Creatively Untitled: A List Post Project

Do you know what D&D actually stands for?

That would be Dead and Devoid of all energy.

It's been taking up so much of my time and energy over these past two- wait, no three... yeah, three  months (we took that long for character creation, one-on-one starter sessions, and me personally working on the campaign setting) that I really haven't been focusing on much else. But we finally, FINALLY have started and from how well things are going, I think I'll be able to take a breather and  actually work on other things alongside this.

So, to get y'all caught up....

LIST POST TIME

*confetti cannons here*

1. First, let's talk about my knitting.

My intention was to have this finished in time to wear to the Destination Yarn open house later this month. Especially because this shawl would feature two different DY colors. 

But after doing the math and having a heart-to-heart with myself... well, for the first time ever, I'm not going to finish a shawl in time to meet my deadline.

I'm surprisingly okay with it. It had to happen at some point and I'd rather it be something that was more of a "this would be nice" thing than a "OH MY GOD THIS RUINS EVERYTHING" sort of deal.

2. I ended up making another moth.

She's quite a bit bigger than my first one. And yes, she does look a little like the Centipeedle in Steven Universe. It was unintentional at first, but as I went along, she kind of grew into it. 

I adore her and she now lives on my lovely new shelf along with my other plushies.

3. I made a mini dice bag for my miniature dice that I use for my crow companion for my character.

Yes, I know that the yarn obscures the cables, but I REALLY wanted to use only scraps for this. It's made mostly with the teeny little bit of yarn I had leftover from Polar Bear in a Snowstorm.

4. We ended up taking both Bethany and Vi with us to Origins last month and it was so much more fun like that. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

5. I'm SUPER friggin proud of this crow painting I did for Lily.

6.  John and I actually did something crafty TOGETHER!

These are traveler's journals we made. And I do mean "we." He did almost all the work on his own! My little crafty goddess heart nearly burst with joy.

7. I've been meeting real life mothy friends and I couldn't be happier. 

8. We've been playing Pokemon Go again. Vi and I have been painting the town yellow.

9. It's actually been a few days since I've started writing this and I'm now on the 5th color of my Fade shawl.

10. I may or may not be planning out the yarn for like a dozen more of these.

11. Yes, that's highly unusual.

12. No, I DON'T know what the hell is wrong with me.

13. And I TOTALLY didn't go off my cold sheep personal pledge and buy another skein of Rios just because the colors were singing to me.

14. NOPE NOPE NOPE TOTALLY DIDN'T

15. 

16. ..............................

17. Damnit...

June Bugged

June's shawl is done.

...

This is the part where I'm supposed to wax all poetic about how amazing it is and how wonderful it was to knit and how I can't wait to wear it, right?

...

Yeah, that ain't happening this month.

I did finish the knitting portion of my Gryffindor bag early on, but I'm not entirely happy with it.

As for shawls, I actually attempted to start or finish three different ones this month.

I thought VooDoo would be perfect because I wanted to wear it for Ren Faire next month.

But I didn't really want to do something beaded.

So I thought Mystic Star would be a good one to finish.

But I didn't think I'd actually be able to finish it in time.

So I picked up Gilded Age again.

But this one was boring AF to work on.

So, frustrated beyond belief and freaking out since it was already the middle of June, I grabbed a couple of skeins of Malabrigo Rios worsted weight and started the first free pattern I could find.

Which happened to be Kelp.

I cast on, muddled my way through the (rather unhelpful, in my opinion) directions, and just kept knitting.

I knit on the way to Origins.

I knit at Origins.

I knit near. I knit far.

I even knit at a bar.

I finally finished the body...

And ended up having to improvise the damn ruffled edge.

Then I did a picot bind-off that took me, not even kidding, a whole damn day.

AND I ALMOST RAN OUT OF YARN!

But finally...

It was done.

Blocking was relatively easy. I just kind of pulled the garter stitch points down and let the edge just kind of fall where it wanted to.

But somehow, someway, this shawl didn't "Ashtan"

Yep.

It's not big. It's not excessive. There wasn't any mid-project crisis. I didn't really change the pattern.

It is a pretty shawl, don't get me wrong.

I love the ruffled edge.

And I love the color variation in this.

But...

This shawl is clearly not for me.

It needs to be given to someone who will love and appreciate it.

I needed to make it, and it fulfilled that purpose.

But it's also taught me that I'm not going to love every single thing I make. Some stuff I'm going to be able to let go of freely and clearly, without the slightest hint of remorse.

And that's perfectly okay.

So thanks, Kelp, for teaching me so much. I hope you make your recipient much happier than what we could have had.

As for me, I think after the torture...

... it's time for a treat.

Glams and Games

I FINALLY am feeling up to chronicling the past couple of weeks, because, jesums, they've been a doozy.

Note to self: multiple people-heavy events two weekends in a row are going to completely drain all your spell slots.

Rather than trying to cram it all in at one time, I'll be kind enough to break it into a couple of posts.

First off, we need to go clear back to the weekend of the 16th. I know, I know, it's hard. You can't even remember what you had for dinner last night, but I believe in you!

Anyway, that weekend John and I had planned on going to Origins Game Fair in Columbus. It's become an annual tradition. And every year we swear that we're going to go for a few days, and it always turns into, "we're broke AF, guess it's just Saturday."

Enter my mom and her boyfriend. He had enough points built up in some reward system that he asked us if we wanted a free hotel room for the night. It was a belated anniversary present.

Uhh, yes please and thank you.

So John and I decided to go down to Columbus whenever we liked on Friday and then spend all day Saturday at Origins. We were hoping to go to the Pride festival and do some swimming. I also wanted to hit up Yarn It & Haberdashery.

But of course, this is us we're talking about. Nothing ever goes to plan.

First, we ended up leaving suuuppppper late, as per usual. We had to take Al to my mom's and then run a couple of small errands (like getting new swim trunks for the Supreme Butt Face).

We FINALLY started heading to Columbus in the early afternoon. We were supposed to arrive around 4, right when check-in would be. Perfect, right? We'd swim for a bit, get some food, meet Kayla at Pride... Sounds like a great friggin day.

Well, of course that's not what happened. There ended up being an accident RIGHT ON THE DAMNED EXIT WE NEEDED! Add in rush hour traffic on a Friday. We weren't going anywhere. And... we both had to use the bathroom.

We ended up getting off at the first exit we could find, looking desperately for somewhere we could use the bathroom and kill some time. Ended up stopping at a ToysRUs and proceeded to utterly destroy the restroom my god it had been hours and it was terrible *ahem* take care of business.

I felt bad about just using the bathroom and leaving, so I bought a friend.

This is Rupert.

I also bought some stuff so John and I could have an epic party in the hotel later.

Yes, I'm an adult, why do you ask?

We didn't end up getting to the hotel until 7:30, turning a quick 2 hour drive into a nearly 5 hour long purgatory. It really just shows the strength of John and I's marriage that we weren't at each other's throats by then.

So we decided to skip Pride, and just focus on swimming and relaxing in the room.

We knew we were getting a suite, but we certainly weren't expecting this level of swank.

Like, the bathroom was bigger than our bedroom at home. Mind. Blown.

I honestly felt a little guilty that we'd only be here for such a short amount of time.

We decided to head straight for the pool, only to discover much to our horror, there was a youth baseball team also staying in the hotel. And they were currently attempting to break out all the windows with their screaming in the pool.

Holy fucking nightmares, Batman.

We turned right back around and headed to the room.

At 9:30, we decided to go check again and lo, just a single family! We could deal with that.

So, we got to swim for 5 minutes before a dozen screeching demons all came flying into the room and dove right in, with no thought or care of any of the little ones in the pool.

They were screaming so loudly my ears were literally ringing. John and I were SCREAMING to try and talk to one another, but to no avail. We had to resort to hand gestures.

Needless to say, we left, throwing many a dirty look at the parents who were ignoring the steaming piles of human excrement that they referred to as their "children."

Yes, the parents were there and not doing a damn thing.

*sigh*

That's a rant for another day.

Anyway, we both hopped in the massive shower to clean the chlorine off and relax for a bit. I mean, there was a seat in there. I wanted to just spend the night in the shower, but John's a killjoy and wouldn't let me.

Dinner was the next goal and having such a fancy kitchen to work with, I felt like I had to cook something, but John argued that we were on vacation and I should get a break. So we compromised and made an easy-peasy dinner of sandwiches and trifles.

And yes, we poured our non-alcoholic beverages into the fancy wine glasses.

Look at that sweet layering action right there.

We busted out all the party stuff, too.

It was lit AF, yo.

We went to bed rather early (I think it was before 1?) and slept peacefully through the night...

Or not. Because I'm someone with IBS and anxiety. I got treated to a *lovely* panic attack at 4am. Not one of the super bad ones, but still pretty bad. Add in that I woke up in a pool of sweat from being overheated, and yeah, it was a rough night.

I told John to wake me back up at 7:30 because I really wanted to try for a morning swim while he had breakfast.

Well, he didn't.

Instead, he let me sleep until 9am, and then I got treated to another panic attack because "ohmygodIonlyhavetwohourstogetreadyandIknowI'mgoingtobestuckinthebathroomforawhileandyoustillwanttoeatandohmygoddddddddd"

He ended up going down for breakfast while I got ready to go. We managed to check out just a couple minutes past 11, after unsuccessfully trying to stuff the dishwasher in the suitcase.

Side note: I was proud of my super fast, crappy lighting makeup.

And yes, I made the necklace myself just for Pride.

Made one for Kayla, too!

Not bad for just using supplies I had on hand.

We'd already decided to go to Yarn It before Origins because they were having their 3rd anniversary sale. It wasn't far from the hotel, so off we went.

I got treated to an amazing gift bag with all sorts of goodies inside just for walking in the door.

And I decided on some FaerieGrl yarn as my souvenir skein. It's this gorgeous grey with an uber soft rainbow dyed into it.

Totes in love with it.

By the time we made it Origins, the Columbus Pride Parade was in full swing. We managed to find a break and run across the street to get to the convention center. But not before I stopped and grabbed a quick pic.

I wish I could have gotten a better one showing off the mass of people that were heading up the street. It was overwhelming and inspiring.

We finally, finally, FINALLY made it into Origins and John was a happy camper.

We took a pic with our favorite Boss Monster mascot.

I bought a crown.

Took a pic with a cutie.

And walked around the entire convention working on June's shawl.

AND I DIDN'T BREAK MY NEEDLES THIS YEAR!!!

I even managed to find a sheep.

This was just my swag from the convention.

Since this is so long, I won't go into any detail about what I got. But if you have questions, I'll answer in the comments.

We left finally left Columbus around 7 and headed home. The drive back was mostly uneventful (aside from nearly running out of gas and having to stop once just to wash bugs off the windshield...).

When we walked in the door, we were promptly ran over by the various fur babies who must have missed us terribly.

I mean, I wasn't even allowed to pee without a few of them pushing open the door and trying to get affection.

I'll spare you the pic and just leave you with this one instead.

All in all, it was a fun, if exhausting weekend. And I'm already looking forward to next year. I might be recovered by then.