaimed "They've made a Weezer square!". Unfortuntely, he was looking at GAL's Wonder Woman square which also employs the flying W that Weezer use as their logo. He looked so crestfallen when I pointed that out that there was no way I couldn't make him a Weezer square for his blanket.


Square number 10: Weezer

So I basically took the flying W from GAL's Wonder Woman square then, just to completely seperate the kickass band from the kickass superhero, I added an arty circle around the design. A pretty simple square really but I think it's effective.

I knitted it in spring green and baby blue but any colours will work.

This is a design that I made for my own personal use and is not endorsed by or being used by Lamas and Lattes or the official Geek-a-long blanket. I am merely a fan of their project and have decided to make my own version. Don't forget to visit the Geek-a-long page to show your support for the official Geek-a-long blanket project which is raising money for a great cause and if you'd like to donate to that cause then please visit The Child's Play Charity here.

Our Princess is in Another Castle

A double post today, one personal and one stitchy.

On the Geek-a-long they have a Mario mushroom square. I know that Simon would love a mushroom square but, as great as the Geek-a-long one is, I think he'd prefer a more traditional, rounder mushroom from the earlier Mario games. So I researched a few different types of cross stich patterns and made a chart which should work for both knitting and cross stitch. It's a lot smaller than the designs in the other squares but I think that it looks right for Mario.

Square number 9: Mario Mushroom.

I'm very happy with the way this turned out. I wasn't sure how it would look with a white face rather than beige but it looks good.

This is a design that I made for my own personal use and is not endorsed by or being used by Lamas and Lattes or the official Geek-a-long blanket. I am merely a fan of their project and have decided to make my own version. Don't forget to visit the Geek-a-long page to show your support for the official Geek-a-long blanket project which is raising money for a great cause and if you'd like to donate to that cause then please visit The Child's Play Charity here.

London Calling

I haven't posted much this week as we've been away. We went to London for my husband's 40th (yes, the birthday's here and the blanket's nowhere near done; at this rate he'll be lucky to get it for his 41st, lol).

London was amazing. I've only been a few times before, usually on a day trip with my mum, so it was really fun to stay there for a few days. We got to be really touristy and walked around until my feet threatened to give up and leave me.

As you know, we're big fans of WWE here and when I was researching the area our hotel was in, I discovered that there was an independent wrestling show being held around the corner on our first night there. So that was the first night sorted and it was amazing! We've never been to a live wrestling show before and it was so much fun. The crowd were so into it and yelling the most hilarious chants. We're definitely going to keep an eye out for more independent shows in the Bristol area.

The next day was the real touristy one. We went to Covent Garden to check out the market and all the Christmas regalia.

A giant silver reindeer to match the silver glittery one on my desk but then we spotted...real mini reindeer!

Seriously, how adorable are they? I wanted to feed them but they were only letting the kids do that; foiled again by those pesky kids ;)

Our final night was my husband's big birthday present; his favourite band, Carter USM, had their last ever gig at Brixton Academy. I don't have any photos from that because the last time my husband went to a gig there, he got pickpocketed, so this time we didn't take anything but our tickets, enough cash for a couple of drinks and ourselves. It was possibly the craziest concert I've ever been to and that's saying something.

So that was our trip away. We had a great time and will definitely doing it again.

Speak Friend and Enter

I'm still not feeling great but at least the all over aching has stopped; it all seems to have moved into a headcold now so I'm still snuggled in my sofa blanket nest and demanding Lemsips (I don't know why they taste better when my husband makes them, they just do).

I am feeling well enough to get back to the knitting now and also to tell you the saga of my new phone. I mentioned a few posts back that I wanted a new phone to play WWE Supercards on, well besically I just wanted a phone that would let me download any app or game and will also pass along all of my text messages instead of those the phone wanted to. My phone is actually in my dad's name due to a package deal he got a few years back on phones for me and my mum so I had to wait until we could go to a shop together and get an upgrade. While my parents were visiting, I upgraded to a Nokia Lumia because I wanted a phone with a really good camera. We traded in my old handset as part of the deal and then my parents went back to Wales and I went home.

The guy at the shop mentioned that I may need to use my old sim card until my new one kicked in so I opened the back of the phone and realised that my old sim card didn't actually fit in my new handset. No problem, I just had to wait until my new sim card started working. Except it didn't start working. I had a quick Google and realised that I just needed to talk to my inetwork provider and get the sim card switched over (either they guy in the shop hadn't done it after all or something else had gone wrong along the way).

My husband was in work so I couldn't phone them as all I had was my not-currently-working mobile phone so I emailed them, explaining the situation and asking them to switch my sim card on. I didn't hear anything back from them for two days then got an email saying that they'd been trying to call me and couldn't get an answer...obviously. The gist of the rest of the email was that they couldn't deal with me because the phone's not in my name - which isn't a problem I've had before because I am listed on the account. So I emailed my dad, asked him to call them and when he did, he got told 'Where have you been? We've been waiting for you to contact us to turn the sim on for days'!

Ahh well. It's probably a good thing I didn't have a phone this week anyway, I would've just called my friends and family to moan at them about how ill I felt, lol.

Really long rant over, lets talk about the next square. For this one, I went back to the Geek-a long blanket. I wanted to have a Tolkein related square and I thought their design was really clever.

Square number 8: The Lord of the Rings

This square features the word 'friend' in elvish as in the riddle on the Doors of Durin.

The photo is a little washed out but in real life the square is a lovely sage green and buttermilk yellow colour. I was really pleased with this square, it turned out great.

I hope that you're all staving off the flu and having a better week than me (end of the week, at least). And here's a fun fact before you leave; did you know that the Nokia Lumia is a Windows phone that, it turns out, doesn't support the WWE Supercards app?   ;)

Trees and People Used to be Good Friends

I officially have the lurgy. This is this first time I've been able to leave the nest of blankets on my sofa since Wednesday. I know that the whole 'catching flu because you got soaked in the rain' thing is an old wives tale but I did get drenched in a downpour on Monday night during my parents visit and I could barely move on Wednesday so I'm going to blame the rain anyway.

Obviously I haven't done much knitting this week, what with the visit and being sick (I've never been so ill that I can't knit before) but I'm still posting squares that I made previously so here we go.

Square number 7: My Neighbour Totoro

We finally got around to watching this film earlier in the year and absolutely loved it. I originally wanted to do a Catbus square but when I found this chart of Totoro I knew it would be perfect. The only thing I changed was adding a little more to the bottom of the chart so that we could see the markings on Totoro's belly.

Sorry this post is so short but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Now I'm heading back to my nest with a mug of lemsip.

Instead of Shooting Where I Was, You Should Have Shot Where I Was Going to Be

Today's post is going to be a short one as my parents are visiting and I get to go shopping and pick out our Christmas present - I just hope The Range still has the Odessa Baskets in stock or I'm going to cry and it won't be pretty.

Time for the next square on The Blanket of Doom. We've had sports, TV shows, books and an RPG so it's time for a video game and I had to go old school. I found the exact chart I need on Molina's blog although she has since moved to this site and you should really check both out because she has some great charts, especially if, like me, you're a Supernatural and Stargate fan (I will be using loads of her charts if I ever get around to making my own blanket).

Square number 6: Space Invaders

Obviously I have chosen not to use the borders, mostly so that I could get the design to fit the 45x57 square but I still think it looks great. Despite my camera making the square look like it was knitted up in black and yellow, it is in fact a gorgeous lime green (also I know the first pic makes the square look out of shape, that's just the weird placement I apparently put it in when I took the photos).

Okay, I'm going shopping for goodies, wish me luck.
xxx

SQUEAK

My Andy emmulator has died and I can't play WWE Supercards today (I really need to get a new phone so that I can play it like normal people instead of making my computer pretend it's a phone). So instead of crying over my dwindling People's Champion score, I'm going to post the next square of my husband's blanket. 

For the next one I decided to go to Discword. My husband is a huge Terry Prachett fan and the bookcases in our living room have been overtaken by his books. In hunting for a Discworld related chart I discovered the amazing stephieface who has a few Terry Practchett projects and some other great charts too so click on the links and check her stuff out. I couldn't decide between her Grim Squeaker or DEATH of Rats charts and eventually went with the Grim Squeaker even though I had to change it slightly - I adapted it to work with just two colours instead of three and also enlarged it in order to do this. Looking back, I regret changing it and wish that I'd gone with the more straightforward DEATH of Rats chart. I may go back and redo the square if I have time later on in the project but even if I don't, I think it still works (just not as well as stephieface's original chart).

Square number 5: Discworld's The Grim Squeaker

I hope you have a great weekend and get lots of crafty stuff done, I'm certainly going to try :D

Yeah, I've Got Nothing

I've just found out that my cousin has her christmas tree up already and not just one but nine christmas trees dotted around her house. I'm so jealous; I want to put my tree up but it takes up a lot of room in our small living room and with my parents visiting next week, it'll be a bit of a squash. I'm putting it up right after that though, you see if I don't.

It's time to post the next square of my husband's Blanket of Doom. After the dizzying heights of the World Series winners, it's time to bring it home with a square dedicated to his favourite british sports team - which means a football square.

I am not a football fan in any way, shape or form and will usually watch some kind of detective drama on my computer while it's on the TV but my husband is a life-long Arsenal FC fan and has listed the team among his five favourite things along with Carter USM, The Manic Street Preachers, Zombies and Star Wars (notice that I'm not on that list?). So, an Arsenal square it is.

Again, I struggled to find a chart small enough to fit in the 45x57 space so had to make my own.

Square number 4: Arsenal FC

This is a design that I made for my own personal use and is not endorsed by or being used by Lamas and Lattes or the official Geek-a-long blanket. I am merely a fan of their project and have decided to make my own version. Don't forget to visit the Geek-a-long page to show your support for the official Geek-a-long blanket project which is raising money for a great cause and if you'd like to donate to that cause then please visit The Child's Play Charity here.

Hunter Pence Has Already Finished His Christmas Shopping

The third square for my husband's blanket is actually rather timely. About six years ago ESPN America appeared on our TVs over here and gave us baseball. Immediately my family became a bit obsessed with the game and whereas my dad latched onto the New York Yankees, my husband went for the far more crazy San Francisco Giants. Obviously, my husband's pick was the better choice.

ESPN America may have left our TVs again (and I really miss Around the Horn) but we're still able follow baseball online and my husband is still a huge Giants fan. So the decision for this square was rather obvious.

One of my first knitting efforts when I first started back in 2012 was to make him a pair of Giants themed fingerless gloves.

While the gloves themselves fell apart after a couple of months, I still have the chart I used. Just the logo seemed a little plain though and I remembered that I'd seen a load of knitted hats being worn at the games which had the Golden Gate Bridge on them.So I found a couple of photos of similar hats online and then figured out my own chart.


Square number 3: San Francisco Giants

This is a design that I made for my own personal use and is not endorsed by or being used by Lamas and Lattes or the official Geek-a-long blanket. I am merely a fan of their project and have decided to make my own version. Don't forget to visit the Geek-a-long page to show your support for the official Geek-a-long blanket project which is raising money for a great cause and if you'd like to donate to that cause then please visit The Child's Play Charity here.

A Song of Blankets and Yarn

Housework is done so now I can sit down with a cup of coffee and show you square number two of the Blanket of Doom.

For this square I wanted to do something from Game of Thrones as the husband has read all of the books (so far) and loves the TV series. The challenge was finding something which fit into a 45x57 square. Then I stumbled across the amazing i crochet things They've made a bunch of charts for the Game of Throne houses and they are brilliant; you really should check them out by following the link below.

I decided to go with The House of Stark design in grey and cream. The design is actually 44 stitches across so I knocked a stitch off the backend of the direwolf so that it fits the size I need, leaving one stitch in the background colour on either side of the wolf.

Square number 2: Game of Thrones -House of Stark

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and eat all those leftover sweets from Halloween ;)

Happy Halloween! Witness the Blanket of Doom!

Lets start this blog with my current WIP.

I was looking for something special to make for the husband's 40th birthday. I've made him items for the past few birthdays (I will post pics of these at a later date) but I wanted this year's to be extra special. Then I stumbled across the Geek-A-Long by Lattes and Lamas Their aim is to make a blanket over the course of a year, making a geeky square every week. A geeky blanket is the perfect present for him to use on those cold nights snuggled up in front of the latest boxset or WWE pay-per-view.

As most of the squares on the GAL blanket so far are more suited to my fandoms than my husband's, I've decided to use GAL more as inspiration for my husband's blanket; using only a few of the designs they've featured but sticking to the size and style.

I'm up to square 11 right now (only 37 more to go) so I will make a post about each of these every couple of days and then each new square as I finish them.

Square number 1: Dungeons and Dragons

Despite me saying earlier that the GAL blanket was more suited to me, there are a few squares that are ideal for my husband and this is one of them. A large chunk of his teen years were spent playing D&D so I knew that I had to start with this 20 sided dice.

Most of this square was spent re-teaching myself how to do double knitting with the help of a couple of handy Youtube tutorials. So there were more than a few false starts but I love how it turned out and the use of dark purple and baby blue really makes the design pop.

Thanks for dropping by. Have a great Halloween and I hope you get more tricks than treats ;)

First Post

Welcome to The Stitchy Nook.

This is a blog where I can post an ongoing chronicle of my crafts. It'll be a mixture of knitting, crochet and cross stitch items (and anything else that I find myself drawn to). I hope that you enjoy your visit here and I'll will try my best to update regularly.

Ren xx