If There Were No Luck Involved, I'd Win Every Time! [Square #13 and a free chart]

A fair few years ago now, my husband was really into playing online poker. In fact he became a bit obsessed with the game in general. He got some books by the pros and we'd watch it on TV a lot; especially the World Series of Poker. I even bought him a Phil Helmuth bobblehead for Christmas a couple of years ago.

The obsession's waned a bit these days but we still watch the occasional televised match, usually when Victoria Coren-Mitchell's playing because, let's face it, she's awesome.So it was a no-brainer to put some kind of poker-related square into the husband's blanket.

I decided to keep it simple and go for Pocket Rockets and obviously use 'the prettiest card in the deck' as one of them. Unsurprisingly, I couldn't find any poker knitting charts out there so I made my own.

Square Number 13: Pocket rockets (aka a pair of aces)

The cards are a little squat and fat, more square than rectangle, so maybe if I made them again, I'd squish the cards in a little more width-wise. Weirdly though, I quite like them looking squarer, there's something aesthetically pleasing about squares inside a square - but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, if anyone wants to make this, I've added the chart below. It's unaltered from when I originally made it so you may want to fiddle around with it to make the cards more rectangular. If you do use it, please credit me and I'd love to see whatever you've made.

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.

The Happy, Froliking Reindeer *ahem*

I've finished that hat I was telling you about (and am now back to the Banket of Doom grindstone) so I thought I'd do two posts today; one for the hat and one for the next square.

Last winter my husband told me about a new jumper that Queens of the Stone Age had come out with "in that knitting type style, you know what I mean". This was before everyone and their brother had printed fair isle t-shirts so he had to pull a picture up on his phone for me and I saw this pretty hilarious jumper.

But I had the feeling that it would be even funnier if it was more pixilated and knit-like or, even better, actually knitted.

Then I forgot all about it until a few months ago when I was looking for a hat to knit for a friend and stumbled across Kat Mcab's Frolicking Deer Hat It was perfect and when I showed it to my husband he got that puppy dog look which means he really wants me to make him something. Of course, I was busy with the blanket and the giant queue of stuff behind it so I couldn't start it until last week when we went visiting the in-laws and I didn't want to take a huge bag of wool with me.

I went with a lovely wine colour and a contrasting silver grey. It took about a week to make as you're basically making two hats in order to make it double-sided. That was probably a good thing because it meant I only worked on the 'parental friendly' side of the hat while at the in-laws.

Here is the finished hat, modelled by my very camera-shy husband.

Parental friendly side of the hat

Non-parental friendly side of the hat

Kat states on the pattern page that this is an XXL hat but I found that the width was fine because the doubling up made the hat very thick and warm. It did, however, make the hat very long which looks good on my husband but I think I'm going to have to find a way to make the hat shorter when I make one for my father-in-law. Of course, because he asked me to make him one based on the fact that he'd only seen the non-naughty side, I'll have to come up with a new pattern for the other side of that hat anyway.

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.

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.

Our Princess is in Another Castle

A double post today, one personal and one stitchy.

On the Geek-a-long they have a Mario mushroom square. I know that Simon would love a mushroom square but, as great as the Geek-a-long one is, I think he'd prefer a more traditional, rounder mushroom from the earlier Mario games. So I researched a few different types of cross stich patterns and made a chart which should work for both knitting and cross stitch. It's a lot smaller than the designs in the other squares but I think that it looks right for Mario.

Square number 9: Mario Mushroom.

I'm very happy with the way this turned out. I wasn't sure how it would look with a white face rather than beige but it looks good.

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.

London Calling

I haven't posted much this week as we've been away. We went to London for my husband's 40th (yes, the birthday's here and the blanket's nowhere near done; at this rate he'll be lucky to get it for his 41st, lol).

London was amazing. I've only been a few times before, usually on a day trip with my mum, so it was really fun to stay there for a few days. We got to be really touristy and walked around until my feet threatened to give up and leave me.

As you know, we're big fans of WWE here and when I was researching the area our hotel was in, I discovered that there was an independent wrestling show being held around the corner on our first night there. So that was the first night sorted and it was amazing! We've never been to a live wrestling show before and it was so much fun. The crowd were so into it and yelling the most hilarious chants. We're definitely going to keep an eye out for more independent shows in the Bristol area.

The next day was the real touristy one. We went to Covent Garden to check out the market and all the Christmas regalia.

A giant silver reindeer to match the silver glittery one on my desk but then we spotted...real mini reindeer!

Seriously, how adorable are they? I wanted to feed them but they were only letting the kids do that; foiled again by those pesky kids ;)

Our final night was my husband's big birthday present; his favourite band, Carter USM, had their last ever gig at Brixton Academy. I don't have any photos from that because the last time my husband went to a gig there, he got pickpocketed, so this time we didn't take anything but our tickets, enough cash for a couple of drinks and ourselves. It was possibly the craziest concert I've ever been to and that's saying something.

So that was our trip away. We had a great time and will definitely doing it again.