Gaze into the Fist of Dredd!

I hope everyone is okay out there in craftyland. Things are good here. My parents visited at the weekend and we took them to the latest Attack! Pro Wrestling show: 'Rafflemania'. It was another great show and both of my parents have said they'd like to go again which I sort of expected from my dad but not my mum. it just goes to show how much fun the night is that even non-wrestling fans have a great time. So if you're ever in the Bristol area, I'd recommend looking Attack! up.

Purrlock went into the vets to be spayed at the end of last week and has been feeling sorry for herself ever since. She's the baby of my trio of cats and she's definitely playing on that this week; following me around and constantly climbing into my lap for cuddles, bless her. But I know that she'll feel better for it when her stitches have healed.

Woe is Purrlock

She did just run hell for leather when the doorbell went so I know she's not actually feeling as bad as she seems if she's still getting over excited when the postman's here, lol. Postman = new box to play in, obviously :) But this particular parcel is this month's Pop in a Box so she has to wait until the husband gets home before I can open it. As for PIAB, I've guessed wrong every month so far so I'm not sure if I should even bother guessing this month. But I think I'm going to go with something from Star Wars.

Anyway, back to the Blanket of Doom squares (we're almost at the end).

I've already mentioned that the husband is a huge 2000AD fan which is why I've already made him a Strontium Dog square. But I couldn't miss out the most famous character from 2000AD; Judge Dredd. Even I loved the Dredd movie (the Karl Urban film not the Stallone one) so this was a fun square to work on.

Square number 40: Judge Dredd

I had trouble coming up with a Dredd design that would work and then finally I got inspired by the various minimalist superhero designs that have been floating around the internet. I think it works really well and the husband loved it. It ended up being one of my favourite squares on the blanket.

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 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.

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.

Either a green unicorn just raced across the lab, or I accidentally took some LSD.

This week, I'm taking a little bit of a break from the blanket to crochet some stuff for the baby twins my in-laws just had. Baby things are so adorable, even my husband's got involved and bought some teeny tiny baby clothes for them. I'm going to take pics of the things I'm making and post them next week so for now, let's go back to the squares for the Blanket of Doom.

For the next square, we're back to TV shows because I wanted to make a 'Fringe' square. It turned out to be a lot trickier than I expected. My first idea was to do one of the logos that appear on the opening credits, like the seahorse or the apple but I really wanted something more related to Walter because he's my husband's favourite character. So I thought I'd make a pattern with Gene, Walter's cow from the lab but quickly realised that it would end up just being a square with a cow on and no real relation to the show at all. Then I remembered the episode where Walter tells a detective noir story involving all the main characters and in it Gene the cow has bright multi-coloured spots. Perfect because I'd just learned the double knitting with more than two colours technique I talked about in the last post.

I didn't want a cartoony looking cow and most of the more realistic looking cow charts online were too big for the square. I did find a smaller cow chart which I used as a base for Gene but it looks like I forgot to save it and now I can't find it again. If it belongs to you, please let me know so that I can credit you. But because I did alter the base to make it more Gene-like, I have posted the final chart I made. 

Square 27: Fringe.

I really did struggle with this square. At one point I was working with five different colours of wool at the same time and it was so difficult; it tangled really easily and took ages to complete (about twice as long as a normal square). I'm sticking to three colours only from this point on, lol.

Also, I might have run out of purple before I managed to finish *ahem*. I think I would have cried if I had to unravel everything I'd already done but I came up with the brilliant idea of adding stripes to the top of the square to represent the different coloured universes on the show. Okay, so it was a bit of a bandaid fix-it but I don't think it looks too bad at all; the stripes kind of go with the spots so it works.

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.

Na na - na na - na na - na na - Slippers!

I named this blog the Stitchy Nook because I wanted it to cover most of the crafts I like doing but so far, it's been very knit-heavy. Obviously, this is because I'm currently working on the Blanket of Doom. Usually, though, knitting is a lot lower down in the favourite crafts list because I much prefer crochet and cross stitch. So even though, I'm still working on the blanket, I'm going to try and drop in details of other things I've made that aren't knitted, every here and there.

The first thing I want to show you, purely because I'd completely forgotten about them until a few days ago, are my Batman slippers. I'd been meaning to crochet a pair of slippers for a while and finally gave it a go. The link to the exact pattern I used has died and, having looked through the other posts on that particular blog, I think the creator has taken the pattern down completely. But if you wanted to recreate these slippers then any pattern for a basic slipper will work, as long as it's for a slipper that will cover the top of your foot rather than a strappy or Mary Jane slipper. Zoom yummy's slippers or Mammy Made's slippers look to be similar to the ones I made.

I crocheted the actual slipper in a shimmery black wool that I have in my stash and then I used the Batman applique pattern from the amazing Louie's Loops site [seriously, you need to check this site out, it's fab!]. And ta da! Batman slippers!

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

We do not Sow!

After the epically long post about my cats, I know have a pretty short post about the new square on The Blanket of Doom.

I decided to go back to the Game of Thrones-verse because my husband really does love that show and the books. I originally intended to do the Targaryen symbol with the three headed dragon because that seems to be a popular choice. But then my husband started mentioning the Greyjoys and how much he liked them. So I looked them up and discovered that their symbol is a kraken. A kraken! That's awesome! It's almost good enough to get me watching the show.

I went back to i crochet things who had made the amazing Stark direwolf chart I used earlier in the blanket and, lo and behold, she had also made a Greyjoy's one - on the very same page as the Stark one. So the kraken had to be done.

Square number 23: Game of Thrones: The Greyjoy's symbol.

As ever, just click on the light blue links to take you to the correct page for the chart. And while you're there, check out the other great crochet patterns. It's definitely worth a look.

Smoke Me a Kipper, I'll be Back for Breakfast

Not only is this the second post of the day, it includes two of the squares I've knitted for the Blanket of Doom. The second post is because I've neglected the blog over the past couple of weeks (although I have still been knitting up a storm while binge-watching 'Spooks' on Netflix...or 'MI5' as is seems to be called in the US). The second square is because the pattern is one that I purchased, therefore I can't give you a link to the chart or post it here as I normally would: I will link you to the Etsy page though because it's a great little pattern that I would recommend anyone to purchase.

If you asked my husband what his favourite TV show is, he'll tell you either 'Breaking Bad' or 'Twin Peaks' but the TV show that he's the biggest nerd over is definitely 'Red Dwarf'. You can quote a line from the show and he will tell you the season and episode that it came from and then tell you everything that happened in that particular episode...in great depth. So there had to be at least one Red Dwarf square on his blanket but the problem is that it's difficult to come up with a clever design to put on a square. The only one I could find said 'Smeg' which is just a lazy reference in my book.

It quickly became obvious that I had to come up with my own chart for this square but even then, I struggled to think of a good reference to use. I attempted to make a Starbug square but because I couldn't use too much detail, it just looked like a green blob. Eventually, I decided to go with the London Jets logo, which is a bit more obscure than I'd like but this blanket's not for me and my husband loved the design.

[For those who don't know, The London Jets is Lister's favourite Zero-G Football team and he wears a few different t-shirts in the show all bearing their logo].

Square number 18: Red Dwarf

[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. ]


As I mentioned above, the second square I'm showing you in this post is one that I purchased from Richearts Etsy Shop. I originally bought it to make a cross stitch but, with a little tinkering to make the design suitable for two colours, it worked amazing well for my next square.

Square number 19: Alien

 Hopefully, I'll be back to my normal blogging schedule from this week on but I hop you enjoyed my bumper blogging day today <3

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 ;)

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

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.