There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown

So I was checking my emails yesterday morning and I had one from my favourite magazine, SFX; a British sci-fi and fantasy magazine that we've been subscribing to for about 6 or 7 years but I've been reading it for about 12 years - which makes me feel really old. The email was from the editor telling me that I've won Amazon vouchers for participating in their reader's survey a while back. Which is awesome! I'm not sure how much I've won yet but I've already started doing some Amazon window shopping.

We've started collecting Funko Pop Vinyl figures so I'm definitely going to indulge in that. We've only been collecting since the end of February when we bought each other a figure for our anniversary, but it's already so much fun...and very addictive. We've even joined Pop in a Box which is a subscription for a mystery pop every month based on your preferences - we got Peter Venkman this month which was beyond perfect.

Our Pop collection so far

Bane doesn't play well with others so has his own shelf

 Also this week, the Wool Fairy [aka my mum] has been and left a wool bounty behind so I'm back to working on the Blanket of Doom. I'm on the final square, which is very exciting, and then I have to start on the Lattes and Lamas join. I've been reading the instructions and I think I've figured it out so keep your fingers crossed for me. Obviously, I'm a lot further ahead with the blanket in real life than what I've been posting here so I'd better get a move on and post the next square.

So far, there has only been one music related square which definitely doesn't reflect just how much music my husband listens to and how many albums he owns. [If I didn't know better, I'd swear that the fact my parents used to own a second hand record shop played a part in him deciding I was his future wife.] So to make up for this, the next handful of squares are all representative of his favourite bands and I'm going to start with his very favourite band of all-time.

Square number 33: Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine

Before I met my husband, I vaguely remembered Carter USM as a 90s band that some of my friends liked but I didn't really know very well. Mostly I remembered them as that band who attacked Philip Schofield on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. Now, I've seen them live and I have nine of their songs on my regular playlist. I also managed to get my husband one of his favourite Carter USM t-shirts signed by both members of the band.

I decided to base the Carter USM square on that t-shirt and album design and I'm over the moon with how well it turned out.

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.

That's How I Roll

Many years ago, when we first got together, I made a meal so horrible that my husband banned me from cooking. True story. But lately I've had a hankering to bake stuff - I blame The Great British Bake Off for this.I've made a few batches of biscuits and some mince pies in December then we received a food mixer for Christmas from my in-laws so I wanted to break it in by baking an actual cake. My husband's been hogging the mixer to make bread (not that I'm complaining about that) but I finally got a chance to use it Monday night while he was distracted by The Walking Dead. Armed with this recipe for Lemon Drizzle Cake I took over the kitchen and here's my result:

It rose loads so I probably need a bigger tin to bake it in and I had to cook it for 20 minutes longer than the recipe stated before the inside was cooked which meant that the outside burned a little bit...but, man, it tastes amazing! I'm so proud of this, it's the first cake I've baked since I was in school.

On the crafting front, I'm still awaiting new wool to complete the two remaining squares on the Blanket of Doom so the knitting has been put on hold until Monday when the wool fairy (otherwise known as my mum) visits. In the meantime, I've started a cross stitch project that I've been wanting to do for a while. It pointless me posting any pics of it yet as I've only just started and I doubt anyone wants to look at random dots on a big expanse of white but I'll post some when I'm further along.

Even though the blanket's on hold for now, I still have a load of squares that I haven't posted yet so here's the next one. This square is taken from a game that's a huge favourite of me and my husband and is one of the first games I ever played (he talked me into it when we first got a PS2). I'm talking about Katamari Damacy. It's an insane and addictive game with a soundtrack that worms it's way into your brain and stays there for weeks. We love it! So it had to go onto the blanket.

Square 32: Katamari Damacy

I originally knitted this up in purple with the katamari in a pink, blue and white colourway wool in order to try and sum up just how bright and colourful the game is. But it was just too busy and you couldn't see the pattern, just an multi-coloured blob on a purple background. So I frogged that one and grabbed my bright orange instead which I paired with a more sedate green to accentuate the brightness of the orange. I really like this combination, it clashes but in a good way.

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.

I Am Not Expendable, I'm Not Stupid and I'm Not Going!

Good afternoon. I hope everyone's okay out there this week. It's been a week of illness here, unfortunately. I've been battling a nasty bout of food poisoning and Merry went to the vets for a operation that should hopefully stop her having any more infections. She's been coping a lot better than I have.

Just look at her, all perky and working the bits the vet had to shave as if she chose to have her fur like that the whole time. Whereas I've been mooching about in my pyjamas and dragging my duvet around with me as if I'm Linus from The Peanuts.

Needless to say I haven't done much knitting this week (seriously, even knitting has been making me feel nauseous), which is a shame because I'm only 3 squares away from finishing all the squares for the blanket of doom. It's probably karmic punishment for getting all cocky about that in a conversation last week. I'm still quite a bit behind on posting the blanket squares on here though so I can just go ahead and post the next one.

This square's a little strange for me because even though I'm not a fan of all the same stuff as the husband, I do at least know quite a bit about them. Blake's 7 is a TV show that I'm really in the dark on. I did try watching it back when we first got together but only made it through two or three episodes. My husband really loves it though and I couldn't leave a fandom out just because I'm a bit clueless about it. Luckily, the show has a pretty simple logo so it was easy to make a chart without having to do too much research.

Square number 31: Blake's 7

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.

You Just Keep on Trying 'Til You Run Out of Cake

I pulled a mini disappearing act, sorry about that. Things have been a little busy here; me and the husband just had our eleventh wedding anniversary so we've been doing romantic things likes watching Robocop (the proper 80s version, of course). Also the mugs are selling well and I've been working hard on new designs.

To make up for not posting for over a week, I'm going to post two of the squares on the Blanket of Doom. But before I do that, the lovely Megan-Anne from the Geek-a-long has pointed out to me that I haven't mentioned the most important part of the entire Geek-a-long project, the fact that they have done this to raise money for charity. The GAL girls have created this awesome project and made all the charts available for free so if you would like to show your appreciation then donate a little something to the Child's Play Charity at this page.

Square 29 of the BoD came about purely because I was looking at various charts on Pinterest, saw this a Transformers chart and thought 'Of course! How could I have forgotten that?'. My husband used to have a Transformers t-shirt that he wore all the time with the Autobot logo wearing Groucho Marx glasses, a fake nose and moustache (Robots in disguise :P ) and I bought him one years ago that had LED lights that lit up - that one didn't last past a couple of washes before the battery pack got ruined, it was great while it lasted though. So  Transformers square had to be done.

Square 29: Transformers.

I'm so happy that I found Elizabeth Thomas' design. It's the prefect size, it was great fun to knit up and I am over the moon with the finished result.

The next square is one that I knew I was going to do right from the beginning. There are a fair few squares representing video games on this blanket but I definitely had to get Portal in there. I originally planned to do the warning sign that shows the stick man jumping off a ledge into a portal but when it came down to it, I just had to do the cake - that image sums up the entire game for me.

Again I was lucky enough to find a chart online and as with the Autobot one, mirukukeki's Portal chart was the perfect fit.

Square 30: Portal.

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