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.

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.

Check Meowt!

In the last entry of this blog, I posted a picture of one of my cats with The Blanket of Doom. So I thought I would introduce you to them all.

If you'd asked me 5 years ago if I liked cats, I would've laughed and insisted that I was more of a dog person. Then my husband had a couple of pints too many on a Saturday afternoon watching while football down the pub. Apparently he started getting worried on the walk home, that I might be angry with him for staying out longer than promised then he passed a sign in a house window that said 'free kittens to a good home' and a tipsy light bulb went off in his head - I couldn't get mad at him if he had got an adorable kitten for me, right? To be fair, she was and still is very adorable and she was definitely a better drunken gift than the time he bought me a loaf of bread.

So that's how Captain Americat - or Merry, for short - was added to our family and how I became a definite cat person.

Baby Merry

Merry now - 'helping' me with my knitting

About 6 months after we had Merry, my mother-in-law discovered her cat was pregnant and asked if we wanted one of the kittens. Of course we did! When they were born there was a little gray tabby among the other black and brown kittens in the litter that was definitely the kitten for us. And we named her Purrlock Holmes.

Purrlock when we first met her

Purrlock now - definitely not stealing things off the Christmas tree

When we visited the in-laws' to meet Purrlock, there was this other kitten who, when the other kittens were playing, would just sit and stare at my husband with these huge, sad eyes like Puss-in-boots from the Shrek films. I swear, my husband fell in love with that kitten quicker than he did with me, lol. So we suddenly went from having one cat to having three. My husband named his kitten Inigo Meowtoya after the Princess Bride film and those two are pretty much inseparable these days.

Inigo winning my husband over

Inigo now in all his fluffy glory

So those are my cats and I love them all to bits even though they're obviously plotting world domination. Seriously, I finished brushing my teeth last night and turned around to find this:

You can't tell me they aren't up to something.