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.

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.

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.

Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

I signed up for the free month of Amazon Prime a couple of weeks ago because I ordered a lot of stuff from them and was too impatient to wait for the normal delivery time. A nice side benefit of this is that we've had access to Amazon Prime streaming and have been trying to watch as much as we can on there before it disappears again. So if you're wondering why this post is late, you can blame it on the brilliant 'Black Sails'. I also highly recommend 'Bosch', 'Toast' and 'Constantine' - the latter is made even better because of the hilarious way they keep trying to convince you that Constantine is from Liverpool (to be in keeping with the comic book) even though the actor has a blatant Welsh accent :)

I have run out of wool again - I really did think that 300g would be enough to do all the joining and edging but was woefully wrong. Unfortunately, the wool fairy is currently on holiday in Lanzarote and I can't buy the particular brand I need in Bristol, so I have to wait until she gets home and can post me some more. I've only got one row to add to the blanket though, so it's big enough that the husband has already started using it when he gets chilly.

Obviously, I'm still behind in posting the blanket squares on here so I can get on with that. Next up in the music block that I knitted up is The Ramones. They just had to be in there, there was no question about that really. I was originally going to do the classic Ramones logo with the eagle and names but in order to fit it into the size I needed, it would've ended up as a squashed mess. So I hunted through our CD collection and found the Pinhead Skull logo which worked out great because it was a design that could do double duty and also represent American Horror Story.

Square number 36: The Ramones.

Again, I'm happy with how this knitted up. It's simple but effective.

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.