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.

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.

Baby Things!

If you ask any of my friends and family, they'll tell you that I don't have a maternal bone in my body. And they're quite right but that doesn't mean that I don't have a little bit of a squee over teeny tiny baby clothes and toys. Also, I will admit that I did melt more than a little when I saw my new niece and nephew at the weekend - they are adorable.

Obviously, I just had to make stuff for them. I'm so going to be that random aunt who knits clothes for their toys when they want the proper bought stuff, lol. But I don't mind that, I have very fond memories of toys my Nana made me when I was a kid.

The first things I made, I didn't actually end up giving to the babies because they were far too small. The twins were premature and even smaller again because they are twins so I made a pair of hats in the 'premmie' size but by the time we managed to go to Dorset and see them, they'd grown to 'new born' size and the hats I made were comically small. That's okay though, I have brought them back home and put them on a couple of our Funko figures instead.

The pattern I used was this one from AlliCrafts. I'm definitely going to make them again because they are so cute but this time, I'll make them in the correct size.

The next couple of things I made were far more successful, to the point that my sister-in-law claimed that she wanted to keep them for herself, lol. Cuddly toys, they're always a winner.

The first toy I made was one that I'd made before for a my mum's friend's baby. So I already knew how easy the pattern is and just how adorable the finished product is. I'm talking about Rachel H's L'il Baby Unicorn I love this toy so much, it's really to fun to make and looks great; I highly recommend giving it a try. The first time I made it, I stuck Rachel H's colours of pink and red because it was for a little girl and the colours were one of the reasons I wanted to try it in the first place. This time, even though it's a unicorn I wanted it to be something both the twins could play with if they wanted. I had a ball of Robin DK in bright pink, blue and white in my stash that I've been looking for a good project to use it on and I thought this would be perfect, especially if I used plain blue as the contrast colour to offset the pink even more.

The original L'il Unicorn I made a couple of years ago.

The second toy I decided to make was Emma's Crochet Stripy Giraffe. Just look at it, I could not resist something that cute. Again I wanted both twins to be able to play with and cuddle it so I tried to use colours that would appeal to both boys and girls. This was a great pattern; I know that there have been some negative comments on Emma's page but I didn't have any problems at all and would definitely recommend giving it a go. In fact I'm planning on making a couple more for my friends because I had lots of fun making this [and so did my cat who discovered a fun new game of stealing a leg and making me chase him to get it back].

War. War Never Changes

Lots to do today so just a quick post of the next square on the Blanket of Doom.

I got into playing video games about 2 years ago and since then, there have been a few games that me and my husband both love to spend an evening playing. One of our favourites is Fallout: New Vegas. Although we disagree about how to play it; I love doing actual quests whereas he will randomly scour the map and investigate every shack or cave he finds.

I wanted to do a Fallout: New Vegas square and initially was going to a Nuka Cola logo [actually, I first wanted to do Vault Boy but the square's just too small for that]. But when I was looking for a decent picture of the logo on Google, I stumbled across a picture of the sign for The Tops Casino and I far preferred that idea.

Square 28: Fallout: New Vegas

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.

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.