May312025

character saturday: hellooooo

mrs callidora hellfire - tiefling, charlatan, nanny

If you'd asked me, I would have sworn up and down that this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was a character I'd posted before. She's definitely a character that's been around since the days of Nightingale. Or at least the days when our characters were in the Nine Hells. But after a couple of different searches through the blog, I could not find the previous version of her.

I don't remember exactly how Fluffy and I got to "Mrs Doubtfire, but a tiefling/devil"... but I know that's basically where we ended up. Hence, Mrs Hellfire, the tiefling dwarf, was born.

And Hero Forge dropped some new umbrellas this week, so I basically rebuilt the character from scratch.

Would I play her? I mean, I've never had an overwhelming desire to play a Fiend Warlock... but I do like an old lady character. Even so, probably not.

Anyway...

Soup this week was a slightly spicy chicken noodle soup. Essentially, regular chicken noodle soup (except for the fact that I used spaghetti as the noodles) but with some cayenne pepper.

In crochet news... I finished two whole projects this week.

ma's pastel easter basket fever dream cardigan

One of which was Ma's cardigan which looks like the Easter Bunny threw up. I mean, she loves it, which is the main thing. One of the issues with just making up a pattern from inside your own head is that you get to the end of it and go... "well, what I SHOULD have done was X, Y, Z". And thus happened with this project also.

I should probably have done narrower stripes, although I was using a fixed quantity of yarn, and a couple of the colours I only had a single ball of. But even potentially making the strikes five rows instead of six would have allowed me to get the second apricot colour onto the front of the cardigan. That would probably have meant that the stripe up the back would have been white, but that also would have worked.

Overall though, I'm please with it. Especially the ribbing, since I absolutely failed to do black on black ribbing for the cardigan I made for myself last year. I have done so much ribbing since that this was actually simple, albeit time consuming.

And, as I said, Ma likes it, which is the main thing.

However, I also finished the shrug cardigan thing I was making for myself. And it fits, it does what I was expecting it to do. And I absolutely want to unpick the entire thing and maybe have a third go at it. Because it just doesn't work in the way I wanted it to. Part of that I think is that the very lovely grey yarn I bought to finish it off with is... possibly a little too thick. And because the sleeves are all one width, the cuffs are too wide for my delicate little wrists...

I'm absolutely going to deconstruct the thing this week... even though I don't specifically know what I'm going to do instead. 

[extended break while idly Googling variations on "crochet cardigan pattern" without any definitively useful results]

This week's Mini Media Reviews... (which I totally didn't forget and totally didn't have to come back and add in four hours later). First up, Kraven the Hunter. Which was... well, as I described it to Fluffy last night... "Had it not been for Aaron Taylor-Johnson's abs, I would have called it a complete disaster". Because, honestly, that man's acting chops and his body-ody-ody were the only things worth watching. Well, I'll also give some kudos to Fred Hechinger as Kraven's brother. Likewise the two boys playing their younger selves. But everybody else is pretty much drowning under the weight of the shitshow being piled upon them. The effects are questionable at best, the script is awful, I have no idea what direction was given to Alessandro Nivola as this movie's version of The Rhino... but all of it was bad.

Whether or not it's a result of it being a Sony movie rather than a Marvel one, I have no idea.

Next up was the unrequited gay love story that is X-Men: Apocalypse. Because if you try to tell me that any of these Fassbender/McAvoy movies are not the story of Xavier trying to get Magneto into bed, I will call you a liar straight to your face. Regardless of how much they dangle Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique between them. It was okay. It's not great. But the X-Kids are decently cast and do well with what they're given. Oscar Isaacs is doing his level best pushing shit up hill as Apolcalypse, but it's not a terrible movie.

Friday Night DnD was... well, on the drive home we christened the session "Kittens, Cookies and Family Drama". And only one of those things actually happened inside the game. Mr and Mrs just got two new kittens, so there was much squeeing and playing with adorable kittens. And then Mrs made cookies, warm, chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, yes please. And then Fluffy's character had existential family drama, that I got to deliver. Good times. And because of that we honestly didn't get a whole lot else done in game.

Anyway...

The usual supermarket things, followed by a trip to Big W for, very excitingly, new socks for me and then to Kmart mostly for looking at things.

May242025

character saturday: wild (heart) woman

zurra fallensong - orc, guide, barbarian

We're dipping back into the Potential 2024 Barbarian well this week, not least of all because I haven't really made a new mini in a few weeks.

I tried any number of combinations of possible characters while I was looking for things that spoke to me. Especially any of the races that I hadn't already played with the Friday group... or, you know, haven't played at all.

This particular experiment was looking at the new PHB version of the Orc (because I had played a 2014 iteration, my favourite Big Dumb Boy) and possible the idea of a polearm weapon. I think the Wild Heart subclass came half way through once I'd designed the face and used yellow eyes... I then changed them to the more beasty black sclera and we were off to the races.

And even if I never play any of these experiments, at the bare minimum I have a bunch of prebuilt faces that I can fuck around with later.

Anyway...

This week was... [gestures randomly in all directions].

First up... soup. This week was the Halfling Tomato Soup I've made a few times before... and, honestly, as good as the recipe is, I don't think that it's a good soup for eating all week. Part of the problem was that I didn't buy the right kind of cheese for making toasties with... so I didn't really get to have the whole tomato soup with cheese toastie experience.

Next up, the Mini Media Reviews for this week.

Penny Dreadful has been somewhat on my radar when it came out because of all the naked men, but I didn't really know all that much about it beyond "Victorian London Gothic Detective Story". Holy. Forking. Shirt. Balls. If you have not seen it, absolutely do yourself the literal pleasure. I was hooked from the first episode, and while there were a couple of performances where I went "well, yeah, this wasn't the right choice", overall it was amazing. I'm now waiting with bated breath for Season 2 to arrive at the library.

It's one of those ones where I don't want to get into WHY it's so good, because I went in not really knowing what to expect and was delighted by the suprises, but Sexy Victorian London Gothic Supernatural Detective Story pretty much covers it.

I followed that up with the first season of Wednesday. Now, we've kind of already covered how I feel about most of the adaptations of The Addams Family. Specifically the animated movies I watched a few weeks ago. But, really, the only version that seems to get it are the Barry Sonnenfeld movies from the 90's. Nobody else seems to have really gotten it. And I'm going to give Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson for the first one, and Paul Rudnick for the sequel their flowers. Because they collectively got it.

Granted the second one is mostly just Rudnick taking the script for the first one and improving on it. But even so.

As for Wednesday, show creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote a serviceable teen mystery show and spectacularly failed to Addams correctly for the majority of the run time. Don't get me wrong, the show is very watchable. As a teen drama it's solid if unremarkable. But as a piece of Addams Family media... it's very possible that the animated movies understood their assignment more.

Jenna Ortega does decently with the material she's given and I would literally watch Gwendoline Christie do just about anything. The thing I cannot get past is the decision to cast Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Gomez and Morticia respectively. Absolutely fucking not. I very nearly died of cringe every time they were on screen.

I will also give props to Hunter Doohan as "the love interest" for being in his early 30's and convincingly playing someone in his... late teens. He was very good though.

Moving on.

Yes, the week was that time again. Rental Inspection Time.

So I did my usual trick, cleaned the kitchen on Sunday and then on Monday did a deep clean of the bathroom, moved all the furniture around and did the full floor mopping and whatnot.

Tuesday I headed out to Spotlight to pick up some more yarn for the crochet shrug cardigan thing I'm currently working on, then went to the library at Burnside for a while.

When I got back, I did what has turned into something of a habit of late, and after working on the shrug for a while with the new yarn, I looked at it, decided I hated everything that was going on and frogged the whole thing. I then started again from scratch with the new yarn. I'm basically now at roughly the same point I was when I frogged the whole thing on Tuesday.

And then on Thursday I took one of the two skeins of yarn I bought on Tuesday back, because the red really wasn't the right shade, and I really liked the grey, so I swapped it out for another one of those.

I then ended up having to go to two different Bunnings stores... because I really don't know why I bother with the one in Kent Town... 

Also, this is just a general note for me... next time we go looking for clear shower curtains, can you please remember that Bunnings has perfectly serviceable ones for under $10, and just go get another one of those please? Instead of getting one that isn't clear and gives you generalised anxiety and just makes you uncomfortable regardless of which side of it you're currently on.

Thank you, Future Self.

Friday Night DnD was mostly Talking To People About Things. Which I always enjoy. Setting wheels in motion. Getting our ducks in a row. All that good stuff.

That did, of course, mean that we didn't go and do the thing that would allow us to level up... and all the both jiggery and also pokery that I did organising my new leveled up sheets was not immediately necessary. I mean we'll get there... it has just definitely been a minute since we last levelled up.

Anyway...

Today was mostly chill. We did the supermarket thing, and then I wanted to catch up a little on Ma's cardigan and then do what is hopefully a final fitting so I can finish it up this week.

And that was it really.

May172025

character saturday: small town crook

iago - blacksmith, crook, contact

Sometimes your DM makes an NPC that you enjoy so much you're required to make a mini of them. And thus, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book brings us Whisper's Criminal Contact, Iago.

Iago has a fucked up arm and a fucked up leg (I can only do so much with Hero Forge in that regard, even if I remade him with the new Body Modifier) and has a lisp and comes across a little bit if you got Peter Lorre to play an Igor/Fritz character in a Frankenstein movie. And I would fucking kill for Iago. Once I realised he was very sad and not actually at all creepy, I instantly fell in love with him.

And he came back in last night's session. I didn't get to speak with him sadly enough, but it was fun watching somebody else interact with him.

Anyway...

It's been an odd week weather-wise. This is weather I would have expected back at the end of March/beginning of April, where I'm wearing shorts all day but maybe throwing on long pants in the evening, to being fully rugged up and chilly by the end of the week. But here we are in the middle of May.

This week's soup was Chicken Chow-DAH.  And I was doing very well most of the way through with how much there was, but didn't factor in the last couple of ingredients and I made more than I intended. Not the worst problem in the world I guess. But I've been trying to make less.

Ma's crochet hexagon cardigan continues. I did have to frog/unpick several rows because I'd done too many, but then did several more rows on both sides, changed colours and then realised that I'd actually been fucking up the supposedly straight edge I needed. So I had to frog the whole thing on both sides a second time and start over.

I do seem to be frogging things as much as I am making them of late. Speaking of which, Ma brought back the shrug cardigan thing I made, and I'm planning to frog that also. Or at the very least, undo the side seams and turn it back into a blanket, at least until I decide what I'm actually doing.

[Brief pause while I realise I'm slightly chilly and do that exact thing so I can use it as a blanket.]

I also started working on something else, which might also get frogged because I don't have enough yarn to finish it without switching to something else entirely. These two previous ideas might come together. Or they might not.

But I very much enjoyed working with a slightly larger hook and slightly thicker yarn, just because it felt very loose and open and easy. And the end result was really pretty. So I'm not making any definite decisions as yet.

This week's Mini Media Review is just a single movie. Which I quite enjoyed. Under Paris. Is it making great strides in the world of shark movies? Not overly. Did I definitely pull inspiration from everything from Jaws on down? Absolutely. Is it full of characters that you're very happy to see die? Oh, 100%. Which I actually like in a slasher/monster/disaster movie. Is Nassim Lyes (the male lead) ridiculously beautiful? Fuck yes he is.

It's also a very serviceable shark/monster movie. It's shot well, the effects are good, the writing is fairly solid. Does it get kind of bananas in the last 20 minutes? Absolutely. But I also really dig that about it, and I'm very much on board for the sequel that the ending sets up.

Friday Night DnD was good. We all split off from each other again, and all learned various things. My boy did some underhanded negotiations, but, honestly, the target already wanted me to do the thing I wanted him to do in exchange for the thing I wanted... so it made my life considerably easier.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. Nothing much of interest beyond that.

May102025

character saturday: dapper man in blue

whisper - pickpocket, telekenetic, sorcerer

You know what I love in a DnD campaign? When you actually get to update your outfit. And less a "Hero Forge released a new piece that is actually better than the existing piece, so I'm changing the art but the outfit is basically the same" and more "this is a new outfit".

So this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is my boy Whisper in his new, slightly more revealing, striped navy blue fit.

But it's also what happens when your boy who may or may not be part of a criminal organisation gets the standard outfit for that criminal organisation recognised by people.

Time for at least a new shirt. Also, he got a new magic item, so I wanted to include that. Did I choose to pull the magic item art from an existing image instead of just picking something basic from Hero Forge.

Is it the look I would personally have chosen? Probably not. But it is a little extra, so I'm not completely mad at it.

Also, having him show more skin makes so much more sense now that I've actually played him at the table.

Anyway...

There was much crochet this week. Did it turn out that the two sides of the hexagon cardigan are actually slightly too big and I need to frog the current colour back to half the number of rows. Yes.

This poor yarn. It's been made, frogged, made again and will be at least partially frogged again.

But I should also be able to knock this one over much more quickly than the one I made for myself, which is good. Also, I now know how to actually make ribbing, so I'll be able to finish it properly.

In soup news... I made my lasagne soup. Which, for something I mostly made up, works pretty damn well every single time. Because, really, it's just bolognese pasta sauce made with more stock and with broken up lasagne noodles thrown in.

Not exactly rocket science.

In Mini Media Reviews... in my ongoing adventures with anime, and I don't quite remember whether or not this was something I heard about from a person or just something I saw on the list of things that the library had... I watched the first (and currently only) season of 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team. Why does it have the numbers in the front? Because the regulation men's volleyball net height is 7 feet, 11 ⅝ inches or 2.43 meters. I mean, obviously.

And, even though I don't much care about volleyball, and I don't much care about sport, and I don't, in any way, get as enthusiastic about literally anything as these boys get about volleyball, I really, really fucking loved this show.

Is part of the appeal a very obvious homoromatic relationship between the two lead characters, two of the supporting characters and two of the characters on the opposing "villain" team, where they're substituting talking about volleyball for talking about kissing, etc? Yes. Absolutely. Is part of the appeal that they actually don't make the "villain team" a bunch of assholes? Yes. Absolutely. I would have been completely happy if the season had ended in a draw between the two teams.

Is this also a show where you just want one character to tell another character "hey, you're being kind of an asshole, maybe you don't do that and just talk to the rest of us like we're actual human people with feelings and thoughts"? Yes. Absolutely. 

But I loved it all the same. I would kind of liked a little more fleshing out of the rest of the main team, most of them are relegated down at most a single character trait, if they get anything at all. Mostly they are kind of just a hair colour that differentiates them from everyone else.

I also attempted to watch a TV show called Van Helsing from 2016. I made it all the way through the first episode, I then made it 10 minutes into the second episode before the combination of horrifically bad acting and very confused story telling made me pull the pin. The two leads have all the acting ability and chemistry of a toothache, and the story wants to both be Post Apocalypse Zombie Vampires AND Secret Vampire Society With Terrible Accents.

But mostly it was the horrific fucking acting.

Friday was Chiro Day... also some expected and accidental errands.

Friday Night DnD was... later than usual. As in we left my place later. But honestly, our amount of actual playing time, about the same.

Did we nearly have a TPK? Yes. Did I realise this afternoon that I was fucking up my AC the entire session and it was actually much higher? Also yes. But we survived, and did the thing we came there to do.

So, all good.

Anyway...

Today was a minor exercise in frustration.

Mostly because it seemed like tomorrow being Mother's Day brought a bunch of randos to the supermarket.

Afterwards, I did a fitting on Ma's cardigan. As mentioned earlier.

Then we did a trip to Spotlight to pick up another skein of yarn. Only to not find the yarn, have one of the staff say they would find it out the back, ask us to wait because it was "very high up" and then not only not go get the yarn but also not come find us and tell us they weren't going to get the yarn. So, you know, slightly annoyed. If you can't get to it safely, fine. However, you said you would do a thing. Either do the thing or tell me you're not doing it without me having to come find you again.

On the plus side I did teach one of the (non craft section) staff members about yarn dye lots... because for some fucking reason I had "please talk to me, I love random human interaction" tattooed on my forehead all day. And the person who was ordering three skeins of that purple yarn over the internet... you're absolutely fucking welcome that you got three from the same dye lot because of me.

So we left there without the thing we came for.

And then went to Haighs for the second week running. Forgetting, of course, that it is Mother's Day tomorrow. And most of the people there where, in fact, fathers and sons. We also didn't manage to find dark chocolate broken Easter Egg, but we did find broken Milk Chocolate Hot Cross Bun Crunch Egg. So, you know, absolutely not mad about that.

May32025

character saturday: big dumb boy

khurg - orc, protector, good boy

I didn't realise that I hadn't ever posted an updated version of Khurg after the first one. Which is a shame, because a lot of those original ones now fill me with deep shame LOL.

But he makes a reappearance for today's DnD Character Colouring Book because Hero Forge dropped their new Body Customiser this week. And what Khurg has desperately been needing for a good long while now is just giant meaty hands. Also feet.

Khurg really is one of my favourites who I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked. Every time I remember that he canonically met Santa who also him the snowflake pin, and that it was one of the elves that embroidered his overalls, it just makes me smile.

Suffice to say I really like this version of him.

Anyway...

This week's soup was my version of Minestrone... and quite good. I could perhaps have forgone the potato, but I also ending up picking through each bowl and eating the potato first... so, you know, whatever works I guess.

And this week's Mini Media Reviews are the two Addams Family animated movies.

I was absolutely not a fan. They really just didn't understand how The Addams Family should work and what makes them unique. Cramming a generic "my parents don't understand me" plotline for Wednesday is the last thing that should be in an Addams Family movie. And the fact that they doubled down on that in the sequel and made Wednesday's whole plotline a "I don't fit into this family" one is... breathtakingly dumb.

But I did realise that there isn't an Addams Family movie that actually has any idea what the hell to do with Pugsley. This does not break that trend.

In crochet news, I finished the squares I was making... I'm just not sure how I'm going to join them together. So they're currently a problem for another day. I also tried to put something together with the other red yarn the Friday folks got me for my birthday last year. And, honestly, I just can't do it. There's something about yarn that I just don't enjoy working with. I tried and subsequently frogged three different starting points, because nothing was working the way I wanted it to. So I've now put it away.

Friday Night DnD was good. Should we have gone left before we went right, oh absolutely, I knew that. I don't think it would have overly mattered in the scheme of things, but I at least had the idea that left was important.

But otherwise we did a lot of going from A to B to C.

Anyway...

Thank all that's holy that we did not, in fact, have to go vote today. Having said that, it might legitimately have been easier and less bothersome than doing it last weekend. Which is somewhat annoying. Because by the time we were leaving the supermarket, there was no line at the polling place and very few assholes standing outside taking up space and oxygen. Lessons learned I guess.

But, we did the supermarket thing, then detoured off to Haighs for broken Easter Egg. Now... I've said this before, and I will say it once again. For the last few years, they have said that they had "broken Easter Egg" when what they actually have is "broken Easter chick/duckling", which, while similar, is not actually the same thing. We also got some actual Easter Egg which had bits of macadamia nut in it.

So good times all around.

And I'd asked Ma to bring the Thneed that I made back down, because, honestly, while finishing off the squares this week I realised that I could absolutely have used that yarn to make a hexagon cardigan rather than the slightly useless thing that I made.

Which meant that I spent a couple of hours frogging the whole blanket thing into it's original seven balls of yarn. And will now turn it into something that is actually usable.