I Used to be an Adventurer Like You, Then I Took an Arrow in the Knee!

I was wrong about Pop in the Box again! I guessed something from Star Wars and got Captain America; not that I'm complaining, I love Captain America and Star Wars is more the husband's thing :D

Our Pop collection is definitely growing (they really are addictive little buggers) so we've had to put up a couple of new shelves to move stuff around and make room. The first shelf is a very narrow one which we bought specifically for some pops and I think it looks great.

The second shelf is a much bigger one that we've bought to display part of our comic book collection and free up some of our bookshelves. Unfortunately because the shelf is so much bigger, the cats have decided that it's their shelf and have claimed it in the name of kittydom!

God help us when the new bookends arrive and we actually do try and move our comics up there, lol. I'd probably better hide my shoes before they're peed on as revenge.

 My new cross stitch is coming along well. I've passed that horrible stage where you're just putting random dots at random points inside the hoop and you think it's going nowhere. Now it's beginning to look like something. I've still got a very long way to go but I can see it start to take shape which is far more fun. I will start posting pics of my progress when all the Blanket of Doom stuff has been posted.

Speaking of which, it's onto the next square.

I only really got into gaming a few years ago, before that it was just Katamari and a few tries of Guitar Hero. I've always enjoyed watching other people play so never really felt the need to play myself;, even now I'm happy to spend the evening watching my husband fighting Feral Ghouls in the Mojave Wasteland while I craft on the sofa. Then I randomly watched a Youtube video of Day9 and Felicia Day playing Kingdom of Amalur and loved the idea of exploring and collecting treasure...but I really didn't want to have to fight big giant spiders. I mentioned this to my best friend and she told me to try Elder Scrolls: Skyrim because there's lots of exploring and definitely no spiders in that. Those of you who have played Skyrim, you will know that not only are there loads and loads of spiders in it but they actually appear within the first ten minutes of the game. Needless to say, the husband was forced to have a go at Skyrim too when I ran screaming into the kitchen and left my poor character to fend for herself. It was while he was battling on my behalf that he discovered that he was quite enjoying the game, decided to play it himself and got completely hooked.

For those that are interested, I am still happily playing Skyrim and have no problem with the giant spiders anymore (that first time was just a really big shock). And riding high on that success, I've also bought Kingdom of Amalur and kick arse in that game too. Oh! And when questioned, my best friend replied 'I've no idea why I said that, there's lots of spiders in Skyrim'. *sigh*

Square number 41: Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

I got the chart from Tanya's Knits and it was great; it knit up very quickly and I think it looks brilliant. I'm actually a bit jealous and wish I'd kept the design back for my own blanket, whenever I actually get around to that.


This is a design that I found on Pinterest 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 of the blanket. 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 Gum You Like Is Going to Come Back in Style

Wow. It has been almost a month since I last posted.

Unfortunately my computer decided to go kaput. By which I mean that it kept turning itself off with no warning. I could turn it back on, which is what I did for the first few days but when it took five 'turning it back ons' for me to read one single email it became less of an annoyance and more of a real problem. We figured out that it was an issue with the power pack and after a lot of research and nervous procrastination, my husband managed to fix it and now my baby is working fine. But it's upside down. It turns out that he had to replace the power pack with a different make which didn't fit in the same spot the old one had been in so the only way to put the new power pack in and stop it from squashing and breaking the other computery things that I don't understand is to turn the whole tower upside down. But at least it's working and it still looks pretty with it's glowing blue lights.

I'd like to say that I'd been up to loads of stuff while I've been offline and regale you with my tales of daring do but it's been pretty quiet here. I finished unstitching that Star Wars cross stitch and started a new one. We have started watching Battlestar Galactica again and are hoping to make it all the way through the fracking series this time. Our Pop Vinyl collection currently stands at 28 after a bargain shopping day a couple of weeks ago and I have a new tattoo which I am over the moon with.

It's Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds <3

The weather's finally warming up but the husband's Blanket of Doom has a had a lot of use in the past few weeks - especially because our boiler broke down for a while there. I had visions of finishing that blanket in the middle of summer when even looking at a thick knitted blanket would make him overheat so I'm secretly quite glad that it's taken so long for summer to start. I'm obviously still behind in posting the squares on here so onto the next one and it's from one of our all time favourite TV shows: Twin Peaks.

I did originally come up with a design which was the inside of the Black Lodge - half of it would be black and white chevrons to represent the floor and the other half would be two shades of red to give the impression of the hanging curtains in the Lodge. However I had a problem with the overlap in the middle of the square because I didn't want a straight line across as the cut off point. So I decided to throw that idea out and go with something a lot simpler - the fire rune from the caves.

Square number 39: Twin Peaks

 This was a great square to knit up and I think it looks great. I went for dark brown to make a nice change from using black backgrounds and red contrast which was very effective. I'm very happy with this square.

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.

It's Going to be a Slobberknocker!

For those of you waiting to find out (I know that there's nobody actually waiting for these posts but it's nice to pretend), the Pop in a Box I mentioned last week, turned out to be Thunder from Big Trouble in Little China. The husband was over the moon as he loves that film - I've never seen it but lets keep that quiet ;)

In more craft-related real time events, the wool fairy came back from holiday sent me the grey wool I needed to finish the Blanket of Doom and then went on holiday again (seriously, my parents somehow managed to book themselves two holidays separated by a fortnight). So I've added the final row of squares to the blanket and am now working on the edging. I've had some issues with the joining and edging on this project but that was down to my knitting style no the pattern and I'll go into that more when I post that particular blog entry.

While I was stuck without the wool I needed, I turned my attention to the cross stitch project that I mentioned in passing a while back. I wanted to make something for my new niece and nephew's nursery and decided to go with a Star Wars baby sampler, with a different Star Wars character for each letter of the alphabet. I started off well with J is for Jabba in the centre of the aida but the more I worked on it, the more doubts began to creep in. My main issue was that I was having to use some pretty obscure characters or races for some of the letters (K is for Klaatu, anyone?). By the time I reached M is for Maul I came to the conclusion that a sampler was the wrong way to go. I like the Star Wars element because there is no doubt in my mind that the twins will be watching those films with their parents (and their favourite uncle) as soon as they're old enough but by that time, there will also be a whole new group of Star Wars films for them to love and they're not going to be fussed by a character that appears in the background of Episode V.

I think I have an idea of what to stitch instead but first there's the unstitching to do. If anyone knows how to get the marks left behind by unstitched thread on the aida, please let me know.

In Blog-time events, I'm still posting the squares for the Blanket of Doom so here's the next one. It is no secret that me and the husband love to watch wrestling. We probably watch more from the WWE Network than we do from Netflix these days and are loving the fact we can pull up shows that we both watched as kids in completely different parts of the country. For the inevitable WWE square, I was going to use the WWE logo (the scribble one that's just been retired) but the husband insisted that I went old-school with the 90s WWF logo instead and he was right, it looks far better than the original chart I drew up (also, it was way easier to do).

Square number 38: WWF (now called the WWE)

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.

It's Just an Illusion Caused by the World Spinning 'Round

This week's mugs have all been printed up and posted out and now I need something to distract me from April's Pop in a Box sub which has arrived this afternoon - and which I definitely can't open until the husband is home. Our collection is going well, we have 19 currently (not including the PIAB sub) although 3 of them are in Wales with my parents until they next visit. Last month I guessed that the Pop in a Box was going to be Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China and it turned out to be Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters. This month I'm going to guess that it's Age of Ultron Thor, I will let you know just how wrong I am in my next post :D

Anyway, I am going to distract myself by doing this week's blog post a little early. We're still posting squares from the music block of the list and this next one is very near and dear to my heart.

The first Christmas me and the husband were together, he bought me tickets to go and see The Flaming Lips at the Cardiff Arena. The Flaming Lips were a band that he really liked that he believed I would like too and he was 100% right; that night still ranks up there as the best gig I have ever been to, it was like a giant Christmas party with glitter, balloons and fantastic music. Then a couple of years after that, we used their song 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' as the first dance at our wedding. So I had to get them into this blanket somewhere.

Square 37: The Flaming Lips

It's the infamous Pink Robot!

I know that this is a bit of a girly square because it's so pink and probably would have worked better on my blanket (yes, I've decided to make a blanket for myself too - once I've got a few other crafty pieces out of the way) but I love it and the husband loves it and that's all that matters really.

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.

Breaking Rocks in the Hot Sun

I got a new tattoo yesterday and experienced something that I've decided to call 'tattoo-drunk'. The tattoo took about four hours, which is a bit unusual for a small piece, but it was an apprentice tattoo. That means that I was essentially getting inked by two tattoo artists; the apprentice and then the artist teaching her and who would step in to demonstrate certain techniques or help with problem areas. The tattoo itself is the Elven Leaf Brooch from Lord of the Rings and sits just under my ankle on the inside of my foot. Not the most pain-free part at the best of times and by the end of the session the endorphins were flowing freely and I was babbling away about anything and everything. I even have what feels like a mild hangover today.
I'm really happy with the finished result though and I will be going back for more work (from both apprentice and teacher - just at separate times, hopefully).

Time for the next square in the music block and no blanket of any self-respecting music snob (the husband's description of himself, not mine) would be complete without a square for The Clash - well, any british music snob anyway. I just had to attempt a chart for the iconic sleeve of their London Calling album and decided to experiment a little. Instead of copying it exactly, I used the colours of the writing as the background so as to make the main silhouette stand out more.

Square number 35: The Clash - London Calling.

I'm really pleased with this one. Yeah, the silhouette looks a little like a stick figure but that was unavoidable and I think it's still very clear what this square is; everyone I've shown it too has guessed correctly  :)

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.

Take Me Away to Nowhere Plains

I hope you've all had a good week. Mine's been great. The vouchers that I mentioned in the last entry arrived in a swanky little tin and it turns out that I won £200. Thank you SFX! Me and the husband have happily spent that and I'll post a pic of our purchases once they all arrive.

Beside the unexpected spending spree, we've had a wrestle-tastic week. On Friday we went to a live show in Bristol run by Attack! Pro Wrestling. It was an awesome night and we had so much fun that we're definitely going to go again.

The Brothers of Construction vs Big Poppa Sunflower and the Love Making Demon

Eddie Dennis vs Daft Bump

Then Sunday was Wrestlemania. The husband booked Monday off work so that we could stay up and watch it live. We've got the WWE Network streaming on our PS3, so we could watch all the build-up as well this year.

If I'd thought more about it, I would've posted the wrestling square I made for the Blanket of Doom in this entry but I still haven't copied the chart to the computer yet. So we'll have to continue with the music block we've hit.The next band I've made a square for is The Pixies.

When I was in school, I was pretty obsessed with a Christian Slater film called 'Pump Up The Volume'; I can clearly remember listening to the soundtrack on my walkman during my art GCSE [with one side of the tape as the official soundtrack and the other side was songs that appeared in the film but weren't on the released soundtrack - yes, I was just that geeky] and The Pixies featured pretty heavily. But until I met my husband, I didn't know anyone else who listened to that type of music; my hometown splits pretty evenly into pop and heavy metal so grunge didn't really make an appearance, not even in my parents' shop. Since then we've seen then play live and in my soppier moments, I like to think that it's one of those things that shows me and my husband were meant to be together. Obviously, I had to make a Pixies square for his blanket.

Square number 34 - The Pixies.

The Pixies don't have an official logo but most fans use the flying 'P' as an unofficial one - and who am I to argue with fans? Anyway, it was either this or a monkey with angel wings ;)

I'm really pleased with how this one turned out; it's simple but effective and the yellow and black really pops.

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.

Don't forget, to access a link, just click on the blue writing and, if you have the time, I'd love to know what you think of the blog so far.

Alpha Waves

Back to the Blanket of Doom and it's about time for some comic book representation, I think.

We have a definite comic book divide in our house; I love Marvel and DC so they take up the majority of my comic shelves [I do have some others, such as Preacher, Freshmen and Hellboy but Deadpool, Hawkeye, Red Hood et al rule my heart]. My husband, on the other hand, far prefers indie comics; so give him The Walking Dead, We3 or Grandville and he's a happy bunny. But the majority of his comic shelves are taken up by 2000AD. So when it came to picking comic book squares for his blanket, that was obviously the way to go and I had to start with his favourite character; Strontium Dog.

It came as no surprise whatsoever to come up empty when looking for Strontium Dog charts online, I pretty much knew going in that I would be making this chart myself. I decided to keep it simple and go for a Search/Destroy Agency badge and disguise the gold on the edging by making the black outline thicker. Then I went browsing on the Geek-a-long Ravelry group...

I was on the 'Alternative Geekery' thread [because that's obviously where I belong] and a member called Whistler42 posted a photo of squares she'd made using more than two colours. Double knitting with more than two colours? It blew my mind! Thankfully, she also posted links to the video tutorial's she'd used to learn how to do that and I already had a candidate ready and waiting; I could add the gold edging to the S/D badge after all.

The video tutorials were made by Alasdair Post-Quinn and the ones I found most helpful were:
How to follow a three-colour two-pattern double-knit chart  and How to do a three-colour double-knit selvedge

Square number 26: Strontium Dog.

I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. I like that the badge is a bit grungy; perfect for a post-apocalyptic UK [although I'm sure that with a little bit of playing around with the chart, you could get a smoother outline if that's what you'd prefer].

Knitting with three colours is definitely fiddly and the yarns get tangled very quickly. Also, the extra wool being carried along means that the square is a lot bigger lengthwise than my other squares. I've decided to deal with that by having one row of the taller squares along the middle of the blanket; that way, I won't be trying to fit a bigger square in a row with smaller ones and throwing the whole aesthetic out of the window.

Overall, I think that double knitting with more than two colours is something you could only do in small doses - I definitely couldn't have done a whole blanket that way; I'd have thrown in the towel after just two or three squares, lol. I'm glad that I tried it though and I do think that my row of multicoloured squares will look great.

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 keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I've mentioned before that my husband and I got tattoos this time last year to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. I'd mentioned it because originally we were going to get something from the Zelda games (I was going to get the heart containers and he wanted an 8bit Link) but we actually ended up getting tattoos from one of our favourite films; The Princess Bride.

So, we have tattoos from The Princess Bride and one of our cats is named after a character from it; obviously I had to make a Princess Bride square for the Blanket of Doom too.

Luckily, the girls at Geek-a-long were way ahead of me and had come up with a Dread Pirate Roberts square for their blanket. Finally, I could join in with the Geek-a-long again! And it's a freakishly similar design to my husband's tattoo - it's like fate :D

Square number 24: The Princess Bride

I didn't go very adventurous with the colours on this one, just cream and black. It's a lovely design though and knitted up very quickly.

One last thing; wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva… So tweasure your wuv. <3

Everything is Awesome!

I forgot to post this on the last entry but I took a photo of all the squares I had up to the Donnie Darko one so that I could get an idea of how big this thing is going to be when it's finished. I just wanted to see the size so far so a few of the squares are the wrong way around but it does give an idea of how it's going to look when it's finished.

And here is one of our cats, Inigo Meowtoya, staking his claim on the blanket before anyone else can. Sorry, husband of mine, looks like you were just too slow ;)

If I show you this photo of my husband and a birthday present he received last year...

...you will understand why one of the squares on this blanket had to represent Lego - I mean, look how happy he is with that Lego starship!

At the time, I couldn't find any Lego charts online so made my own. Then about a week later, Geek-a-long published their Lego pattern and I've since found a few others on Pinterest too. Sod's law! Never mind, there can't be too many Lego related knitting patterns out there, that's what I say.

Square number 22: Lego

I went with yellow to get the really iconic Lego brick and obviously needed white for the highlights but I find the pattern a hard to see in these colours. Maybe I should have gone with more of a mustard yellow instead.

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 The One Who Knits

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great Christmas. I had a geektastic one with some graphic novels, a load of X-Men DVDs and four, count them, four Hogwarts t-shirts. Santa knows me so well.

Despite Stephen Fry proclaiming on Christmas QI that decorations should stay up until the end of January, we're taking them down today. It's best to do it now before the cats get home from their holiday at the in-laws. They'll already be on edge and expecting us to shove them into their pet carriers again at any moment so I don't want to disrupt them all over again, bless 'em. So that's it; it's all over for another year. Our flat's going to be at least 50% less glittery until November ;)

We've been at my parents for the past week (hence the cats having to go on holiday; my parents' house is a pet-free zone) so I did the same trick as I did the last time we went to my in-laws, I took just one craft project that I knew would last long enough to tide me over until I got back home. And, funnily enough, it was the same project as I took to my in-laws: the reindeer hat (although this time I changed the pattern to a more family friendly one which I will show you at a later date). So I've had to take a break from the Blanket of Doom while I've been working on that. It's probably a good thing though, I've reached that point on the blanket where I'm beginning to think longingly of working on something, anything, else.

I'm still a bit ahead of this blog in real life so I still have squares to show you and today's is from my husband's second favourite TV show of all time, ever! And it's a show that I still haven't watched myself; partly because when so many people tell me that I have to watch something right now, I tend to automatically push back and refuse and partly because my husband loved it so much that he would explain every episode to me after he'd seen it and I pretty much know everything that happens in the show anyway. I'll watch it one day but I'm going to do it in my own time, dammit!

Square number 17: Breaking Bad

If you click on the link, you'll find that the pattern is actually for a friendship bracelet but it's a great design and I think it turned out pretty well when knitted up.

If anyone is up for making a blanket of their own then a brand new Geek-a-long challenge just started and it looks like it's going to be a really fun one; this year's theme is Mad Scientists and I'm already loving the first square. It'll probably be a lot easier when you only have to make one square a week rather than trying to make them all together because you didn't know about the challenge until November; just saying ;)

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

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

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.

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.

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?   ;)