Jury Duty and other matters

Do you like to play board games? Are you uncertain about what board games to get or play? Here's a flow chart.

Do you want impetus to try more games? Or just to play games more often? Try 51in15; play 51 discrete games in 2015. These games can be tabletop, board games, card games, played a thousand times, never played before, published, unpublished, playtested, etc. You only count each game once. There are badges, to post, to gloat over, however you choose to use them. The site I linked to has the badges and some ideas. Enjoy.

C got a KitchenAid for Christmas. Now we need to find a place on the counter to put it. We have a possible place, if we get rid of his knife block and do something with our hot chocolate collection. Since we've been trying to eat healthy and I started having problems with milk, we haven't been drinking as much. We had a couple different flavors, and been getting some as presents. We need to decide what to do with it. Unopened boxes will probably go to the food bank or something similar.

This just makes me want to scream. (article about San Francisco seeking exemption from the ADA for police interactions.)

And in case you missed it, Muslims did react to the shootings at Charlie Hebdo. 

Tuesday I had work thing, a half-day retreat. I didn't go. Instead, I had jury duty. Whee?

First, photogenic, project from my new Japanese tatting book. 

The one on the right is the one I did first, and my tension was too tight. I did better on my second try.

And here are the first two bracelets I made this year.

 And I finally finished my lace wristlet. And its a leeeeetle too small.

And here's a picture of a neighborhood in Greensboro, NC. They hang these lighted balls for Christmas.

Happy New Year (Roman calendar)

I could look up which Caesar changed the new year to begin in January but I'm feeling too lazy to do that. There are lots of calendars so I could easily wish everyone a Happy New Year at least 3 more times without even thinking hard about. I'd just need to look up the exact dates as two of them are based on lunar calendars.

My goal this year is to post at least once a week. I'm not going to say what day of the week, but I'll strive for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Here are some websites I've been reading:
okay, this one I'm playing; creating custom miniatures for my characters
https://www.heroforge.com/
About women (some real, some fictional, some...in-between) who stand out
http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/
If you're on Twitter and had a problem with certain people who claim to be concerned about "Ethics in Game Journalism" you may find this tool helpful
https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker
I think this game looks adorable and I really want to play it
http://penguinking.com/games/costume-fairy-adventures/



My friend A.H. gave me a Japanese tatting book for Christmas, Tatting Lace Accessories. She went to Japan this past summer and I had asked her to look for one, more hopeful than expectant. She confirmed the difficulty in finding a book on a topic, a somewhat rare topic to boot, when you don't know the local name for it. However, she found one for me after the trip. Wasn't that nice?

Bracelet I made of A.H.

This is the scarf, around my neck and in my lap

My stepmom gave me a fabulous infinity (aka Moebius) scarf. A friend of hers arm-knitted it, using boucle yarn. When I put it on, the other end is somewhere near my ankles. I can wrap it twice and it serves as scarf, shawl, head cover, etc. My sister-in-law made me a pine cone wreath. I haven't put it up yet, I need to find my wreath hanger. My stepmother and Dad also gave me a lovely deep burgundy pashimi scarf. It's almost large enough to serve as a c. 1814 shawl; but then shawls that size could fit a twin bed as a coverlet.

My niece is in college now, she started this past September. I gave her a gift card to the school store and a bracelet in her school colors. She was really happy to see those. The small moleskine calendar and pocket Shakespeare seemed to be hits, too. I gave Dad a copy of Wilfred Owens poetry; to my stepmom, I gave some pods for her new Keureg and a small prayer box ornament from hungersite.com (note I don't know if that link goes to the Keureg she has, I just linked to a random one). To my brother, I gave a DVD about the development of roads and other travel in NC. For my Midwestern sister-in-law, I gave a book on Southern cooking. All the presents seemed to go over well.

For C, I looked at his list and bought a t-shirt he wanted; a 9 pounds of King Arthur Flour (pastry, pasta, and whole wheat pastry, the King Arthur flour baking book, and from mom a pastry cutter. I found a cute pair of socks for R and a couple things from her list. My one huge goof was giving someone a calendar, who already had 3. At least the one I gave him, The Big Bang Theory superhero one, is entertaining and came with cards.

What do you mean it's only a week 'til Christmas?!

I still have shopping to do. Okay, some of it isn't 'due' until New Years'. And other stuff has been ordered (it just hasn't arrived yet). There's still quite a bit of wrapping to do but I've already been to one holiday party, with presents distributed and received.

My SO, C, has a use it or lose it leave policy, so he's taking a few days off this week. It will give him time to do some shopping, get his car stuff done, and play some games. I envy him. Of course, I have separate sick and vacation leave; sick leave that just stacks up. And above a certain point vacation hours become sick leave hours.

State Fair entry update: It turns out the judge(s) may have been confused and thought there was a separate category for tatted booties; like there is for crochet and knitting. Because there is no other category better suited for tatted booties than the one I entered.

I'm still working on the pink turtles. The first attempt with the new pink beads, well, the bead slipped out.

This is the turtle, with bead

These are earlier turtles (one went to Dad after Thanksgiving)

I need to put findings on my latest bracelet. Progress stalled when I realized I had run out of thread before I had run out of beads. Oops. I had to move the beads to the new thread, then join the threads, and finished tatting, before hiding the ends. The fun never ends.

One of the presents I received is Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. I've just started and I have already had to look up two terms. 

Hero Forge has a 3D printer and they're not afraid to use it. They are offering customized miniatures. The basic, somewhat blocky, figure is $15. It's not very detailed. The one offering enough detail to make a good game figure is $25. Guess which one I want? They also have two larger sizes, but they don't interest me particularly. Although if I had a character who was often enlarged, the one size up would be fun to have. They also have an option of you creating your figure and then saving it. You can create, then return to it to fine tune it, before buying it.


It isn't perfect. Some of the hairstyles are limited (I didn't see any styles that involved kinky hair nor were there any side braids) but there is a wide range of faces/features. And the build/bodies have a sliding scale; your character can be short and buff or short and skinny or tall and buff or tall and buxom, etc. And they don't have mounted options. Yet. Maybe they will in the future.

Middle of the 'scarf'

End of the 'scarf'

When visiting friends up north, we visited a paint your own pottery place. I finally got to paint a yarn bowl. I picked it out and then couldn't decide what to paint on it. I finally got the simplistic idea of painting a ball of yarn in the bottom. I added a strand going to the yarn slot. What to put on the outside, though? It came to me! A scarf. I painted a knitted scarf going around the outside of the bowl, starting at the yarn slot.

 

See? Yarn ball!

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone's winter (or summer if you're south of the equator) is going well.
Here are my State Fair entries
The dragon (red ribbon)

And the booties. No ribbon on the booties; wrong category. Except, looking at the categories I can't tell what the right category would be. I've contacted the fair people to elaborate.

I finished my project 365. Now I won't be so 'must take picture today', but I'll still keep my eyes open for picture possibilities.

Dad came to have lunch with on Thanksgiving. We had a lovely, long talk. He showed me the listing for the house he built in 1958. Tiny house, but gorgeous views.

I've made some turtles: see. I'm working on more bracelets.  Here are some I've made.

I finally opened my D&D 5th ed Player's Handbook (aka PHB). It's pretty with a lovely array of images. However, I have one minor caveat; the print used for the index is tiny. On the other hand, it's a good index. I have two greater caveats; no finished or at least partially completed time sheet and the references (as in Chapter 5) refer to chapters and not pages. I mean, great, the rules being referenced are in chapter 5, where in chapter 5? They have good character sheets available on line; including one that's fillable. That's a big plus in my book.

I saw one movie that I did not expect to like, Pitch Perfect. It turned out to be really good; a little predictable plot-wise but I loved the music. The other movie I was glad to catch in the theater; Guardians of the Galaxy. I really enjoyed it.

After the Convention

Want to feel old? Try this little website. It calculates how many days you've been alive, what happened around the time you were born, an historical event that is closer to your birthday than today is, etc. The link takes you to my birthday, but at the bottom you can do your own or someone else's.

Here's the bracelet I finished (in sunlight, so you can almost see the pretty beads). Sorry about the bizarre background.

And have you ever wondered just how far somewhere is, compared to what you know? For example, compared to your hometown, just how big is London? Try comparing the maps and see. 

Palmetto Tat Days was great fun (as usual). I took a Nina Libin class, and made one lovely pair of earrings. I started another set, but the thread tangled awfully. I messed the pig I made in Jane Eborall's class, or at least it looks quite funny. The key turned out well. Dawn taught us some origami as a break from tatting.

I won a cape! And it will go into the auction next year...once I've made some...additions

Pig from Jane's class

Key from an evening session

Earrings from Nina Libin

origami envelope

origami box, closed

Origami box, open

One of scholarship quilts; Flowers and Vines

the dragon & edging I made

My badge, with gifts

teapot edging

flying geese edging

3 weeks until Tat Days

The countdown begins. Less than three weeks until Palmetto Tat Days. I've started planning for my projects. I've reviewed Shuttle brothers alternate thread method (as per Gina Butler's video). They have pictures of the scholarship quilts. Here's the teapot quilt. I think that's the teapot I made on the lower right. Here's the flower and vines quilt; with my dragon and vines edging toward the lower left.

Here's a bracelet I made; although it still needs to be blocked and to have the findings added.

And here's where I noticed I had skipped a join and a ring.

This is after I opened the ring.
















And this is me ready to start tatting again (after retro tatting the ring and chain, with beaded join).

I have almost a dozen bracelets made. At some point, I'll need to grit my teeth and open my Etsy shop.

The camera on my iPad went out. After a few calls to service, they determined it wasn't a software problem. Since it was a manufacturer defect, and I had the insurance, they replaced it. Yay!

My niece has left for college. I wrote a letter to her today. I went to see Mom the first weekend in August. She showed me a picture of her mother's mother, as a young woman. And I could tell, even without Mom telling me, Aunt Dot was a dead ringer for her when she was young.

Other stuff has happened, but of course, I can't remember any of it.

Unseasonably Cool

It's been unseasonably cool the past week or so. The high temperatures have been in the 80s and overnight has often been in the 60s (that's Fahrenheit). See some of cloud and sky pictures I've taken:Trigger warning, there's a picture of a bug after the clouds.

It's also been a bit wet. Last I heard, we're about 4.5" above our normal rainfall for July and more than 6" above normal for the year to date. I guess we won't be worrying about the water table this year.

I found an assassin bug on my leg one day. They eat roaches, etc.

I almost have my pawns for Pathfinder organized. This is how I do it.

Scrapbooking storage case

I start with this scrapbooking storage case. It's nice because it has some very helpful features. 

locking handle

The handle locks closed. The locks slide into place. There are two levels, with the lower one subdivided into several small niches and one big layer for the upper part.

bottom part, just after I opened it

upper shelf, holds the huge pawns and the bases

It's full of pawns

As I mentioned in my last post, I helped run the Pathfinder Society games for Fantasy Gamer Conclave.  Here's my table, all set up for the first game on Saturday. I'm all ready for my players. I ran 3-4 games over the course of the weekend; they were just fights really, not scenarios. But everyone fun and there was roleplaying.

I have been tatting. The rings are Ocean Sunset in Lizbeth 20 with Leafy Greens for the chains. I started out ring and ball then decided I wanted to add a ring 'leaf' to the chains. The picture on the left is me in mid wind from ball to around shuttle to onto my flat shuttle. The picture on the right show the 'leaf'.

Here is a bracelet I made. I need to add findings. 

I ordered threads from Yarnplayer, aka Marilee Rockely. Aren't they pretty. 

This weekend I go see Mom. And on the way back, I'm scheduled to have supper with a friend from high school. She lives in California so I see her every 2-3 years when she's back in the area to visit family.

And someone online showed me this entertaining website picture; group names of fantastic creatures. 

Depression Rears Its Ugly Head

Yes, I've been struggling with depression. Mostly, it's a drain on my energy and enthusiasm. But I'm in the recovery phase where I can do things again. Yay me.

I've started playing Lord of the Rings Online, in preparation for Pathfinder Online coming out. I took part in the Kickstarter so I've prepaid for some playtime. We'll see how much fun I find it once play starts. I am enjoying Lord of the Rings, so if Pathfinder is a disappointment, I have a consolation.

I've just registered for Palmetto Tat Days (I had to deal with paying for car issues before I was certain I had the funds). Here's an image of the possible layout of one of the scholarships quilts. I had a problem with my quilt square. I thought I had a teapot square. I wasn't sure of the due date so I put the teapot I tatted as part of display (in the library where our local group, Triangle Tatters, has our meetings). Where it remained for a month. I got it back after the 'please send in your square' date. And then I found out I had a 'flowers and vines' square. I frantically tried to tat something to fit the theme. In the end, I sent in my tatting and the fabric for the block, with abject apologies.

I enjoyed myself at ConTemporal. But I didn't see the non-gaming schedule until I was at the convention. And I didn't get to spend as much time in the dealer's room as I would have liked (but more than my wallet enjoyed). I did get to meet an online friend in person. I don't think I scared her off.

This weekend is Fantasy Gamers' Conclave. It's a very small con but so much fun. The hosts, Knightly Order of the Fiat Lux, run it to benefit charity; specifically the Autism Society of NC. I will be prepping the intro stuff for walk ins (we get a lot of walk ins). C, R, & I have helped run the Pathfinder games at this con for the past 3 years.

On the tatting front, once I'd finished the stuff for the quilt, I was a little burned out. I wanted to wear lace cuffs with my short sleeves for ConTemporal, but circumstances intervened and I wasn't able to wear a costume. Well, there's next year. I have made a couple edgings and a couple bracelets (don't tell, the bracelets are presents).

No pictures this time, unless I remember to upload them from my iPad. I still don't have a camera.