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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one, Motorbike 1 Comment

I’m sure most of the world knows this but the UK was not by both ‘The Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma this past week. Unlike my family up North, we only got a few inches of snow over the course of the week – enough to stop Engel going to work on the motorbike (he did manage to ride in it the first three days, but after a lucky miss, I insisted he didn’t try again) but not enough to stop me going back to work.

Sigh.

It wasn’t a bad first week of work, but I was ready to go home, curl up in a blanket with a hot water bottle and a stack of chocolate and not leave my nest for the immediate future…

Felix did however have a ball – she got to make snow cats and finally have that snowball fight she spent all winter asking for. Inkling in the other hand… yeah… he’s not a fan of this strange, cold, wet, white stuff!

The weather aside (I am a true Brit and can discuss the weather for several hours, it’s a cultural thing) I have two completed projects to share this week!

First of all:

Yep, it’s another chunky Wayfarer! (Pattern by Jen Lucas from the book ‘Doomsday Knits: Projects for the Apocalypse and After’) I literally had this on the moment it was cast off the needles! So warm and cosy…

And project number two:

I made one of these for Felix when she was tiny, and it felt fitting to make one for Isaac. I did hers in the colours of the rainbow, but for him, well, it’s a running joke that he is in fact the Hungry Caterpillar! Made using several free patterns – the alphabet series by Frankie Brown on Ravelry.

So aside from the weather, starting back to work and a little bit of knitting, there’s not much else to say at the moment. I’ve started reading through the Achtung Cthulhu rules and setting, so don’t be too surprised if more random lovecraftian things start to crop up!

Oh, and on the Pokémon hand puppet front, both Felix and Engel are trying to convince me to make ALL of them. I will say now that there is no way I’m doing all 800+ of them!!!!

Maybe just a few more favourites…

Wool count:

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 23 (5 this week!)
Wool bought – 4
Wool given – 5
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 605 (So near my 600 ball goal!)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one 1 Comment

And this is why I should never have Engel come up with blog post titles…

Two completed projects this week. Let me start the first with a bit of an explanation…

Engel likes computer games. Loves them really. Especially open world type RPGs. He puts a worrying number of hours into them, just wandering, doing little side quests, pointedly ignoring the actual plot…

Anyhow. One of his most favourite is Fallout (depending on his mood depends on whether it’s Fallout 3 or Fallout 4, but that’s semantics) and watching him play through the nth playthrough of one of those two, I spotted this:

And I commented that wouldn’t it be cute if Inkling had one of those…Engel looked at me, with a look that I know far too well…and so the hunt for a pattern began!

This was made using the free pattern: Mini Knitted Rocket Ship by Ilana R. Marks and although incredibly cute and awesome, needed a few tweaks to get them a bit more like in the game…

Lengthened the centre part of the rocket, added some extra windows and voila! Now I just need to turn them into an actual mobile…when I do, I shall photograph it and let you all know!

The second completed project is no less geeky than the first. Felix was playing with her cat puppet I made forever ago, and it was having a conversation with her cuddly toy Meowth (her favourite Pokémon for those curious). After watching this adorable exchange an idea took route in my mind and refused to shift until it was knitted…

A Meowth hand puppet! I used my own free cat hand puppet pattern and added a number of small additions and a few tweaks and voila! I may publish my notes so that more Meowths can be created to conquer the world! I am also debating knitting a few other Pokémon hand puppets and if I do I’ll probably put all the pattern notes together and post it under one pattern…not sure yet…need to think on it and see if inspiration strikes…

Anyhow! In non knitting news, tomorrow is my first day back at work after maternity leave! Every time I think that I just want to cry…

Updates will probably be a bit patchy for a while until I get back into the swing of things. It currently up for debate as to whether I will actually get more or less knitting time…

Till the next post!

Wool count:

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 18 (2 this week)
Wool bought – 4
Wool given – 5
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 610 (Will we get below 600 this year? It turned out to be an unobtainable goal last year…)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Couldn’t resist that title after making all these:

Yep, that’s another six seatbelt covers! I used the same free pattern as last time: Seat belt snuggles by Chris Behme and the reasoning? Felix complained repeatedly that whenever anyone used the car, they didn’t have a seatbelt cover, and all the seatbelts needed one. After having a few full car loads of people (my car can convert to a seven seater, it’s surprisingly useful) I relented and used up a load of chunky wool scraps, as well as letting Felix loose on the button collection.

However, she also had one special request…

A ‘princess’ seatbelt cover for her best friend, as she needed a special one for her seat in her car! This makes me think of Disney’s Tangled (Rapunzel) for some reason…

Needless to say, I don’t want to knit any more of these any time soon!

So thankfully I have a different, more geeky project on the needles now, but more about that when it’s finished.

In other news, Missy came to visit her cousins! (She also brought her humans Rabbie and Loki) and much fun was had by all! It was a great laugh, lots of adventure and playing games! I will say now though, I was GMing ‘No thank you, Evil’ and as a fairly strict cthulhu GM, it nearly killed me. No death, insanity or destruction! No elder gods to twist mind and reality! No cults to meddle and cause mischief! But, I managed it. Just. Same can’t be said about the players who managed to turn a half hour adventure (if that) into nearly two hours!

Anyhow, enough of that. Been celebrating Chinese New Year this weekend and watched the dragon parade and dancing lions, took part in making paper lanterns and block printing. Felix had an absolute ball, and Inkling…well…he really, really wanted the pom poms on the lions heads…bless, the nice lion let him pet it for a good five minutes…

Alright, enough chatting, I have a load of housework to do, a chocolate cake to eat and some knitting to get cracking on!

Till next week!

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 16 (5 this week)
Wool bought – 4 (It was snowing, and happened to be the first shop I ducked into for shelter, and they were in the clearance bin, calling my name…)
Wool given – 5 (I mentioned to Engel I only had one ball of black DK wool, he brought home four more for me! And I didn’t even ask him to!)
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 612

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Cats, Gaming, Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

Ignore the title. I may be a little giddy and/or sleep deprived!

But! There is a reason for it!

Here’s the Octopus:

Its a wash cloth for Inkling – using the free pattern: Baby Octopus Cloth by Elaine Fitzpatrick. Believe it or not, this pattern and the wool had been picked out before Inkling was born, I just haven’t gotten round to knitting it until now! He’s been eating finger foods and desperately needed something that could scrub all the food off him in the shower!

And now for the pussy:

Free pattern Attachable Rainbow Kitty Ears by Saphy kun. I spotted these on Ravelry a while ago and knew I had to knit Engel a set, particularly for when he’s playing violent computer games and/or doing online gaming with our friends.

They have been used, not sure if it’s because he can’t get them off the headphones (they do have buttons so can be removed) or if he likes having the cat ears on himself…

Also this week, I finally sorted through my wool stash (this occurs every year or so to some extent) this time I’ve segregated it by colour and each ball is bagged with any matching friends of the same kind and dye lot. The lone balls of wool are put together with the other lone balls of wool of that colour group (so they don’t get sad and lonely) and now I can tell at a glance what wool is best for the size of project I’m doing. This will hopefully get me to focus on using up the odds and ends of my stash! And also future yarn purchases – I know what colours I have lots of, and not so much, so hopefully I’ll buy what I need, not what I want!

I don’t believe that either, but I can hope!

Oh, also, whilst I was sorting my wool out, these scampered out:

Yes. More tribbles. A  red subspecies of the pink mutant variant discovered, only two have been captured and sent for further study up North…

Early post this week as my sister is coming to visit and it’s going to be awesome!!! But before the fun and games start, I need to tidy up all the toys everywhere – it’s amazing how much mess two children, three cats and a husband can make in the blink of an eye…

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 11 (2 this week)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given – 5 (I mentioned to Engel I only had one ball of black DK wool, he brought home four more for me! And I didn’t even ask him to!)
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 613

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

The knit project for this week is exactly what it says on the blog post title.

Elmer and friends:

Left to right: Generic grey elephant, Wilbur, Elmer and Rosie

I made these based on the free Lion Brand Yarn pattern Sweet Mini Elephant – Rosie is the only one knit as written, but in smaller needles, the rest are worked in multiples of 5 stitches where possible. Oh, and the tallest is just three inches tall! So tiny elephants!

Unlike my previous Elmer’s I would willingly knit these again – which is good as I suspect I’ll be making more as presents!

This set will be making its way up to Scotland to the school my mum works at – like the Hungry caterpillar set and the stubborn goat, they’ll be used as teaching aids with the autistic children she works with.

Knitting aside, I’ve been brushing up on the rules for ‘No Thank you Evil!’ – an RPG aimed at introducing kids as young as 4 into the world of role playing. My sister, her husband and their furbaby Missy are coming to visit and we’re going to give it s trial run before I try playing it with Felix – get all the bugs worked out first!

I think this may be the only game however that, as I read the rules and the setting, I actually want to be a player! There’s just so much scope, you can literally be anything!

Engel has broken the character generation system already. His creation? An incorporeal ghost cat who travels through time with his companion Syphilis who has the ability ’embiggen’ so can turn into a giant raging monster.

After I sighed at him, he grinned and declared that actually, he wanted his character to be Syphilis.

Trying not to kill him, I enquired how he planned to communicate with the other players. His response: With a series of awkward rashes.

I’ll leave it at that for today.

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 9 (2 this week)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given – 1
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 614

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting 1 Comment

There used to be only 151 Pokémon, now, there are 802 Pokémon in total, (without including Mega Evolutions and Alola Forms, which are variations of existing Pokémon).

I’m not surprised to say the least, it’s a fun, catchy anime that has had generations of kids worldwide hooked. For me, it was the first gen, the original red, blue and yellow games.

And now, my nephew is hooked also. As I said in my previous post, I was going to make him a Pokémon themed scarf as I had made a Pusheen scarf for my neice.

When I mentioned this to Engel, and showed him the few patterns available!! online – pikachu or pokeball themed – he immediately told me to make a gyarados scarf (one of the original 151 Pokémon) as it had a long snake like body so would lend well to the shape of a scarf.

There weren’t any patterns available so once again, I cracked out the paper and pencils and got to work making my own pattern. I’m not publishing it as I somewhat doubt anyone else is going to be mad enough to make one! (There’s 34 pieces to it!) If I’m wrong, tell me!

Without further ado: Gyrados!

That’s all for this post, I have both a small project and a large project on the needles, so hopefully I’ll have one finished for next week!

Wool count

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 125 (8 since last post!)
Wool bought – 42
Wool given – 135
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 639

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Cats, Gaming, Knitting, Little one 3 Comments

Hi all! Been enjoying my bank holiday weekend by doing more birthday stuff! Meeting up with some friends and gaming with other friends as well, even managed to sneak in a trip to my LYS and found a ball of wool that was whispering…just one! And once I get through my queue of knits I know exactly what it’s going to be!

Now if only I could say the same for the rest of the wool I have…

On that note, on to my finished knitting! Still ploughing on with the Hungry Caterpillar sets, and this week I have made:

Muffins! Ok, they’re really actually a modified version of the free pattern: Divine Cupcakes by Maiya Becker – I worked K2P2 rib on the cake bottom to make the cupcake wrapper (increasing an extra two sts in the base to do so) then doubled the number of knit rows called for in the frosting to make it taller.

Oddly enough, I really wanted to make these so was glad to finally get them on the needles! I worked the free pattern: knitted watermelon by Elaine Simper double stranded to give a more textured/mottled appearance particularly in the watermelon flesh.

Oops, appears Ziggy decided to photobomb me here! (Actually that reminds me of an amusing fact, one of the reasons we got Ziggy was Engel wanted a boy kitty. Took Ziggy to the vets to be vaccinated and the vet rather worriedly informed me, in a hushed voice so Felix wouldn’t overhear, that she was very sorry but he was a she. I couldn’t stop laughing for nearly 20 minutes…)

Anyhow.

And on Sunday he ate through a nice big leaf. Again, double stranded for more colour variation and I used the free cloth pattern: Leaf Cloth Trio by Theresa L. Jones, I used Leaf 3 as I like that it both curved and had veins.

When I was working on the leaves, Felix asked me yet again to knit the caterpillar egg from the beginning of the book, to which it responded that no, it would be so small it would be lost instantly. She then countered my argument by stating the egg could be sewn onto its own little leaf, then it won’t get lost.

I worry that she’s out smarting me and she’s not even four. Not that it’s difficult to do that, but still.

So without further ado:

A little egg on a little leaf. The leaf is made using yet another free pattern: Woodland Wreath, Leaves by Frankie Brown. The egg is simply a little bobble I knitted up and sewn on afterwards.

Alright, that’s enough typing for now, I have butterflies, cocoons and fish to get knitting.

Wool count:

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 80 (7 since last post)
Wool bought – 34
Wool given – 131
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 675

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one, Uncategorized 2 Comments

Let’s start with a story. Every time we go into Manchester, Engel likes to check out the gaming shop (so do I for Call of Cthulhu RPG expansions) and if Felix is good, she gets a dice for her dice bag.

For some time, Felix has called this shop “The Tentacle Shop” as it has a plushie tentacle. A month or so ago we went and, horror of all horrors, the tentacle was gone. Even though it wasn’t for sale, it had been sold (some people are very pushy) and Felix was devastated.

Felix informed us (and the shop) that there would be tentacles – she was going to make some and so was mummy. I shrugged it off (my to knit list is ridiculous right now). She did indeed make a tentacle herself out of paper mâché and pompoms and was very pleased and I figured that was that.

Then, the day before Free RPG day, she asked me where the knitted one was as she wanted to take it to the tentacle shop and give them it as it can’t be the tentacle shop without one.

Cue mad panic cast on, and with an hour to spare:

Its based on the free pattern Gripping by Hunter Hammersen, I added little bobbles for the suckers.

The tentacle was given to the tentacle shop, Felix got her dice, we got free RPGs, everyone was happy.

Then Felix asked where her tentacles where.

Sigh.

But I have had fun with them…

Maybe a bit too much!

Wool count!

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 59 (3 since last post – lots of partial balls used)
Wool bought – 33
Wool given – 49
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 614

 

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Uncategorized No Comments

Summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty…

(Summer in the city, The Lovin’ Spoonful)

Good thing you cant hear me sing! It is very, very hot today, and yesterday, it’s been hot (for me) all week really, which makes my latest knitting project of wooly hats feel very pointless! Ah well, it’ll be of use soon, possibly tomorrow knowing the British weather.

Free pattern – Meret (Mystery Beret) by Woolly Wormhead

There’s an story to these (there’s always a story) I’ve made three of these for my mum previously – the first two were made from New Lanark wool to match a jumper I made her, and a matching scarf and mitts. The first of these she wore through (she works at a school and it’s a playground must have for her, plus anytime she goes outside in the poorer weather), the second is in use, and the third was a little cotton summer version which, her living in Scotland, gets about a week of use a year.

My aunt saw her hats and asked for one as well, so…

There’s not an inch of New Lanark wool left so I stash dived and found this pretty unlabelled wool.

In other news, it was free RPG day yesterday! And I had far too much fun, though the heat did kill quite a bit of the enjoyment as my energy levels just dropped…

I ended up having a siesta! With company round! At least some of said company had siestas too…

There’s an amusing story to tell regarding free RPG day, or more specifically the shop it was at, but I’ll save that for next week.

Later!

Wool count!

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 56 (6 since last post – lots of partial balls used)
Wool bought – 33
Wool given – 49
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 617

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Hi all,

Long story short:

Recieved a letter from Felix’s nursery class Thursday evening saying they were having a ‘royal banquet’ and encouraged the children to dress as princesses, princes or knights that following Thursday.

I looked at Felix, she looked at me, I hesitated then began the question ‘What would you -’

‘A knight! And I can save dragons!’

Ok. Went to the shops Friday. Nothing. Checked Amazon, lots of knight costumes but Felix sized? Nope.

Start the countdown, it’s time to make a knight costume with…six evenings in total to do it? Three left as of now?

All projects on hold, and its another ‘from the archives!’ for all of you! This time round: Sackboy. I imagine most people have played, or at least have seen Little Big Planet being played. Sackboy is the star of the show.

In 2009 when this pattern came out, Engel was games testing Little Big Planet, and I thought it would be cute for him to have one.

Pattern is Sackboy by Alan Dart – and came with a simply knitting magazine back in 2009.

I later made him a trenchcoat and shotgun, unfortunately never photographed, when I realised the abuse the poor guy was getting at Engels work. It seems people who test games, hate the games they test.

Oh well.

I’ve made a dozen or so plain ones, but also two more fun versions:

Dr Who – based on the 10th doctor, played by Tom Baker, and that scarf! I actually made a 1/20th to scale version of it for this little guy.

And lastly, a ninja!

Cause ninjas are awesome.

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 27 (2 since last post)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given – 46
Wool gifted – 16

Total – 653 (So, so close to getting back to that starting total!)

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