Scary White Girl is moving!

Okay, I'm not moving personally. But my blog is moving. After some persistent problems with the blog over here, I've given up and decided to make the move over to Wordpress. I've had good luck with their services, and they make it pretty easy to import the twelve years worth of blog posts I've made here (give or take). So if you'd like to continue following my blog, please head over to http://scarywhitegirl.wordpress.com/. My goal is to post a little more often over there. :)

Tea Time Feature!

I got a message on Friday that one of my mug cozies was featured on a blog post at Glue and Glitter! I love the other items that she's paired with my mug cozy for this feature--a lovely ceramic mug and a chai kit. So check out the feature, or check out all of my mug and take-out cup cozies!

Hats!

Yesterday was a day for working on hats while we gamed, as I have two custom hats to make. One of my friends at the game expressed astonishment that I nearly finished both of the hats while we were gaming. I ran out of the yarn I needed for one hat, or I would have finished it. I was just glad that I got through as much as I did, and didn't have too much idle time. Because I love our game, and it's a blast, but I also like having something to keep my hands busy. Otherwise, my brain is more likely to wander off and get lost.

I had an idea for a new hat design the other day as well, so that will likely be on my plate soon. And I have another hat that I made pieces for, but haven't finished. This is mainly because I need to do some embroidery to finish it, and embroidery is one of those things that I've always had trouble getting into. Cross stitch is fine because there are designated places to put the stitches. Embroidering with no lines to follow is a recipe for disaster for me. This is why I paid to have "Police Box" machine stitched onto felt for my TARDISes. :)

So we'll see how successfully I can do the embroidery. If it is too fussy for me, then I might just write up the pattern and sell that rather than making the hat as a regular item for me shop. I like making hats, but if I find that a hat is really fussy for me to make, it becomes a lot less fun for me.

Beware the wall of text!

I should probably post here more often. But since I haven't posted for a few months, here's a recap!

In October, I got to go to New Mexico for work. I went there several years back, and fell in love with the food there, particularly stuffed sopapillas. So I insisted that we go out to a Mexican place one of the nights we were there, and I got my stuffed sopapillas. Om nom nom.

Also in October, Jeremy's first novella, "Kensei," came out for e-readers! It's bundled with two other novellas as Cobalt City Rookies from Timid Pirate Publishing. All three of the novellas feature teenaged super hero protagonists. I have, of course, read his novella several times, and I finally got started reading the other two recently. So far, super awesome!

We spend November working on our novels for NaNoWriMo. This was the fourth year I attempted it, and once again, I did not finish. This time, it was because my laptop died a week before the end of November. Though I ended up buying a new laptop on Cyber Monday, and had it two days later, it was really a disheartening blow to my potential progress. I'd still like to finish the novel, but I haven't gotten back to it yet.

I also had the big EtsyRain holiday show in November, which was excellent! This was the first year the show was in McCaw Hall, and the new venue was spectacular! My sales were also great, and the new item I debuted, wrist warmers, proved quite popular.

A few weeks later, I sold my crocheted crafts at GeekFest, which was put on by Seattle Browncoat Charities. It was a ton of fun to finally do a show where I didn't have to try to explain things like Cthulhu. :) Also, Jeremy got to see Kirby Krackle, ended up buying all of their music on his phone while listening to their show, and then playing it for me. Yay, nerdy music! (Granted, we had seen the lead singer from Kirby Krackle about a week previous, which was part of the reason that Jeremy went to see them play at GeekFest.)

We spent Christmas proper in Seattle, but then left a couple of days later for a grand tour of the Midwest. We flew to St. Louis and spent one night there. The next morning, we loaded up the car with my mom and youngest sister, and drove to Kansas City, where we spent two nights at my middle sister's brand new house, which I refer to as the mansion. It has an indoor pool. That's really all that you need by way of explanation. I managed to pull a muscle in my leg from either swimming or going up and down the stairs the first day (possibly both), but I still went ice skating on the second day, which really didn't improve my leg any. But it eventually got better. We also got to watch Inception, Return of the Jedi, and Les Miserables while we were there.

After our two nights in Kansas City, we returned to St. Louis for another night, and did karaoke in my mom's living room. Because she found a karaoke machine at a yard sale for like $6, and it worked. The music selection was a bit slim, but that just meant we got to pick out ridiculous songs and sing them. Someone should have taped me and Megan trying to sing all five parts on a Spice Girls song. :)

We drove down to Carbondale for New Years Eve, where we played a ridiculous amount of Cards Against Humanity and hung out with my good friends there (except for Thor, who was sick). We went to lunch with my former boss's widow the next day, after I took Jeremy on a driving tour of Carbondale. I was a little surprised at how well I remembered how to get most places... but I guess I did live there for nine years!

Finally, we drove back up to St. Louis and stayed at my mom's for one more night, where we broke out the wine and played a wine-themed version of Monopoly. Much to his astonishment, Jeremy won the game after Mom and Megan decided to give up.

So now we're in 2013, and though I don't do resolutions or anything of the sort, I do at least have things in mind that I'm trying to do, like trying to budget and spend more carefully this year. I'm also trying to write more frequently (daily would be ideal) and keep my blogs more active. :) On the crafting front, I should probably figure out something new to start making this year. At the moment, I'm doing a bunch of custom work for friends and family, and then I need to restock all of the stuff that sold out at my shows. So it might take a while before I can start on new things. Or, depending on how some of the custom works goes, I might start making these things for my shop!

Ah, young nerds :)

Many many years ago, my hubbie started running a game for the children of some of his gamer friends. These girls (and a couple of boys) were around 10-12 years old at the time. We still game with a couple of them, who are now in their early 20s, and another of them is our regular catsitter.

Now there's a new batch of kids, belonging to other gamer friends. So on Saturday, he started running Star Wars for three kids, ranging in age from 11-15. Because there are only three kids in the group at the moment, he let me make a character too. Whee! :)

The kids are actually brilliant, though. Two of them have gamed before (one of them has had me as a GM before), but not with people their own age. The oldest one had never played anything other than card and board games, and she took to gaming like a fish to water. There was one point where my character talked us out of combat (we were pretty outnumbered), but other than that, we tried to let the kids do what they wanted to do. It took them about ten seconds to figure out that if no one ever went to the bog, and there was rumored to be a bog witch hiding there, she was probably a Jedi. And she was, as it turns out. :)

So yeah, we only get to play this game about once a month, but I think it's going to be a fun addition to the gaming schedule. And since one of the kids lives some distance from us, her dad is going to hang out during the game and help with NPCs. That is gonna be hilarious. :)