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.

End of the Work Week Wisdom!

Me: "I'm a little surprised it's already a thing...."
Cyrano: "I cannot say I am surprised. (: I know these people."
Me: "What are you talking about? We ARE these people. :)"
--Me and C.J., talking about the Doctor Pooh idea

Because I found a picture on Tumblr, and then found out it was a T-shirt design, and then found another T-shirt design, and then he found fanfic, and then I remembered that fanfic gives me hives.

(But it doesn't stop me from making weird mashups, and/or wanting to play in weird mashups.)

End of the Work Week Wisdom!

Ugh. I'm sick today, so all you get is the End of the Work Week Wisdom.

"Dress every day like you'd run away with the Doctor in those clothes."
--unattributed quote, but I'll attribute it to my friend Aine, who posted it on Facebook

Today is not a "dressed like you'd run away with the Doctor" sort of day. Though I am wearing my Doctor Mew shirt. Which I can't seem to find anywhere on the Internet, but I did find this, and now I want another shirt.

Also, one of the cats is sitting in the chair behind me and snoring. It's kinda adorable.

Ah, life!

Life means that this blog tends to come and go from time to time. Especially when I spend about 3 months working out of an archive with no internet, as opposed to in my office, where I can blog during my lunch break. :)

So let's see here. I spent most of December crocheting until I thought my fingers would fall off. I got a brief respite from that when we went down to California to visit Jeremy's family, but then I had more things to make when we got back. I haven't actually slowed down yet, either, as I'm working on a couple of custom orders.

Around February, when I think my actual production schedule should slow down a bit, I'm planning to work on some new stuff for Scary White Girl Designs. One of the things I'm hoping to branch into this year is crochet patterns. I've written up one already, and I'm halfway through writing up another one. I'm hoping to find someone who can beta test the patterns for me. My mom has offered, and I may take her up on it, but I have this sneaking suspicion that she'll finish making the items and then say "what did you just have me make?!" They're a wee bit on the super duper nerdy side. :)

I'm also planning on making some new products, many of which are just variations on things I already make. One thing that I know that I'll definitely be doing is both shorter AND longer arm warmers, as I've had requests for both. I've done one pair of shorter ones (wrist warmers) before, but longer (past the elbow) will be a new thing for me! But I'm excited about that one, because I wear a LOT of T-shirts that have very tiny sleeves, and having arm warmers that cover my whole arm would be epic! :) Also, I think that super duper long arm warmers in the style of the Fourth Doctor's scarf just seem RIGHT. :)

Media consumption!

I've managed to watch a bit more stuff lately than I normally do, so here's a couple of notes on those things.

1) Tangled: Yes, the Disney movie. It was pretty good, but it's just NOT a Disney movie like the ones that came out when I was a teenager. Songs from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast still stick with me. I think that maybe if I was willing to watch Tangled a few more times, I might get some of those songs stuck in my head more, but I doubt I'd watch the movie again. It wasn't at all bad, it was just not quite what I hoped for. Though it was PRETTY. :)

2) Doctor Who: In anticipation of the newest episode, I went back and watched "A Good Man Goes to War" (which I keep wanting to call "Demons Run") and "The Doctor's Wife." The weird thing about watching these two in that order was that I caught something in "The Doctor's Wife" that I had dismissed the first time I heard it, but that made a whole lot more sense right on the heels of the later episode. This got me thinking that maybe I should watch the first half of season 6 in reverse order to see if there's more of that... because River's timeline is backwards in comparison to the Doctor's... hmmm. :)

Anyway, like I said, this was in anticipation of "Let's Kill Hitler," which turned out to be maddening and lovely all at the same time. Only five more episodes left this season, which seems far too short for my liking! (And yeah, 13 episodes is normal, but it just REALLY seems short this season.)

3) Buffy: We're up to season 3 of Buffy currently, about halfway through. And I've discovered that I can't pick up anything that Joss Whedon has a hand in presently as I will stumble across more spoilers. This time, it was an issue of the Dollhouse comic, which talked about what was going on in terms of Buffy "season 9," which is a forthcoming comic (they already did season 8 as comics). As it turns out, it wasn't a TV show spoiler, but a season 8 spoiler. Nonetheless, ugh.

4) Captain America: We finally made it out to see Captain America last weekend, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It still breaks my brain a little that Johnny Storm is playing Cap now. I might like Cap as much as I disliked Johnny. :) And the trailer for the Avengers movie, though quite vague, still makes me excited to see it! :)

Wow...

Kids take a TON out of you. We picked everyone up at the airport around 11 a.m., and dropped them off at their hotel a touch before 6, and we were beat. Now, granted, I had been to the gym in the morning, and there was a REALLY big flight of steps that Peter begged to be carried up. And since his mom had Lila and his dad had all of their stuff, I carried him up a couple of flights, and Jeremy carried him the rest of the way. My legs are STILL feeling those stairs. :(

But we did have a blast. The light rail train and aquarium were HUGE hits with Peter, and I think Lila enjoyed seeing some of the fish. She's still just at the single word stage of things, so it was a lot of "Look!" and other babbling. The real great hit with her was actually the lavender pillow. It was soft and smelled good, and so she snuggled it immediately. I also like to think that she loved it a lot because it was made from a T-shirt that used to belong to her good buddy Jeremy (or, as my sister's husband dubbed him, "Friend Jeremy," since he isn't their uncle). :)

After that we managed to drag ourselves to a night of fiction reading (by other people, not us) at the Wayward, and then zonked out. We were SO grateful for the lazy Sunday we had planned. We spent a bit of time sifting through some books to ease the strain on a couple of bookcases, and then headed to the Cinebarre for Iron Man II. I am now totally in love with that theater. Mid-afternoon on a Sunday seems to be a great time to go, as it wasn't too crowded. So we got our snacks and drinks delivered to our seats relatively quickly, and got to enjoy the movie in a mostly quiet theater. Plus, I had sangria to drink. Jeremy got a $5 milkshake. :) I love it!

Came home to make somewhat disastrous giant burritos (the structural integrity of Jeremy's collapsed midway through, and mine decided that sour cream was a good addition to my shirt), but then we got to watch two more episodes of Doctor Who. Though they were probably not my favorites of this season (episode 1 is holding that honor at the moment), even though they're all about the Weeping Angels, there were still good moments. And we're caught up in terms of what's available thus far! :)

In other news, Trader Joe's has blue cheese slices! It's technically blue cheese blended with Monterey Jack, but whatever. They're yummy. My sandwich today is ham and blue cheese with tomato and mayo on a big soft baguette thingie. Delicious! :)

More Doctor Who Chatter (Possible Spoiler)

(Advance warning that there is a spoiler about "Victory of the Daleks" below. It's not a ZOMG spoiler, because the title implies the existence of Daleks in the episode, but the details are spoilery. You have been warned.)

We got done with Jeremy's birthday dinner at Red Robin last night early enough that we decided to watch "Victory of the Daleks" when we got home. (Side note: If you go to Red Robin for your birthday, they will NOT sing to you when they bring you your sundae if you're seated in the bar area. Just an FYI. Jeremy was crushed by this. We offered to sing to him, but it wasn't the same.)

So from the previews, it's pretty clear that there's something bizarre going on. Army green Daleks with WWII "vests"? Nifty. I want to make one already! (Though I need to find the right beads to use for the nubs on the lower half. Possibly even nubby buttons.) And of course there's more than just two Army green Daleks...

But seriously? Technicolor Daleks? My first response: "They've become iMacs!" My second response (laughing so hard I couldn't hardly speak): "It's the Rainbow Lanterns!" (Which is a comic book reference that I only understand from Jeremy complaining about how they ruined Green Lantern.) When it comes to the Daleks, it's hard to say if it's going to be a one-off thing, or if the future of the Daleks is that they come in red, orange, yellow, blue, and white. With gold light coming out of the eyestalk thingie. (I think I liked that last bit the least. It was weird.)

At any rate, I'm willing and able to make the brightly colored ones. You know, if anyone's interested. ;)

The new Doctor Who

Jeremy decided to buy the first episode of the latest Doctor Who season from iTunes the other day. Who am I to tell him no? :)

I should backtrack, though, and say that I watched like one episode of Doctor Who in college and also read the novelization of that same episode (as a bizarre coincidence). Then when they rebooted the series with Christopher Eccleston, I started watching it and fell in love. But they say you always love your first Doctor the best; not me. I'm a David Tennant girl.

I might have to say WAS a David Tennant girl soon. When they first announced Matt Smith as the next Doctor, I looked at his IMDB page and said, "Oh, he's CUTE." With big time emphasis on the cute. Like someone's little brother cute. I tracked down Ruby in the Smoke (which he had done with Billie Piper, a.k.a. Rose Tyler), and said, "Yeah, okay, I think he can pull it off." So I've been a fan since soon after the announcement.

After watching the first full episode with Matt Smith, I'm a squeeing fangirl. He's FUNNY. I was laughing hard throughout most of the episode. Now, this may present problems later--I'm not sure I can take him seriously, because, again, CUTE! He's so young and slightly goofy looking, that I think the cute + funny will outweigh the serious. So I'm hopeful that he'll prove me wrong on this one. :)

And the new companion, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan)? She's already growing on me. No one can ever replace Rose, in my book, but I like what they're doing with this character. She's a special sort of companion, and I will probably cry when her heart gets broken. Because it will. Spectacularly. I already know.

I'm also picking up on the little subtle (and not so subtle) meta-plot things that are already being tossed out there. There will be badness. Lots of it. I know so.

Survived the weekend, barely

So the show on Saturday went very well. I was a lot more comfortable on stage this time, and I think it showed. Jeremy was terrified, but he still did awesome. :) There is video with passable sound this time, and I'll link to it as soon as I find out where it's posted. :)

Sunday was my Vampire game, which went okay. Once again, it felt like it was all about one character, to the exclusion of the rest of them. We tried to get the other folks involved, but they weren't really going for it. Apparently I need to push harder. :)

However, I also had a pretty bad headache through most of Sunday, which got worse after the game, and then lingered into Monday. It was an odd one that I want to call a migraine, but I'm not quite sure what might have triggered it. At any rate, it wiped me out pretty soundly. So I spent part of Monday sleeping, and then the rest of the day relaxing in front of the TV with a stack of unfinished crochet projects. I've now finished a bunch of rose pins and, the most exciting item, my crocheted TARDIS. (You can see additional shots of it on my Facebook Fan Page.) I've already got the next one in the works, with a few design modifications based on what I learned from the first one. My prototype is waiting to see what fun destination it will fly off to, and I'm pretty sure I've got a few more people lined up to buy the first ones to arrive in my Etsy shop. :)

Wow...

So I didn't realize it at the time, but my last post was my 1,400th post to this blog. That's pretty crazy, but I guess I have had this blog since 2002. I posted a lot more in the early days. Now, I make my 1,400th post, and then forget I have a blog for 2 1/2 weeks. :)

I didn't actually forget, of course. I spent one week in New Mexico, with very little free time to spend on the internet. I got back in time to run around like a crazy woman before Jeremy's birthday, and then spent the past week getting ready for his birthday party and trying to help him get over the plague. I succeeded in the first, and failed in the latter. And also seem to have gotten a minor plague of my own for my efforts. *sigh*

My travel schedule for upcoming weeks is allegedly packed, but nothing is confirmed yet. So I suspect I will be spending three weeks in Kansas pretty soon, but won't know until I'm told to scramble for plane tickets. This seems increasingly to be the way of things, which is a little rough. But at least I have my schedule lined out, so I know when I can and cannot travel.

Pretty much haven't been up to much of anything else, other than re-watching season 3 of Doctor Who. Jeremy started out way behind me on Doctor Who, so I get to re-watch while he gets caught up. I like this plan. :)

And real Friday

Which is nice, because waking up this morning was very hard. But knowing that it was Friday and not another Monday (which is what it felt like) was good. :)

We had a lovely day yesterday, spending time with Aine and John at Jana and Michael's place, with Jana's two kids. Of course, I say kids, but they're 18 and 19, so not really kids. I was convinced that Jerome had found his long lost brother, which was pretty amusing. We watched a ton of random movies, ate an enormous quantity of really good food, and had some fun and interesting conversations. And we've already made plans for next Thanksgiving, which seems to be our Aine and John holiday. The first year we were in Seattle, they hosted us; this year they drove us to the festivities; next year, we're going to host them. Since it's a year away, that gives us plenty of time to figure out where people can sit and get the place cleaned up. :)

In other news, we finished season 4 of Doctor Who on Wednesday, which means we have to wait like forever for season 5 (which hasn't started yet). Either that, or figure out if it airs in the U.S. when it airs in the U.K. That would be awesome!

And the End of the Work Week Wisdom comes from the season 4 finale:

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now!"
--Captain Jack Harkness

Which of course is totally meaningless out of context, but a) it involves spoilers, and b) we were laughing our asses off when we heard it, because Captain Jack is just so Captain Jack. :)

More geekiness

So we've been cruising through the Doctor Who DVDs, and as I was busily crocheting while watching last night, I had a fabulous idea strike me. I rummaged through my incredible stash of yarn, and discovered that said idea was almost 100% a go. Why is that I ALWAYS am missing one color of yarn that I NEED? (Anyone know if Jo Ann's is open on turkey day?)

A couple of years ago, my friend John commissioned me to make him a Doctor Who scarf. For those of you unfamiliar with this object, it is approximately 12 inches wide, 12 FEET long, and involves 7 colors of yarn. I made it for him. I cursed a lot. But I got it done. I sadly have no good pictures of this creation, as it was the money I made from this commission that went towards my new digital camera, and DEAR GOD did the one before that suck. Suffice it to say, it was quite the undertaking.

And I've occasionally pondered making another, and then I've remembered what I'd need to charge for it, and how much of my life it would consume, and then moved on. But my brain flash last night has made it possible to once again make something like that scarf, only a much quicker version.

I'm making Doctor Who ice cream and coffee scarves... :)

Technically, they're the same cozies I've been making, just in those specific 7 colors. I'm thinking of doing a Doctor Who fan pack, that involves a Dalek and one of each cozy, but that's getting a tiny bit ahead of myself. I still need to find the gold/yellow yarn in cotton, which is proving trickier than I'd hoped. But I will figure it out, one way or another, even if it involves doing one stripe in acrylic. :)

And yes, this absolutely proves nothing more than the fact that I'm a big geek. But I'm okay with that. :)

Whee!

So I don't watch "Smallville." Never have, probably never will. I'm just not much of a Superman sort of girl. I like my superheroes a little less wholesome, I think. :) But "Smallville" is on right before "Supernatural," and so when Jerome turned on the TV last night, it was still on.

Now in the midst of his complaining about the fact that the guy on the screen was supposed to be Doomsday, and how wrong that was, I noticed the music they were playing in the background... more specifically, I _recognized_ the music they were playing. VAST! I was astounded! VAST has always been one of those bands that a handful of people I know have heard of, and here they are getting national television air time. Neat! :)

And of course, this really doesn't have much of a point. Just me being excited that a band I like(d... don't really care for a lot of their newer stuff) was on TV. :) I somehow only half watched "Supernatural," even though I know it was the mid-season big deal episode, but at least it wasn't a cliffhanger. I've missed at least 3 episodes this season, which have apparently contained all of the meta-plot, and so I'm utterly lost. *sigh*

Ah well, in good news, we should have the first two discs of Season 4 of Doctor Who, which means I will finally get to see the episode with the Adipose Babies. I already know all about them, though, as I made one that will be winging it's way to Paige soon, along with a Dalek. :) She's making Jerome some SWEET Clockwork Orange plugs in exchange. :)

Good weekend!

So I made a LOT of headway on the first of my two big orders over the weekend. This involved, among other things, me going to a dollhouse shop, so that I could find a teensy little eggbeater and a teensy little toilet plunger. As it ended up, I found a suitable replacement for the latter option. But the dollhouse shop was CRAZY. I guess when you're selling tiny little things, you don't need a lot of space, but people do still need to walk around. In the aisles, there really wasn't room for two people to pass one another, which was awkward when there are 3-4 people shopping.



And the end result, of course, is very cute. :) For those who aren't as geeky as me, it's a Dalek, from Doctor Who. This little guy, however, is maybe 4 inches tall, rather than about 5 feet tall. I refuse to crochet anything that approaches my own height. :) And yeah, these will be going in the shop as soon as I can make time to make more of them... I bought extra dollhouse accessories so that I could make more. That'll save me from going to the claustrophobic store that involves taking two buses to get to, though it's probably not even 2 miles from where we live! :)

Aside from crocheting like a madwoman, we also got to do character creation for my Werewolf Wild West game, which is looking like it's going to be a blast. It's most of the same folks that we've been gaming with since last year, and they're always a great group to game with. Looks like we may be adding a fourth to the group, which will also be fun. Don't be surprised if I babble on about Werewolf stuff from time to time, though more often it'll probably be about 1850s history that I'm babbling about. :)

And we also got two more seasons of X-Files on DVD last night, because they were on sale. Of course, I told Jerome that we're finishing season two of Doctor Who first, and that's a big sacrifice for me, because the seasons we got of X-Files are 3 and 4... season 3 is my very favorite season, since a) that's when I started watching the show, and b) "Small Potatoes."

Hurrah for Friday!

I'm spending my day at UW, running about to various libraries and sections of libraries. Some people might complain, but I love being on campus for a day. And I especially like the pan-Asian place they have in the HUB for lunch. :)

End of the Work Week Wisdom:
Bishop: "Start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know."
The Doctor: "Well, for starters, I know... you can't wrap your hand round your elbow and make your fingers meet."
--from "The Idiot's Lantern" episode of Doctor Who

Like I said, addicted. :) Of course, this means we're going to get through the remainder of the new seasons before the next season comes out... :)

Stuff and things

1) So Pineapple Express is seriously funny, but has no redeeming qualities aside from that. And yeah, totally NOT something to take the kids to, because there's a lot of violence and they wouldn't understand pretty much any of the humor. To get it, you either need to have smoked weed, or known people who smoked weed. :)

2) We're getting seriously addicted to the new "Doctor Who" series. We've watched all of season 1, and now are into season 2. And I don't care what anyone else says, Christopher Eccleston is my favorite Doctor. :)

3) So yeah, I'm slightly swamped with craft stuff. It's a good thing, cuz it gives me plenty to work on, but wow... everything just hit at once with people wanting to buy stuff. :) I shouldn't complain, at all. :)