Work in Progress Wednesday (just a bit late): Checkers Scarf

Since I've had so much going in lately, I decided to start a very simple crochet project that I could easily throw in my purse and have with me at all times. On Monday I started working on the Checkers Scarf by Sally Beaty in a special colorway of Cherry Tree Hill worsted weight superwash merino called Affliction Anyone?  This yarn is one of four different colored skeins I bought online from a hand dyer that based her colorways on MMORPG, The World of Warcraft.  This one is supposed to remind you of the colors of the warlock class and since most of you probably haven't played the game, I'll just tell you that the colors are spot on.  

I have been holding onto these four skeins of yarn for quite some time now because I wanted to use for a really good project because I literally can't get any more of the yarn.  The person who dyed it is no longer in business :(  Unfortunately, I only found out about her lovely yarn very close to when she stopped producing.  Oh well, you win some you lose some.  

I really like the pattern because a) it is really easy and therefore memorize-able and b) it's a basic granny square type look, but the way you turn each row makes the double crochets lean and look really interesting.  I should be able to finish this up this weekend since it really is so easy to work on.  This past week has just been so busy that I really haven't had any time tow work on it at all.  So, I'm just happy that I have as much done as I do.  It's also really nice to not have a deadline for something, seems like life has been filled by those lately.  Anyway, until we chat again... happy crafting!

Stuff &Things

So, it's been a busy... few months. I looked back and realized that I've probably only posted 3 times in the past couple months and that is most likely being very generous. There have just been so many neat and/or time consuming things going on to occupy me. Due to the inherent time destroying capability of the season I think I'm going to dub this time of year Anti-Blogsmas!

At first work was really busy and hat always cuts down on my blogging energy... and then all sorts of other and more fun things arrived to capture my attention.

First, the next expansion of World of Warcraft came out around Thanksgiving. Cataclysm is fun, addictive and a joy to my inner gamer. I have been playing so much now that there is so much new content available. Here are some screenshots of my in game shenanigans.

My new Goblin (Igotwutuneed) in her lovely rocket boots

Thayolin cruising around Vashj'ir on her new seahorse mount

After my little wow distraction, the busyness of Christmas loomed and I got into my usual last minute crafting and baking extravaganza.  I didn't do a whole lot of present making this year, but I do have a couple neat things I can share.

Murray the Reindeer made for the Yankee Swap at my Knit Night

A Tiny Cthulhu I made for a $1 Yankee Swap with some friends

So, I've been a bit busy, but it's been for good reasons.  Should have some neat updates to share soon.

- Posted using BlogPress for my iPhone

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just thought I would drop in and say hello for the first time in almost two months.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting regularly soon.

But I wanted to say that our little family hopes you have a lovely and restful Thanksgiving full of family, friends... 

and food (of course).

Springy Crochet Slouchy Hat

Recently I have been trying my hand at crochet hats, since I have discovered that I like them, they are quick to make and I seem to look pretty good in them.  One of the members of my fiber group, LadySpendcer on Ravelry, recently made some chemo hats for a charity I like to support through knitting.  The hats she crocheted were so beautiful, I just had to try to make one for myself.  

I'm still pretty much a newbie at crochet, so there are lots of mistakes that occur when I'm working on my crochet projects.  While this is annoying, at least a round of crochet is easy to pull out without accidentally destroying your project in the process.  So, with that intro, I'm sure you are not surprised when I say that I actually made this hat twice.  The first time I used a larger crochet hook then the pattern called for since I thought I might be a tight crocheter.  So, apparently I am not because my hat was GINORMOUS!  So, version 1.0 of this baby was reclaimed and made into version 2.0, which is the final product. 

It took me much longer to do this project than I thought it would, at around a week.  This is mostly because I was on vacation and did a whole heck of a lot of sleeping and doing other things I don't generally the time for like playing WoW and organizing my crafty things.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Little Things That Make My Day

So, there's no Ten on Tuesday subject this week and I kind of missed last week's entirely... so I thought I would do my own in an effort to pick up the blogging pace.  Here are 10 Little Things Can That Make My Day:

1) Starting a new project - Whether it be knitting, crocheting, stamping or whatever.  There is just something exciting about starting something new.

2) An attentive purring cat - Molly is NOT a lap cat, so whenever she chooses to lavish attention on me, it's a good day.

3) A beautiful sunrise/sunset - I don't know what it is, but whenever I see a particularly pretty sunrise or sunset, it seems to alter my mood for the better.

4) A surprise visit from the iced coffee fairy - You know who you are and I am always grateful.

5) Comments left on my blogs - Hint, hint... :D

6) When that awesome smell in the hallway when I come home is actually coming from our apartment - I am so fortunate I have a hubbie who can cook and is not afraid to try new things in the kitchen.  Brian's Peanut Chicken and Heavy Kodo Stew from the MMO Cookbook are my favorites.

7) Checking things off of my to do list - Sad I know, but I get a thrill when everything is done.

8) Getting a new achievement in World of Warcraft - Yes, this is a bit specific, but when you haven't played in a few weeks and then your computer croaks, you realize just how happy you got about silly things like these.

9) Chocolate - Enough said.

10) Having someone favorite one of my projects on Ravelry - It's a nice little pat on the back, usually from a complete stranger, but it's nice to see that people like my work.

10 Things I Am Thankful For

This is such a great 10 on Tuesday. For most of November I kept on seeing people on Facebook and Twitter talking about all the things they are thankful for. While I know I could do at least one status update a day with something or someone I am thankful for, I just didn't seem to find the time to actually do it. So, I guess this week's 10 on Tuesday is my opportunity. There have been so many awesome things for me to be thankful in the past year. Here is just a small list of them:

1) All the wonderful people who are part of my life - I can't even begin to list all of the people who are dear to me, so I'm not going to try.  Some people I see everyday, some less than once a year.  I am so blessed to have such caring friends and family, thank you all for being there for me.

2) Warm, purring cats - To me a house without a cat isn't a home.  I have had a kitty in my life since I can remember and for 4 years we did without, which was very difficult for me. Whether I'm reading in bed with our Molliwog rubbing her face against the pages of my book or having Winks purr like a madman when I stop by to feed him when Brian's folks are away... these cats just mean the world to me. 

3) The smell of a good campfire - I'll admit, I'm a sucker for certain smells and the scent of wood burning is one of them.  Good thing I married and Eagle Scout and I was a Cadet in Girl Scouts.  Between the two of us, if we need one, a good campfire is an easy undertaking.

4) The taste of freshly baked bread - To quote a co-worker of mine, "I never met a carbohydrate I didn't like," and since I'm home on vacation and have some spare time this week, I've been cooking a lot.  Today I made spice bread and it is just so good hot with a little pat of butter.  I love my bread machine; now I just have to remember how it works.

5) My hobbies - They might sound distinctly unimportant in the scheme of things, but knitting, paper crafting, photography, blogging and computer games really make a big difference in my life.  They de-stress me while forcing me to be creative and laugh at myself.  There is also the added bonus that they are all social in some way.  I play World of Warcraft with several of my friends, so that gives me a chance to spend some time with them during the week when I normally couldn't see them.  Almost all of my paper crafting projects happen when I'm in a class of mostly familiar faces and my knitting introduces me to all sorts of small businesses and other knitters as I look around for some beautiful new yarn I have yet to discover.

6) The exquisitely soft feel of Malabrigo - Ok, forgive me, I'm going to step into my yarn geek persona.  If you told me a year ago that I was going to absolutely drool over certain types of yarns... I would have thought you were crazy.  However, a tactile obsession has befallen me sometime since I started knitting in earnest.  I. Love. Soft. Yarn.  All I do when I go to a fiber store is touch things.  I can honestly say I have picked up a gorgeously dyed skein to put it in my basket, only to put it down when I notice it's just not soft enough for me to knit with.  So sad.... but, at this point I know my weakness.  To me the perfect illustration of what is soft (yarnwise) is how Malabrigo Worsted feels.

7) The generosity of others - It always blows me a away how generous people can be.  Just this week one of my friends' parents gave us a beautiful four poster queen sized bed.  They were moving and didn't need it so they generously said we could have it.  Now, my husband and I have been married for over six years now and for those six years have been sleeping in a full sized bed.  Our old bed was great, don't get me wrong, it was just a little tough to establish peace where covers were concerned....  Another example is how quickly Brian and I found ourselves with new queen sized sheet sets and a comforter after mentioning our new bed's imminent arrival.  I mean really, we didn't even have time to go out any buy any for ourselves!   

8) Music - I don't think I can say how much am am thankful for music and do it any kind of justice.  It has played such a large part in my life for so many years that I don't know how to begin.  I have yet to find a musical genre I don't like at least in some way.  From classically written movie scores to musicals and Metallica, I really enjoy a wide range as both a listener and performer.  Music is just the perfect way to express all kinds of emotions that are hard to convey by words alone.

9) All the beauty that surrounds me - Spring flowers, blazing sunsets and birds calling in the early hours of the morning; the sound of children playing on the playground outside our window.  These are just a few of those tiny things that bring a smile to my face everyday that people often overlook.  Even I forget to take time out for them on a busy day, but when I have a change to slow down and relax, they creep back into view.

10) My wonderful husband -  I couldn't leave him out now could I?  Love you honey!

WoW: Who's the Tank?

Abbott and Costello's Who's on First set for a more geeky crowd:

I just love this classic act: I can't get enough of it. This rendition is especially funny for me being set in world of Warcraft. There hasn't been much time for gaming lately, so I needed to get my fix in somehow. Anyway, off to paint at a couple friends' house for the day. Hilarity shall ensue.

FigurePrint Contest Results

I am sad to say that neither my friend Amy nor I was the winner of The Instance's FigurePrint contest back on the 9th of Oct. While this fact makes me sad since we both worked very hard on our respective entries, the person who won, Gonz, really deserved first prize.

I feel very good knowing that someone that has as much talent as he, was the winner. So, now that I've declared his artistic genius, here is a link to his entry. I'm only posting a link as I don't want to hijack his picture, since I don't know how he would feel on the subject.

If you want to listen to the podcast revealing the finalists (in the first 5-10 minutes) and Gonz as the winner (towards the end) you can find the links to the iTunes subscription, rss feed and mp3 download here.

If you want to see some of the best figureprints made for the contest you can view them on The Instance's site in four different blog entries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4-Finalists and Winner.

Super Secret Project Revealed: Knitted World of Warcraft Figureprint

Everyone, meet Thayolin, my level 80 Horde Paladin on the Durotan server of World of Warcraft. Why, you ask, did I knit a rendition of her? Well there's a bit of a story there.


The backstory:

My husband and I have been playing World of Warcraft together for about 3-4 years now. Recently I got an iPhone and started listening to podcasts on my way to and from work to entertain myself. My favorite is The Instance, a podcast by Scott (@ExtraLife) and Randy (@RandyDeluxe), that gives WoW players the news, rumors, and general discussion of all things World of Warcraft on a weekly basis with heavily douse of hilarity. In their most recent episode (#164) they announced a contest they are running to give away a free FigurePrint of a character from Figureprints.com Now, the concept getting a free FigurePrint is damn near irresistible to me.

Brian and I each have on of these and they are very cool. They are a 3-D rendering of your character wearing their armor and weapons and run you about $150 a piece. Brian got me one of Thayolin for Valentines Day this past year. I was so excited!

But I digress. To enter the contest I had one week to make my own figureprint out of anything I chose: whatever I wanted! Hmmm, what do I do for fun all the time? KNIT! And what do I have a metric ton of just sitting around our apartment? YARN! So, given this wonderful idea, I decided to give knitting up a Thayolin doll a go. I mean why not? how hard could it be?

The process:

Ok, it was pretty darn hard!!!! The podcast came out on Oct. 1 and the due date for submitting a photo of your figureprint was Oct. 7. That is not much time. Especially since I'm not a fast knitter, I have never made anything like this before AND I'm making up the pattern as I go along. So, 20+ hours later Thayolin's knitted persona was born. Below are some pictures of the process of making her. I have some notes on the pattern, but I generally just improvised it, so if you are interested in making one for yourself, I could give some tips, but that's about it.

Ahhh, the early stages... It's always fun to see a disembodied knitted head sitting on your desk.



Working down to the hip area. I even tried to make a basic skeletal system so I could bend her at the waist and legs. She bends a little but not too much, so I obviously have to work on this more next time.


For awhile she just looked like a voodoo doll because of all the needles sticking out everywhere. A certain member of my family who shall remain nameless was a bit concerned of what others might think if they saw me working on her at this point. Hehe...


A little bit of intarsia for the Wyrmrest Accord tabard. Not too bad for exactly zero planning beforehand.


Getting close, just the gauntlets, shoulders and helm (shudder) to go!


Here's a closeup of her helm. That is the piece that took the longest to make because I had to embroider the detail on it in order to make look even remotely ok. I probably put 3-4 good hours into this alone. But I am very proud of it. It even kind of looks like the original :P


So, wish me luck on the contest. My friend Amy also made a figureprint and hers is awesome. You can see it on her blog here. I know I have some good competition. Hopefully we will find out soon. My fingers are crossed and I'll post the results once I find out.

Lessons from She Shoots Sheep Shots

Recently, I was scouring through my Ravelry groups, looking for updates and new projects people have shared. While looking through a knitting and photography group called Project Photography, I stumbled upon a Photography for Knitters Workshop that "surprise" was in Carver, MA! (only about 1.5 hours away). The workshop description said it was "about having more control over your photos, and wanting them to look great online." SWEET!!!

So, I emailed my photo/knit buddy Tara and in the next few days we were excited, signed up and ready to shoot! The workshop was put on by Gale Zucker, aka SheShootsSheep on Ravelry. Gale is a professional photographer and accomplished knitter who rarely gets to combine those two portions of her life. She started off our workshop by showing us some of her fiber and knitting related photography in her book, Shear Spirit (more info below), and some of the techniques we should use to make our fiber projects really show their texture and come to life.

Next we talked about lighting your projects and how to BEND LIGHT TO YOUR WILL!!! Erm.... pardon, I mean.... use lighting to your advantage by reflecting light onto the subject or using a light box. For the third part of the workshop, we took our projects outside and practiced using the techniques Gale demonstrated earlier. I purposely brought to the workshop a very cool silver cowl that I had recently finished for a friend. I had a distinct feeling that this cowl would be a nightmare to photograph since it has three distinct fiber textures throughout. I am very proud of how the cowl came out, so I really wanted to capture it well. Luckily, my friend was a willing victim to my plan to shoot it on someone (thanks Tara :P).

Tara took a great pic of my Jayne Cob hat (on my own head).









Gale demonstrating that you need to get into some pretty interesting poses to get just the right shot....
















For the last part of the class we went back inside, ate cookies (we need our energy you know) and focused on how to optimize the photos we took for uploading to blogs, etc. I came out of the workshop with lots of new ideas and the rejuvenation of my desire to use my camera. So, needless to say I had a great time at Gale's workshop and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in sprucing up their fiber photos for their blog or just documenting projects on ravelry.

If you want to see Gale's work check out the following:

Gale Zucker Photography - Gale's day job and professional portfolio.

She Shoots Sheep Shots - Gale's blog: combining her love of fiber, knitting, and photography (yes, and sheep too).

Edit: Gale posted some pics she took at the workshop, links to some of the other attendees' blogs, and a nice writeup of the day on her blog. You can check out the hijinks at her post Sighted in Carver.

Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, 20 Patterns & Miles of Yarn - a link to Amazon for a book Gale collaborated on with Joan Tapper. This is filled with gorgeous shots Gale took of fiber animals, yarn, and farm life.... it's just beautiful! I highly recommend it and it makes a great coffee table book in addition to the lovely patterns. Gale was very thoughtful and personalized my copy.... complete with a WoW reference!

Season 3: Episode 1 of the Guild comes out - SWEET!

Ah.... happiness for all. I'm so glad there is another season of The Guild. It makes playing World of Warcraft all the more fun because of all the in game references.

The next installment of my favorite form of entertainment

As some of you may know, Blizzcon 2009, Blizzard's Annual convention celebrating Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, is going on right now. Now, I don't really care for Starcraft and haven't had the opportunity to touch Diablo, but I am totally excited about the announcement regarding World of Warcraft. There has been alot of speculation on what will happen in the expansion. Even the name, Cataclysm, was up for debate until recently.

They are supposed to be doing some really neat stuff in this expansion such as repurposing some of Azeroth rather than just creating new areas, so I'm really excited and thought I would share the expansion trailer with you.

Do you want to date my Avatar?

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=601e493a-9f80-4d4e-ad8c-62962c3c5add" target="_new" title="The Guild: "Do You Want To Date My Avatar?"">Video: The Guild: "Do You Want To Date My Avatar?"</a>

This is a recent music video done by the folks at The Guild. The Guild, which you can watch on their website, is a two season web series about a group of online gamers starring Felicia Day who has also starred in another great web series, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. I highly recommend this music video, the mp3 of the song and The Guild web series to anyone who has ever played a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game, there! are you happy?).

As you all know B and I play World of Warcraft often, and this web series is very good (and funny) commentary on what it can be like to play online with people you don't really know. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. If you like the video and want to support The Guild you can download the video on iTunes for $1.49 and the mp3 on Amazon for $.99 (both are a steal).

When my gaming and knitting habits collide

As many of you are aware I have a few semi-addictive hobbies and pastimes. There is almost nothing better than when two of them combine into something incredibly cool (at least to me). Since I begin knitting in December, I have been spending alot of time on Ravelry.com which is a great resource and social media site for knitters/crocheters. They have free patterns, forums, groups, a place to document all your yarn... yada, yada, yada ad nausium. Awhile ago I found the group called World of Warcrafters: dual wielding needles since level one and I was totally floored. People who knit and play World of Warcraft?!?!? Bwah?!?!?!

After I got over that, I kept reading it until one day I found a post by IndieDyer who happens to dye yarn in color combinations inspired by World of Warcraft. How sweet is that??? Weird you say? Meh, I choose to agree to disagree. If I can make socks or anything else for that matter with really cool yarn that happens to be called "Not your Average DK," "Totemic," or "For the Horde!" then I WILL! Now I just have to find really cool patterns for them all...

So, my pictures today are of my very first skeins of WoW inspired yarn. Unfortunately since I started writing this post, Indie Dyer, the woman that dyes all these yarns, has decided to stop producing them. Waaaaaahh! So, I have of course now purchased two other skeins in colors that are still available at DiscontinuedBrandNameYarn.com So, if you are interested you better snatch them up now. One colorway I wanted disappeared in a matter of hours tonight. Sadness... it so figures that I just found out about this yarn and it is in it's final days. Well, at least I will have 5 skeins of some very unique yarn to make neat items out of. There will always be cool yarn out there, this stuff just stole the show for me.

our little helper

Recently I have started putting Molly up on the desk when I get home from work becuase she generally hovers around my chair and meows at me as I am going through my usual "I just got home from work" ritual. Within the past week or so, I thought, " why not have her up here on the desk where I can pet her more easily?" I can check my email, look for new patterns, log a little Wow time.... how can this be bad?

Well, today she apparently decided that I needed help playing WoW and jumped right up on my chair and the desk while I was over talking with Brian on a mini gaming break. It was so weird... Strange cat, but we love her soI guess it works out ok in the end ;-D

that moment of... eureka!

Have you ever have that moment when you suddenly say "why the hell didn't I think of that before??!?!?!?" Well, exactly yesterday I thought of a great idea for Brian's Valentine's Day present. And I even gave myself 3 whole days of lead time to get it done too... (lol) So, I found an intarsia chart for the Horde emblem (World of Warcraft reference) on Ravelry and had my "eureka" moment. I would make him a Horde scarf that would match his black and teal winter coat.... brilliant!!

Intarsia is a method of using two or more different colored yarns in one project. I won't get into the details, but if you are interested, wikipedia can give you a general overview of intarsia. I have never done any ting using more than one yarn before. Actually I had unknowingly bought a book on intarsia called Picture Perfect Knits as few months ago just because it had neat projects in it. When I got it home I realized it was most likely a bit over my head. So, I put it aside and figured I would come back to it in a year or so after I had more experience.

Well, apparently I was wrong about that because I picked up the yarn for Brian's scarf and finished my first intarsia chart today. Doesn't it look so cool?

Anyway, so that much was the work of last night and about an hour today. Now all I have to do is knit the main part of the scarf and then do another chart of the emblem on the bottom of the other side which of course mean reading it backwards (that should be fun :-/). So, maybe by the weekend I'll have it done for him. But, I'm pretty proud of my first attempt, even if it is a little messy on the "wrong" side. Oh well, it's hand made, it's supposed to have idiosyncrasies :-D

No more xp for us, hooray!

Woohoo! We finally hit level 80!!! Here is my victory screenshot with all my new (and matching) armor :-D

To answer your inevitable questions:

1. -Yes, I am very easily entertained.
3. -Yes, playing WoW is considered quality family time.
4. 
   -Yes, I do plan to continue playing WoW until they no longer make expansions (hopefully a very long time)
5. 
   -No, I will not be growing up anytime soon. It's not like I'm 30 or anything, geeeese!!

Woohoo!! B finally gets a Christmas present!

So, I was finally able to order Brian's figureprint of his main WoW character, Setekh. We're so excited!!! It's kind of like creating your own little statue... First you have to enter a lottery to get chosen for a figureprint. The company is so new and there are so many people interested in these that they have to limit how many people can order per month. Then you basically tell them the name of your character and what server it is on and they pull the info of what your character is wearing/wielding from the WoW Armory. Then you choose your pose, stand and viola! You have your very own 3-d representation of the character. I can't wait to see his up close. Hopefully we'll win the lottery again so I can get one of these too.... Having Thayolin immortalized forever as a mini statue makes me so very happy ::GLEE:: Oh, if anyone is interested, go to http://www.figureprints.com/ to enter the lottery to order one. Oh, and don't give me that look... these are damn cool!