photo saturday: purple blades

Sometimes you reinvent a character, only to reinvent them almost entirely a short period of time later. Beltran, last seen back in the days of manual colouring, is one of those. He got a full makeover when I was refreshing everyone's designs after the Face Customiser dropped, and I liked that design.

Then they dropped the flowy scarf... technically it's a "split cape", but honestly, scarf. And I had to resist the urge to add it to about half my characters. But it definitely seemed to fit for my slightly extra knife throwing, acrobatic, thief rogue. And then I looked at my cast of characters and thought... yeah, there's way too much blue going on, I should try other things.

So I ended up going with purple. It also seemed fitting.

Are the knives with the giant hole in them at all practical? Probably not. Would they throw well? Also no. But the centre section on those knives is weird, so I did a little bit of Photoshop fuckery.

And I'll be honest, I made this back in April and looking at the tattoo design again I was struck with a serious case of "what the fuck was that supposed to be?". Turns out, while the actual image itself is, I think, supposed to be blind justice, in-universe, it's an interpretation of the Balance card from the Deck of Many Things.

More so from the literal meaning of "balance" than the actual meaning of the card within the magic item. Because I figure if these decks exist as magical items, they should also exist as mundane fortune telling decks like tarot cards. So that's just Beltran's card.

Anyway...

After deciding that I was going to frog the scarf I'd been working on last week because it just wasn't coming together the way I wanted it to, plus I'd somehow including a triple twist into it. So that was my entertainment last Saturday night... and I say "entertainment", I mean most of it went very quickly, and then I managed to get a tangle in the yarn that I couldn't get out and had to undergo the very laborious task of undoing the starting chain one loop at a time from the wrong end, a process which took about three quarters of an hour all up.

However, I then worked on the scarf throughout the week, and finished it last night. I'm not completely happy with my join. I decided to just do it as a flat length rather than as a circle like the first time and then tried to crochet it closed, which, my brain just flat out rejected. I couldn't wrap my brain around how that was supposed to work, so I ended up sewing the two ends together... twice, after the first attempt was a mess. And it's... fine.

I am very happy with the finished scarf all up though. The colour, the ribbed texture, the big chunky yarn, the fact that it's going to be super warm, the infinity circle of it all. New favourite scarf.

What am I going to work on next? No clue. I had considered a beanie, but all the yarn I have is slightly thinner than all the patterns I keep seeing.

Also, as a general thing, why the hell does the US, UK and Australia all have different naming conventions for the thickness of yarn? Also, why is the Australian one the only one that makes any fucking sense because it actually includes a number? Even the Craft Yarn Council have tried their own scale that actually uses numbers, but also, their scale isn't something that seems to get printed on actual balls of yarn.

So, fucked if I know. I'll just stare at the box for a while and see what inspires me. And if nothing does, I'll just fall back on little granny squares.

This week's soup was Chow-DAH... and not, I can't not say it like that. It just lives in my head that way. It was pretty good as well, which helps.

I continued working through the Marvel back catalogue I'd missed out on with Eternals this week... good, solid, manages to actually have a story and interesting characters, but overall a little hollow. Also, I realised that in a Post-Saltburn world I may never be able to see Barry Keoghan in a movie and not think about his penis.

I mean, I'm only human. 

Also, because I am human, I have no intention of seeing Saltburn, because it sounds like fucking torture, I have however seen the final scene because the internet exists.

But, back to the topic at hand... Eternals, better than Doctor Strange 2, not as good as Black Panther 2.

I also watched an Agatha Christie mini series, Ordeal by Innocence, which is full of very good actors and terrible fucking characters. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week. Also, it feels slightly weird to describe it as Friday Night DnD when it's currently the only DnD, but, it's the naming convention we've done with for many years at this point, so I'm not changing it now.

Also, it was a last minute cancellation, so I just watched movies instead.

Anyway...

Today I got to break out my newly made scarf. See aforementioned comments about the warmth of said scarf.

Otherwise it was just the usual supermarket stuff, and some Looking At Things on YubTubs.

photo saturday: beestinger pairs

The last three Beestinger sisters come in sets of two... which, I realise as I say it, sounds confusing. But this week's Beestinger sisters start out with Belladonna and her fiance Beau, who wasn't originally a thing, but I made him for something else and realised he'd made a fun addition.

And of course, the Beestinger sister with the fiance is based on my second favourite (or maybe tied first) Doctor Who companion, Donna.

Does she have incredibly bad taste? Clearly, yes. Or at least she likes too many prints and colours in an outfit.

I also appreciate the fact that I ended up with at least three different halfling gods represented in the family. Belben has Brandobaris, Belladona had Yondalla, the twins (up next) have Sheela Peryroyl.

But Belladona is basically "front of house" for the bakery, but also turns her hand to both icing or decorating things and making various candied fruits and nuts and other things made of or with sugar. And clearly Beau has a very sweet tooth.

And rounding out the Beestinger sisters, the twins, Cara and Pearl. Beekeepers, gardeners and makers of mead. They're also the only members of this branch of the family with heterochromia

They also take their names from the last two good companions, Clara and Billie. But of course, I went with the first name of the actress who plays her, Pearl Mackie. And like the character she played, I always had in the back of my head that Pearl was the other same sex attracted member of the family (Belben being the other one, because your first character is always mostly just you).

I also envisaged that the pair of them turned the little plot of grass behind the bakery into a riot of wildflowers and herbs and ingredients their mother uses for remedies and teas. And the flowers also feed the wicker beehives they use. Well, the bees in said beehives, obviously.

Anyway.

This week was a week full of tomato soup and cheese toasties. And I pretty much perfected my cheese toasties (the secrets are low heat, real butter and using a vegetable peeler to slice really really thin pieces of cheese and then using a lot of them). I did run out of steam for the soup on Friday, not through any fault of the soup, and I will say that I non-zero amount of that might have been that I'd basically run out of good bread for toasties at that point.

After doing some rough calculations on the granny square blanket I was attempting to make for myself I discovered that I would need something in the region of 180 squares... and have made 24. So, while I'm not necessarily giving up... I am putting that on the back burner a little. Also I want to maybe do some different pattern squares, so we'll see how that all goes.

Instead I decided to maybe try something that would take longer to finish. So I broke out the chunky red Merino wool I got from the Friday gang and started working on a scarf. And because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to try the ribbing stitch I'd been unable to get with the thinner black yarn.

Turns out that chunky yarn, a bigger hook and stitches I can actually see make all the damn difference.

However... all things come at a price. Because I was trying to make it into an infinity scarf, but managed to twist the first row around on itself completely, so the whole thing has a giant kink in it and also, my join is absolutely fucking hideous because it's the point where I need to flip the work around and go back the way I've come and it's a disaster.

So I came to a decision last night, even though I'm just about at the end of the second ball of yarn... I'm frogging the whole thing, starting over, and making it a straight scarf that I will then stitch together at the end.

On the plus side, it only took me a couple of days to get to this point, so I should be able to get back to the point I'm at now pretty quickly.

Oh, yeah, before I forget, I picked up a couple of the later Marvel movies from the library last Friday, because they're just sitting there and why not. Specifically Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Wakanda Forever is, potentially barring the usual Mandatory Third Act Giant Battle Scene, sensational. If they could have seen their way clear to lifting that nonsense out, it would have been pretty much perfect. I get why it's there, but it's not needed. Because the movie is a conversation about grief. Partly the grief of the cast and crew at the loss of Chadwick Boseman, and partly the grief of the characters at the loss of the character of Black Panther.

It's also funny that you can see the parts of the script that I think existed before Boseman died, because there are a number of scenes that you could clearly just swap out Black Panther and add in either Shuri or Queen Ramonda. But there are other parts that absolutely only exist because of Boseman's absence. Props also go to both Angela Basset and Letitia Wright who carry the entire movie on their collective shoulders. Well, the pair of them along with Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer.

The other thing I could have pretty much done without was The White People. Because the scenes back in Washington with Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus add nothing. Also, is Louis-Dreyfus wearing a fake nose in addition to what might be a terrible wig, or is that just her face? Yeah, none of that please.

It's also 100% a female driven movie. Basically there are three male characters (with more than like four lines) and only the villain is really what I'd class as a main character... everyone else is a woman, and a woman of colour at that.

I do find it interesting that both movies include "the next generation" of Marvel characters, so it's clear where they're headed, because unlike the comics, they can't just keep reusing the same characters over and over and over as their actors age out of the roles or refuse to come back or retire or whatever.

In contrast to Wakanda Forever, Multiverse of Madness is just... dumb. Sam Rami was so busy try to either ram in Constant References to either his own back catalogue or Things From The Comics, that they don't bother to really have a movie in their movie. It wasn't unwatchable, it was just incredibly underwhelming. There were bits that I disliked, unfortunately most of those things were anything  including Banderscatch Crumplebottom and Not Amy Adams. And mostly the things I did like was anything involving Elizabeth Olsen.

And not only because this movie gets us one step closer to Hulkling and Wiccan in a movie. Also, now that we're fucking with Multiverses, nobody who might die STAYS dead, because we can just go pluck them out of some other universe.

So, there you go, a mini double movie review out of nowhere. Not enough to make it it's own post, so it can just live here, lost to time.

Thursday Night DnD was... The End. The end of this campaign. The end of the adventures for these characters. The end of my involvement in Thursday Night DnD for... the foreseeable future. Am I sad? Not especially. Am I happy? Not especially. I suppose "relieved" is the better term. But even that's not completely accurate. I have no strong opinions at this time.

Ask me again later I guess. Or don't.

Friday Night DnD was Doing A Heist Without Heisting Anything. And Much Angst About Graph Paper Children. Good though.

Anyway.

Today was basically the Supermarket, followed by Looking At Things at Kmart.

photo saturday: big sisters

And finally we come to the sisters of my first character. Well, the two oldest sisters anyway. I don't even really remember the original reason why I gave Belben five older sisters... it makes sense once the naming convention happened, but I honestly don't remember what came first. Maybe I just wanted to make him the literal baby of the family.

Also, the vast jump in quality between their first appearance and now... staggering.

The naming convention for the sisters is pretty simple. All the Doctor Who companions I like from 2005 to 2017. Guess who doesn't get a shout out. So we start with Rose, obviously, who works in the bakery and will eventually take it over from her parents. And the blonde hair obviously comes from the Longpond side of the family.

Weirdly, or not, I guess, she's my favourite of the sisters, Belben's favourite sister and the model that came out the best I think. But then Rose is my favourite of the companions for the most part (Donna being a close second).

For Marigold, we have Martha as the companion equivalent. And cleric vs doctor. I think I went cleric instead of just making her a healer in general, because this branch of the family isn't just going to have a single adventurer in this generation.

Anyway...

A very generic soup this week... kinda sorta minestrone with cabbage and sausage that didn't quite hold up the way it should have done. But tasty enough.

The Hexagon Cardigan is finally finished! There will probably be a full post about it this week, but it's pretty good. Not perfect, but good for my first "wearable". Because I refuse to count scarves as a "wearable". I did discover a couple of potential issues, both of which would have been obvious if I'd thought about it for 11 seconds. Firstly, acrylic yarn... this thing is going to be a bitch for static cling. And secondly, yeah, your sleeves have giant holes all through them, because it's granny stitch, and the wind is going to get in there. Dur. But at the same time, ventilation because I run hot generally, so, swings and roundabouts.

In other news, my body hates me... I tweaked my back bending over to tie my shoelaces... grrr. Granted, it didn't last more than a couple of days, but still.

Thursday Night DnD was a slightly circular in-character "discussion" about what our group intents were that lasted for about an hour and that we probably should have had, I don't know, six months ago, and then the start of the final combat. And can I just say, while I understand the compulsion to "video game"-ize DnD "boss fights", I also really don't care for the multiple health bar/stages trope. But, given this hardcover, I'm not at all surprised to encounter it.

Honestly, all of the components of this final fight track given this hardcover. And I'll be glad when it's over.

Friday Night DnD was one of those plotting and scheming and planning episodes more or less.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. So, there's that.

photo saturday: the baker and the herbalist

Eventually all adventurers retire... well, the ones who live that long anyway. And sometimes they go on to have a family. Thus we have today's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Brandien turned his love of baking and his role as the keeper of the Beestinger Family Cookbook into a bakery in Silverymoon and Melody turned her knowledge of plants and herbs into a combination of herbal tea/folk remedies while also cultivating and collecting herbs, spices and other plants in order to flavour the baked goods.

Also, an off-white leather and yellow dress combination... love it.

Anyway...

This week was Pea and Ham Soup... but for whatever reason (mostly because it had been in the freezer for several months at this point, and also then I essentially boiled it in the soup) the ham wasn't... the best, texture wise. It tasted fine, it was just a funky texture. So after I struggled through the small bowl on Sunday, I just blended what was left. And, honestly, that improved it considerably.

Finally, after a break of 76 days (or two and a half months), I finally went back to tackle the cuffs on the Crochet Hexagon Cardigan. And I attempted to do the simpler ribbed cuffs but my brain just went "yeah, nah, we're not going to retain the information on how to do that", so I just... winged it. Which worked out so much more successfully, because, honestly I winged the whole cardigan, so it was honestly what's should have happened.

Then I started to connect the two panels together into the finished cardigan... And that should have been the easiest thing ever. I was doing the exact same thing that I did to connect 140-something squares for Fluffy's blanket. But, black yarn... it's an ongoing problem, especially when crocheting in the evening, because I generally don't use the overhead light. So I got most of the way done with attaching it and then realised that there were more purple clusters on one side than the other side, went back and looked and discovered I'd been... connecting it in random spots by accident. I honestly don't know how the hell I even managed it, because I didn't think I was doing anything different, but it was what it was.

I tried again the following day... in the daylight. And got most of the way done and realised... that I had more purple clusters on the OTHER side this time. And tracked it back to a single spot where I joined two clusters to the same spot.

Argh.

Third time was the charm though. And now I'm just about done with extending the bottom of the joined cardigan... and then I need to do the "ribbing" around the neck/collar/whatever that bit is called (I think it's technically a placket, but that implies buttons, which I'm not doing), and we're done.

It's not a LIGHT cardigan by any means... even though the yarn itself isn't that hefty, there's just A LOT of it.

Thursday Night DnD was... fine. Anti-climactic. Vaguely annoying. Proof that I'm very over it. But, mostly fine. We're maybe two games out from being done though. And at this point I'll just be glad to be done. And that's not all on the group, some of it is on the adventure. Very few things I've played seem to ever really stick the landing, so I don't know why I thought this one would be any different.

Friday Night DnD was good. Like, my character achieved his overarching campaign goal good. Which was honestly, kind of a lot to process. Weirdly, our problem in this campaign might actually be access to too many magic items. And too many ones that require attunement, since you can only have three of those.

And speaking of Friday DnD... 

After last week's additional image of the himbo barbarian we encountered, the fictitious TV show we invented and Fluffy's off-hand comment about "making a still for the TV show" from the Hero Forge model... yeah, it was one of those ideas that my brain just wouldn't let go of.

Because of course there had to be other people in the cast. Which led us here...

And then led my brain to end up writing a fictional "retrospective" on the fictional TV show... which I may or may not share at some point, because I'm both incredibly proud of it and also aware of the level of cheese and cringe involved. But it amused me across the earlier part of the week.

Anyway...

This week was a little bit of a repeat of last week... with supermarket and movie at mine, while I worked on my crochet cardigan.