Life, Sticks, and Spinning in Circles

Sims 3: Breaking into your neighbors homes with dive wells

2012-01-16T05:57:00.001-05:00

Here's a fun trick that requires some minimal tomb building tools. It's possible to link dive wells together between lots. That right, you can use them to break into your neighbor's house whenever you want.

Let's demonstrated the technique using the Alto and Goth families from Sunset Valley.

We'll start in the Alto house, because it's got plenty of space in the yard for a dive well.

This trick requires use of the testingcheatsenabled and buydebug. If you don't know how to activate them, go look it up. Got it? Good. Turn both of them on.

Now, place a dive well on your lot anywhere it will be accessible.

Now, I'm going to assume that not everyone likes to build traps or get into neighbors houses using tomb building tools, so I'll walk through this. The dive well system is pretty simple - you give the portal a name, and then another portal can link to it.

To get to this magical section, I want you to hold down Ctrl and Shift, and then click on the dive well. A menu should pop up that looks like the below image. I want you to click on "Change This Well's Name" as is highlighted in the image.

Don't forget that you can click on these images to see them bigger.

A box should pop up that will allow you to enter in a name for this well. I have chosen "Alto Home", though feel free to pick anything you want.

That's all we can do on the Alto lot for now. We will now start building on the Goth lot, for which I had to switch active households to do.

As before, place a dive well somewhere on the lot. If you wish to actually break in, however, you must place this well inside the actual house. Otherwise when you travel here you will be stuck outside the house, and honestly we've got cabs for that kind of a visit. Here I've placed it in the master bedroom.

Again name this well. This time I have named it "Goth House". Why yes, I am inconsistent in my naming. I suggest you do a better job. :P

Now for the fun linkage part.

Ctrl-Shift click on the well again, and click on "Make this an uber warp well".

This will pop up another box. This is where you enter in the name of the well you would like to link it to. In this case, we will be linking the Goth well to "Alto Home".

Now we are completely done in the Goth house. Switch back to the first house and we shall repeat the linking for that well. Obviously I will be linking the Alto's well to "Goth House".

After that, the only thing left to do is test it out! Here is a video showing it in action.

The main downside to this is that you have to do a lot of prep work. You have to place a well in each place you would like to go, switch lots all the time to get things linked, etc. Plus, wells are huge. However, it is perfectly possible to create chains of wells. Alto links to Goth who links to Wainwright and so on. And if you wanted to, you could place a well inside an uninhabited home and use it as a home away from home, a trick, by the way, that ghosts are also capable of preforming provided the house in question doesn't have a foundation.

I might also suggest turning off both cheats once you are done. I don't like to leave them on any longer than I need to. Just because the testing cheats are potentially dangerous, and buydebug is way too tempting.

Homeless Sim

2012-01-08T02:33:00.000-05:00

New Sims expansions in the house means playing Sims again. I'm currently playing a "homeless" sim (tiny plot of land in the middle of no where, no actual house, etc) who's lifetime goal is to make a bunch of money entering horse competitions. The addition of sleeping bags to the game (from Generations) is very useful. They serve a similar purpose to the tent, but you don't have to go on vacation or use cheats to get one.

Adopting a horse via the newspaper is free. I wasted a lot of time attempting to make friends with a wild horse seeing as how they were already friends before I realized you have to have a very high riding skill level to even adopt a wild horse. I ended up adopting that horse later, although by then she was an elder. And a she - I was hoping that even if she was an elder, she would be a boy so I could breed the female I had adopted via the newspaper.

Also couldn't breed my main horse with one of the neighbor's horses. Go figure, huh? :P Anyway, since she was getting close to old age herself, I bred her via the Equestrian Center and got a little male foal I named Captain Fuzz. Elder adopted wild horse eventually passed on not too long after the foal was born.

As my sim herself is getting on in years, I decided to have her pop out a kid with her sorta-boyfriend. Yeah, she was still homeless, though the tiny plot of land which was her technical home had (or at one point had) a rather impressive garden. Once you stock pile produce it's really easy to be sure your sim is never hungry, AND it's faster to eat two apples than it is sitting down to a whole meal.

Anyway, popping out a kid. She doesn't have a real bed, you can't woohoo in a sleeping bag (the one advantage a tent has on it), and Appaloosa Plains seems to be very strict with single gender bathrooms. She finally got lucky backstage of the theater, after having tried the City Hall and Military Base, both of which are combined in this neighborhood and I couldn't get the "Woohoo" options to pop up. I'm not sure if I imagined being able to do it there in the past, or if perhaps it doesn't work on combined lots.

I figured, taking care of a kid wouldn't be that hard even without a house. Carry the kid with me wherever I go, no problem. You can see where this is going, can't you? Freaking twins! You can't carry those around with you, and even though she technically has money I had already decided that since she's supposedly just squatting on some public land (story wise, obviously the game think she owns that plot) the babysitter won't have an address to come to.

So she's trapped on the little lot until the babies are kids. Peeing herself because you can't place a toilet without walls, stinky because she doesn't have water hookup obviously, and grumpy because I typically got most of her fun playing with her horses. I broke down and bought the kids some cribs at least - let's pretend she bought them in a yard sale or something.

Because the lot is so tiny, I had been having her horses stay at the training grounds area near the Equestrian Center. Other than keeping an eye out that the horses don't spontaneously decide to come "home", this is a pretty good set up. She takes care of anything she needs to around town, and then bikes over to hang with her horses and enter competitions.

But, she can't leave her lot. Again, normally wouldn't be a problem, except for that darn foal. See, he was born just a day or so before the twins. And yes, he can nurse from his mommy. But the option doesn't seem to be there every single time he's hungry. I had been supplementing this lack with bottle feeding, but there's no room on the home lot to succeed in doing anything with the horses, and she can't step 2 inches off the lot because that's leaving your kids home alone. Which means a lot more attention needs to be paid to the foal and begging random strangers to feed him with a bottle.

The game crashed just shortly after the twins grew up into toddlers and the foal had grown into an adult. I can't remember if I saved it after that - I know I saved after they were born at least.

Toddlerhood will be better than babyhood in this case. I may or may not bother with learning to talk and walk and pee in a potty (hey, mommy pees on the ground because she can't carry both of you to the gym for some reason), I don't really care what traits they get, and they received their Imaginary Friend dolls when they were born which means I don't even really have to do anything with them except chuck an occasional bottle their way or put them in and out of the crib.

I can't wait until they are children though, so that I may get back to attempting to earn money with horse competitions. I haven't decided if I'm going to purchase a real home once she has enough money, but I have to keep earning if I'm to hit the 40k needed to fulfill her lifetime want, which is my main goal. The kids are just there to carry on the family line if I decide to keep playing after she dies (or if I keep playing until she does die) and the same goes for the offspring horse. Well, that's also so that when main horse finally passes on (she's already an elder) I will still have a horse to earn money with. It's only too bad Captain Fuzz isn't a girl. If I want to get an offspring for him I'll have to adopt another horse.

Sweater Done!

2011-12-29T04:00:00.003-05:00

In time for Christmas even! Thank you Shady Cels for the wonderful encouragement!

Snow, Sweaters, and "Failure"

2011-12-01T02:53:00.001-05:00

I'll admit it. I gracefully dropped out of NaNo a few days ago at 21k words. I just really wasn't feeling the story at all, and there's no shame in realizing that. Is there a part of me that wishes that this wasn't my first non-win? Of course. But as I didn't enjoy writing this story most of the time, pushing through to 50k would have just been a waste of my mental energy, which I've been lacking in lately anyway.

It's December, which marks the third round of Nerd Wars on Ravelry. I don't know if I've posted about it before. One of the challenges this round is to finish a WIP. So I'm digging out my "Obnoxious Christmas Sweater". The sweater I've only got a front finished on. Hey, I've seen people start and finish sweaters within a month, so I'm going for it. Back and sleeves. I want to get it done in time to wear for Christmas, but I'll be happy with just finishing it.

What do you think? I love it, which is why I want it done.

We've also just had the first snow of the year. A piddly little dusting overnight that barely did anything and melted by noon. But still, first snow of the year baby! I'm ready for snow and cold for some reason. I'm tired of it bouncing around between 60 and 40, I'm tired of rain, and I just love snow.

So happy December everyone! Only 25 days until Christmas.

If only novelling was as interesting as Minecraft

2011-11-23T02:20:00.001-05:00

Still behind on NaNo, and I haven't decided if it's a bad thing that I don't really care. I'll be honest - my story has barely any plot, or at least nothing of the sort that would keep me going. I'm working towards something at least, but it's still not really a plot...

No, instead of writing like I should be, I've been playing Minecraft again. It's one of those games that you play and play for days at a time, until you run out of goals again and get bored and don't play for six months.

I've only just updated my game today, well yesterday as it's after 2am, but you get the point. I've been playing for around a week now I guess, and I was hesitant to actually update mostly because I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the new hunger bar. Plus the idea of Endermen creep me out a little. I have a hard enough time with zombies. But I did it anyway.

My first world after updating - I make new to experience all the new stuff in a fresh world - and I spawn on a freaking island in the middle of the ocean. Would you believe that? A teeny tiny island with practically nothing on it, and which is miles from anything but a few other small islands. I am so lucky that one of the small nearby islands had a single tree on it. Seriously.

So... chop down that one tree to get wood. Fortunately I got three saplings from that tree and I planted them all. My little spawn island had a nice little area where I set up a tiny cave lair. I always seem to set up cave lairs initially. It's easier than trying to build above ground.

They changed a few controls between 1.7 and the current version (1.0?). Or at least one that really threw me that first night - in the crafting screen, shift + left click on the things you've just crafted used to take just the ones shown and put them in your inventory, but they changed it so it takes all of them plus all the ones you are capable of crafting based on what you've got put together. Which is all well and useful, except when you are used to the old method and accidentally turn all your logs into planks in one shot. I spend the first night without torches. But I did get to make a door first thing...

Spent a few days getting things set up to my basic standards - torches, door, furnace, crafting table, and at least a single chest. That's really all I need to survive the night. But you know what? Not a single little animal spawns on my island even though zombies and creepers and other scary things do.

I planted wheat, but it takes forever to grow. Went digging around underground in the hopes of finding spiders to slaughter for string for a fishing pole. Which says something - spiders are almost as scary as creepers. Didn't find any spiders, but I did find a bunch of stuff I couldn't mine yet - gold and gems and redstone and other things like that. And plenty of lava. On the upside if I ever need to build a Nether portal I've got plenty of lava available.

My hunger bar ran out before my wheat grew. What followed was a slightly annoying period of time of my health depleting to half a heart, accompanied by the hurt grunt. It wasn't long later a zombie killed me, but that did reset my hunger bar back to full.

I've got a fishing pole now. Currently my goal is to simply get self sufficient where I don't have to worry about resources anymore. Maybe when I get bored of that I'll take the boat I built and sail and sail until I hit real land and start over on the continent. In the meantime, just call me Gilligan!

So in short, I should be writing but I'm not. I still plan to win though, but then again maybe last year's epic comeback has given me a skewed idea of where I ought to be right now. I'm super behind, but I don't even feel any last minute worry...

NaNo has made me nuts

2011-11-16T01:06:00.001-05:00

Or perhaps I've made my NaNo nuts. That's probably the closer answer; I was already nuts.

This year is my "no kidnapping or torture when stuck" year. I'll be honest, while I love my previous two novels, they do have a very similar underlying plot - Someone wants one of my MCs for some reason. That someone eventually manages to kidnap that MC. Other characters must rush to save victim before victim is killed or whatever. Somewhere in there torture and villain gloating ensue, though to which character varies. Villain is way overpowered.

Like I said, I love those novels (even if no one will ever be allowed to read 2009's). And yeah, other stuff is going on around that basic skeleton. But I didn't want a third story that relied on that same old same old to keep me moving, no matter how entertaining I find it.

Nope, this year is apparently my "silly" year. My goal was something lighter, preferably without the overpowered villain screwing with everyone.

I'll be honest, I've had motivation issues this year. Starting from day 1, I didn't really want to write. I've had a very hard time making word count, especially on days I work. That first day, it was late afternoon before I realized I had barely written anything, in fact only premise set up, and didn't even have any MCs. So I had to make myself make some.

Evi is 13, and grew up in an underground society. Tradition states she has to spend a year on the surface world. Leaf is a fairy boy, can talk to animals, and talks...oddly. I love him way more than Evi, though she's starting to grow on me. I'm afraid she's managed to pick up "hates confrontations" from me, so it's probably a good thing Leaf doesn't mind them. Maybe he'll be able to solve problems. If he does he'll be the first character I've ever had that can do that.

I've got a lady with too many children, I have pirates and ninjas, I have a person who is part bird part human who tells awful knock knock jokes... I'm not so sure I have a plot other than "travel around and get into trouble and silliness", but that's ok. My story is a tv show.

Poor Ethan, Alyssa's making you watch her favorite show every day. You could get off the couch and do something else until it's over. But no, you stay there and watch and then complain you hate it. Well maybe the latest episode with the pirates and the sea monster and the ninjas will entertain you. We'll have to see, but in the morning.

It's officially the end of the 15th day. I should be at 25k. I am at 18,789. I'm doing better than I was word count wise than I did last year, but I really don't have an excuse. Last year I was handwritting. Of course I'd be doing better by typing, just by sheer virtue of the fact it's faster. And yet I'm still only averaging a little over 1,000 words a day. I'll catch up this weekend I hope, and preferably get ahead. On the other hand, that may kill my motivation...lol

Now answer me this: Why is it that a chapter involving a sea monster, a mutiny, bad jokes, a pickpocket cat, capture by pirates, and rescue via distraction by ninjas shorter than a chapter about looking for a job and babysitting for the woman with too many children? I mean really, babysitting takes up more words? Fair enough I did get a chunk of change out of simply listing off all sixteen children, but gosh!

Now see, why can't I write story like I wrote this blog post? 600+ words no problem, gee!

Pumpkin Carving - A Personal History

2011-10-25T10:14:00.003-04:00

I'm having a hard time getting pumpkin carving out of my head. So until it's time to actually, you know, do it, I guess I'm just going to be babbling about it here. :P So I guess I present A Personal History of Pumpkin Carving

There was apparently a time during our family history in which normal faces were carved. I was too young to remember, but there is a really old video of both me and the next youngest going trick-or-treating at a very young age. And visible in the background are our normal pumpkins.

My earliest pumpkin themed memory is visiting the pumpkin patch in kindergarten. We were allowed to pick one out to take home and everything. While my classmates picked out small, easily carried by a 5 year old pumpkins, I picked the biggest, bestest pumpkin I could find. I could barely lift the thing if I remember correctly. I was very lucky that the bus we rode to the patch was also the same bus that I rode to and from school on. The bus driver was nice enough to let me leave the pumpkin in my seat so I didn't have to take it back into the school building. I was very proud of that pumpkin.

We've carved interesting things for as long as I can remember. We started with those Pumpkin Masters kits that come with carving saws and patterns. I remember when we were little that we'd transfer the patterns to the pumpkins by coloring on the back with a crayon and then tracing it. Back then I'm pretty sure that Dad would help us with the carving - as I've said before, it's totally a family thing.

We used patterns from those kits for years. I think I had progressed to carving all by myself well before we mostly stopped using them. Somewhere we've got a picture of one of the ones I had done that was a skeleton eating a mouse. I still have a fondness for them even if we don't really use their patterns anymore, and sometimes I miss sawing away with those little saws as I haven't cut through a pumpkin in years.

At some point we started looking up patterns on the internet. We collected loads of free patterns over the years, and I definitely remember searching for new ones mid summer even. I'd say internet patterns were our first true trip into what I think of as "three color" patterns - Not cut through, shaved, and cut through, which eventually morphed into Not cut, shaved, and shaved deeper. We had favorite sites and I think this is when I really started loving patterns based on cartoon characters.

I was most definitely carving my own by this point. There's this one year where I was attempting to carve a rather complicated Harry Potter pattern. I was frustrated and taking it out on the rest of the family. Eventually I ended up hiding in the basement with my pumpkin, working through it someplace quiet so I could concentrate. This had to be in the early 2000s as the pattern was based off of one of the US book covers - OotP I believe.

In there we also tried making our own patterns even though we rarely carved anything we made. I've looked through some of my old attempts at making patterns recently. They're...pretty bad. They'd get the point across probably, but they were certainly far from what I'd consider even a decent job now.

And then at some point our favorite site (that we had come to rely on) took down a bunch of their patterns (cartoon based mostly) because of complaints from the people who, you know, actually owned the characters or something like that. Whatever...lol I think this is when my sister decided to start really making her own. She's got a real knack for it, and was nice enough to take requests from the rest of us. I tried myself, but I wasn't as good as she was, so I didn't try very hard...lol Heck, even my pumpkin from 2008 was from one of her patterns I think.

I make them for myself now of course. It's really only been the last few years that I've been consistently carving my own though. I'm still learning the balance between too much detail and not enough. If you leave your lines too thin, for instance, you're not going to be able to carve it easily. But too thick makes things, people especially, look weird. :P

I feel as if I ought to conclude this somehow, though I'm not sure what to say. Umm, pumpkins rock? Haha :P

Tis Fall!

2011-10-25T03:12:00.003-04:00

Crunchy leaves, pretty colors, cool nights, and pumpkin guts. I adore this time of year more than any other.

We've bought our pumpkins before the last minute this year. I can't wait to get carving, but unfortunately starting too early means nasty rot before getting to showcase the fun next Monday. My pattern is all set - I'm carving Aladdin and Jasmine this year. My favorites from past years have always been the crazy detailed ones, unfortunate for time but understandable. Why wouldn't I be proudest of the crazy ones? :P

My pumpkins from the last three years, in order:

Patrick was three years ago, and I only sort of remember carving him. Perry is my absolute favorite out the the three even if I didn't get to display him for Trick-or-Treat, and Norm is totally awesome as well. Perry definitely fits the bill for "crazy details", but Norm's got it going on as well. Love love love carving.

In other time of year news, NaNo is coming up once again. This will be my third year and I'm starting to get a tiny bit excited again. I'm going for a lighter story than in past years (no more kidnapping and torture for instance) and hopefully the vague idea I have will deliver. :D

Obvious Word Padding

2011-06-24T22:39:00.003-04:00

I'm in the frantic process of getting my NaNo into decent shape before the code for my free proof expires. And as such, I'm finding some really ridiculous word padding.

For starters, my main character who generally doesn't care one whit about clothing is describing them far more than he ought to. Not to mention scene descriptions. Ok, yes it's a very good thing to describe where your characters are. I just happen to suck at it and it always sounds out of place and word-paddy.

Then of course there's the times where I repeat myself. Just how many times do you need to tell us that people worrying about you are overreacting Josh? And I get it, your weapon sucks. Quit telling me!

And then there's my favorite. The slightly snarky Captain Obvious moments and really messed up character dialogue.

The woman handed the baby to her husband, then fetched a tea set from the other room. The tea was already hot and she poured us each a cup, well not the baby. The baby didn’t get a cup because it was a baby.

Oh really? The baby didn't want any? Never would have guessed that. ¬_¬

“How can you throw a child?” I exclaimed in horror.

“It’s easy,” he said. “They’re light.”

Actually, I really love this one. But it's so freaking messed up! XD

And don't worry, those two examples are chapters apart. You know, pretending I used chapters. No one threw that baby, it was a different kid.

Yarn Dyeing - The "I'm really lazy so lets just dump it in a jar" method

2011-03-24T23:24:00.005-04:00

I love dyeing. Though it might be amusing to share my lazy bum method of dyeing, which also has the advantage of keeping the smell of warm koolaid to a minimum. :P

This is my awesome Dyeing Jar. It's just a plastic, clamp top jar I got at Walmart a while back for sun dyeing. I love it though because I don't have to worry about it spilling.

Here's my roving all soaking in the sink. I'm a lazy lazy dyer, so I tend to just leave it until most of the water escapes the sink or I get bored of waiting, whichever comes first.

After I was tired of soaking, I got the dye ready. I took one of our larger bowls and filled it with water. 3 minutes in the microwave put it just short of boiling. Dumped that into the jar (carefully!) and mixed in some green koolaid. Lemon lime or something like that...

Then I crammed the roving into the jar as well. I probably could have gotten all of it under, but I wanted more than one color so I didn't. Then I clamped the lid down and set it aside. I left it until I got bored and the water was clear by that point. It doesn't take that long because I had the water so hot. Probably not the best move if you're going for super even color, but where's the fun in that?

Here's the roving out of the dye. Half green, whee!

Did the same with red - Black cherry koolaid this time. Yes, it's looking rather christmassy by this point, but I'd randomly selected the colors. :P

There was still bits of white, and while I'm ok with white I needed something to make it less christmassy. I had an already opened packet of orange in my dye box, so I sprinkled it over the white spots. Then to be sure it was wet enough I splashed some of the water from the red job over it.

Then it got wrapped up like a sausage and stuck in a bowl to catch anything that might leak out. 2 minutes got it quite hot, so stashed it away in the basement to cool out of the way. (At this point I made lunch - grilled cheese, yum!) I actually forgot about it over night.

Here's it dumped out in our white bathroom sink - the best in my opinion for being sure that the rinse is clear.

And here's it squeezed out and then layed out to dry. It'll be dry in a few days and then I can start spinning it. :D

Loom Madness?

2011-02-11T04:08:00.005-05:00

I walked into Joann Fabric today planning only to get the single ball of yarn I need to complete the shawl I'm working on. But of course I can never stop there. Today's random purchase was a smaller gauge knitting loom, specifically a knitting board meant for double knitting and flat panels, and a kid's potholder loom.

I'm rather pleased with this star square I made following the instructions my new knitting board came with. I mean, sure it's a little wonky, but it's freaking double sided!

As for the potholder loom, I'm not taking pictures of that. I must say, I'm slightly disappointed that it didn't come with enough loops of each color to make the cool, two colored potholder that's on the box. Fortunately, I mostly want to use the loom to try weaving with yarn. You know, once I get the chance to figure it out...lol In the meantime, it's kinda neat to weave and unweave the loops. Not that it really makes a potholder of my thickness preferences.

Roller Coaster Tycoon

2010-12-19T22:11:00.003-05:00

Click to view pics...

Dunno why, but had a random urge to go play one of my old favorites - Roller Coaster Tycoon. It's rather old, but it's still fun. It's just lucky that it runs (with proper compatibility settings) on my laptop as I haven't had much luck installing the expansions. Also lucky that the original was always the most fun. :P

If you've never played this game and get a chance to, I highly recommend it, especially if you are a fan of simulators. The main goal is complete the various scenarios in the parks the game gives you (such as "Have 200 guests and a park rating of 600 by October 31 Year 1") but it's also a lot of fun for just building roller coasters and watching the little people be morons - a bit like Sims in that regard.

And yes, the people in this game are quite stupid. One thing you should make sure to remember is to never make paths that are more that one square wide. Why? Because people will get lost on them. Seriously. They just wander around in circles. But it's quite funny to do on purpose even if a bunch of lost guests is horrible for your park rating.

Another thing to keep in mind is to never let your Handymen mow the grass. Yes, your employees are just as stupid as your guests and if you let them mow the grass THAT IS ALL THEY WILL EVER DO. Of course, this doesn't apply in parks without grass, but that's a small minority. Sad thing is, I've never even found a use for mowing the grass. Fortunately, handymen are the only employees with such a problem.

Here's a fun screenie. Though under normal circumstances your guests will object to paying $12 for anything, when it rains they WILL pay that much for an umbrella. Sure it's mean, but it's a pretty easy way to get that starting loan payed off. :P

It's that December time of year!

2010-12-05T07:52:00.003-05:00

Let there be snow

We've got our first real snowfall out of the way. Nature had great timing this year. It started snowing on December 1. How's that for awesome? It didn't really accumulate until a few days later (ground too warm I bet) and now it's wonderfully snowy when I look out the window. The video clip I linked to is how I've been feeling the last few days (when I'm not sniffling, darn head cold...). It's from an old Christmas movie called "Frosty Returns", which has pretty much nothing in common with the original Frosty movie, but the song tends to get stuck in my head from time to time. :P

If you've seen the counter on the right side column, you'll see I beat NaNo once again! I'm quite impressed with myself this year. I wrote more than half of it by hand, though that took me until pretty much the beginning of week 4. And when I realized that I'd need to rush like crazy? I managed like 20k over the course of 4 days. Including the last day where I wrote over 7k! Can't you believe that? I still can't. I've still got a bit of story to go of course, which means I'll have to find some energy to actually pound out a conclusion. I want that free proof copy this year.

Only downside to hitting December is that it means I really need to start focusing on any Christmas knitting I want to get done. I have one item that I have to get done because the recipient knows about it. This person is rather picky, so it was just safer to ask about colors and patterns. Of course, that was months ago and there's not a lot that's been done on it since then. Thank goodness it's technically being worked on by two people, but I've done the most. Then again, the amount of work done total is rather pitiful so I guess it doesn't count. Other than that, I'm probably going to stick with small things for everyone. My hands actually still ache a bit from my 20k sprint, not to mention like 3 weeks of writing with a pen when I'm so not used to that.

I've also decided to start an "Obnoxious Christmas Sweater" for myself. There's been a few threads on Ravelry that were talking about them, and I just couldn't get it out of my head. I'm not going to stress about finishing it in time, but it would be cool to wear the thing to Christmas breakfast with the family. I'm not following a pattern, just basing it off a store bought sweater I love.

Straw Weaving

2010-10-28T00:56:00.004-04:00

Yup, read about this a while back and had to give it a shot. It's so simple it's kind of addicting. Lots of fun!

Here's a few tutorials: [1] [2]

My favorite results come from having a double length of yarn through each straw. It gives a tighter fabric, probably due to more friction.

Another fun thing I've tried is working "circularly". *pokes picture above this* You need an odd number of straws, and since I've only got 4 right now I did this one with 3. Basically, you wrap across once, but instead of going back, you put the last straw next to the first and continue wrapping around. The odd number of straws ensures that you don't need to think too much about the wrapping pattern. Done with only three straws, it's a bit like the i-cord of the straw weaving world.

One thing to note, unless you keep things really loose (which makes for a rather sloppy product in my opinion) you won't really be able to see the strands that go through the straws. I don't know much about official weaving terms, but I believe you'd call these the "warp" yarn. You can see them poking out of each end in the pictures above, though you can thread them back inside, and sometimes when you fold your new fabric in half you can see them between the wraps.

Fort! I mean... writing cave...

2010-10-22T23:44:00.009-04:00

I ran across a thread on the NaNoWriMo forums about writing caves. Basically, a fancy term for a fort to write in. And of course I couldn't NOT do this!

I sleep on the bottom bunk. It's already cave like and it's not a far stretch to imagine it as a fort. But it had to be something easy to put up and take down. And so I took this challenge upon myself, and a fort was born!

First off, this is my bed in all its messy glory:

Yeah, I'm a slob. Though to be fair, even when I do make the bed, it still looks messy. Why? First off, normal sheets don't fit quite right on a squashy futon mattress. Secondly, the bed is full sized, but my comforter and any of the blankets I've knit for myself are twin sized. They're from my old bed. What can I say, I like my old comforter too much to get rid of it.

Back to fort making, I knew for sure I had one thing that would be big enough to cover a side: A small blanket that I'd knitted which was pretty much only good for covering the foot of the bed. That would cover one end of the bed. I went through my drawers and gathered up old PJs that no longer fit or I just didn't like anymore. I tried lots of things to cover the sides with these, even going so far as attempting to create a "clothes line" type thing from yarn. It didn't work.

Went looking through my craft supplies I keep in the basement. I knew I had some old fabric from when I'd gone through a brief sewing interest period. It was big and orange, and I'd probably never use it. Luckily, and surprisingly, it was big enough to mostly cover the long side of the bed. You can't really tell from that photo up there, but the top bunk is only twin sized, which means that my bed sticks out from under it some.

It wasn't a perfect fit of course, there was space on either side that would need to be filled. An old nightgown and my shawl filled that.

Now for that pesky third side. I was pretty much out of things to put up. BUT I had a closet, most of which I hardly ever wear. And more importantly, these clothes were on hangers. So that third side was covered by shirts on hangers.

And so the finished fort:

And the inside:

Yeah, that's my knee. I'm laying down with my head on the pillow.

The only hard thing to put up and take down is the blue blanket since it's tied in place. Everything else is ridiculously simple. Currently everything is wrapped up in the orange cloth and is under my bed. November will be fun!

It's that time of year again!

2010-10-20T23:47:00.003-04:00

Leaves changing, air cooling, and people starting to whine that it's too cold. I love this time of year.

Spent a good part of the day out in the yard jumping on my pogo stick, kicking a ball around, and generally just being 5 again. I am not a summer person, I am a fall person. I love the cooler weather, and I love the sound of my feet rustling through the leaves. It annoys me that most of the family is cold, and instead of putting on long sleeves or something, turn the heat on. But I do understand, I'm right there with them once winter actually hits.

Now that we're more than halfway through October, I really ought to get deciding what I'm carving this year. Pumpkin carving is one of the funnest things about Halloween. My favorite thing to do is carving characters that all the little trick-or-treaters recognize. It's especially cute when the really little ones make a fuss over them. Yeah, I'm a bit of a show off sometimes.

Last year I did Perry the Platypus, BUT I didn't manage to finish carving in time for trick-or-treat. And yet, I still don't know what I'm carving yet. So far I've put together a folder full of possible images - Mario characters, Phineas and Ferb characters, Kirby... I only carve things I love, which means I end up carving from a small pool. Currently I've finished a possible pattern for Kirby, one for Bowser, and am working on Norm the robot. And I still don't know what I want to do.

Ah well, I'll get there. Hopefully before this weekend when we pick out pumpkins though...lol

Dye dye dye!

2010-09-01T14:54:00.002-04:00

Hehe, did some more dyeing the last couple nights.

No pics because camera's on the fritz.

Firstly, I soaked about 55 yds of wool in my sun jar (yes, I have a specific pattern in mind). Then I took it outside and poured two packets of orange koolaid on one side, and a packet of cherry and a packet of black cherry on the other. Didn't manage to exhaust the yarn the first day (End of august sun is in a different place than early summer sun, and I think it was cloudy too) so left it out again. Now it's the most gorgeous shades of deep orange and red. <3

The second yarn was an experiment since I really wanted some finished yarn to play with. I've got a pattern for this stuff in mind too and it's around 26 yds. I started by using a little of the leftover green from the sun dyeing experiment a few posts ago. Yes, I've been saving the leftovers in the fridge for this long. And no, I didn't end up using it all yet.

Anyways, it turned the yarn a kind of sick green, which totally isn't my thing. So I layed it out on some plastic wrap and sprinkled a little bit of leftover grape koolaid powder (which I had to crunch up 'cause the humidity had gotten to it) onto it. Just enough to make spots. Sprinkled a little more water on it to make sure it was still damp and heated some more. Sick green with purple spots...really not my thing...lol

So out comes some Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade. Mixed a whole packet into a bowl, but only put a little less than half of the yarn into it. The rest I put in clear water. I don't really feel like explaining the full setup, but let's just say I flooded the microwave. Fun stuff that is.

Took forever for the blue to exhaust. Since it was late and I was feeling pretty crappy by this point, my brother helped me carry the bowls of hot water to the basement and I left it down there. It was all exhausted this morning. It even dried quickly since it wasn't much yarn! :D

Spinning!

2010-08-09T06:32:00.003-04:00

Eek! I'm making yarn.

A couple of days ago (mid week maybe) I was looking around on KnitPicks and noticed their roving. It didn't seem horribly expensive (as far as my thoroughly inexperienced guess was) and I'd always wanted to try spinning. You know, with something that wasn't K'nex and Poly-Fill. So I ordered some...and a real drop spindle! And it came rather quickly, compared with my other online orders.

I'm absolutely thrilled! Sure, the center of that ball is mostly barely twisted thick stuff, but I've gotten to the point that it's starting to look like I know what I'm doing.

I can't wait to try plying this stuff - probably back onto itself. I haven't decided if I want to ply the super thick stuff as well. Part of me also wants to just set the twist on the single to maximize my yardage... decisions decisions...

Either way I can't wait to make something from this, even if it will have to be small.

Sun Dyeing

2010-06-25T06:36:00.003-04:00

Since it is now almost 7am, I can no longer say "tonight" and must instead say "last night". Anyways, last night after dinner I did some basic hand painting on a skein of yarn. 150 yards of some Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool. Nothing special really, but here's a picture of it draining. It's currently drying.

Of course, I'm 99.9% positive that this method works. Been there, done that. Still a load of fun to play with colors, but otherwise no adventure.

Enter dyeing yarn using the power of the sun. Unlike the previous skein, which is heated in the microwave, this method leaves the containers of yarn out in bright sunlight to cook.

Earlier in the afternoon, I picked up a large jar from the store. Plastic I think, but the important thing was that it was clear and could be closed well enough I didn't have to worry about spills. So earlier in the wee hours this morning (no, I haven't slept yet) I put the last of my white wool (which has provided me with enough yarn for three 150 yd skeins) into the bottom of the jar. I then poured my leftover dye over it. Wasn't enough yarn to actually use up all the dye, but a good amount of it.

I also had a partial skein of wool/bamboo/nylon sock yarn from my fingerless gloves. I mixed up a packet of orange koolaid into a zipper bag, then chucked the sock yarn in. The sock yarn was a white/green/dark purple-blue colorway, so no clue what orange will do. Hopefully something drastic. It wasn't my favorite colorway.

Anyways, I then took the jar and the bag out into our backyard. I left it near the end of the yard where it ought to get plenty of sunlight once the sun is fully up. This was somewhere between 5 and 6, with enough light to see by but otherwise the sun isn't actually up yet.

I just checked it a little bit ago. It looks like the orange dye has already exhausted into the sock yarn. From what I've heard, superwash wool sucks up dye quickly. However, I'm going to leave it out there with the jar so it can get some heat. Yeah, the water I used was warm. But where's the fun with taking it in now?

No pictures unfortunately. My camera chose now to start acting up and claim low battery. Which means that they're just not fully charged anymore. I'll probably go see if any of my wii remotes needs a fresh battery change.

Off to bed I go. Now let's just hope that it doesn't rain!

Happy Birthday!

2010-03-22T16:58:00.001-04:00

Not much to say really. Having chicken wings for dinner and get to open presents later. I don't really do "parties" so it'll be a quiet night. :D

On Birthdays and Presents

2010-03-20T15:32:00.004-04:00

I really wish people would stop asking me what I want for my birthday. Honestly, while there's plenty of things I wouldn't object to getting, there's nothing I actually want. I'd rather that, if someone wanted to get me something, they just surprise me. That's the fun of presents and the entire point of wrapping them up in pretty packaging.

Apparently, people have a hard time thinking of things to get me. That means, if I come up with anything to tell people, I'm pretty much guaranteed to get it. Which is nice I suppose, but it's totally not the point of presents. If I want something, I'll just buy it.

Snow Pics and Warmer Weather

2010-03-08T20:49:00.004-05:00

Soon is a relative term I suppose. As promised, here's some fun pics of all the snow:

First up is a nice night shot of the snow piling up around our picnic table. It's still coming down pretty hard here.

This is the same shot pretty much, except with the ordinary flash on instead of the fun "night" mode my camera has. Worthless as a picture of the picnic table, but great for showing just how much snow was coming down!

This one was taken several days later. It's probably still snowing, but not nearly as much. As you can see, the snow pretty much has buried the bench part of the picnic table. Compare this with the previous picture of the table and you can see just how much snow fell in a little more than a week. O_o

The weather has warmed up considerably since then, though the snow is still really deep for around here. The top layer has probably thawed and frozen several times since it first fell if judging by the icy crust on top is any indication. Too bad it's not strong enough to hold my weight. In fact, crunching through that crust is so impractical that no one has really gone off the shoveled paths. It's quite nice looking out the window at fresh, untouched snow.

That's not to say that I'm wanting it to stick around much longer. Today's nearly 50 degree weather felt wonderful!

I think the trees appreciate it as well. The last several days of above freezing weather has caused a few trees to start budding, especially one across the street that has lovely pink buds forming. It pretty much explains why I woke up this morning with nose and the upper back of my throat itching in a way that only allergies can do. I'm still in a fog from either the stuffiness or the allergy pills, but at least the allergy pills stop that awful burny itch.

If I'm going to be a sneezy wreck I want the snow to finish melting and spring to come. Right now, anything above freezing feels wonderfully like jacket weather. It always amazes me how 45 degree weather in the fall has people scrambling for their winter coats, but 45 degree weather in late winter/early spring gets people out in light jackets and occasionally even shorts!

Note to those on Ravelry who might actually care: I've changed my blog link to this one rather than my patterns one simply because my pattern one is boring. I'll still be using it to post patterns, but I add the patterns to Ravelry anyways so it's not like anyone will be missing anything.

Never assume anything

2010-02-10T10:07:00.003-05:00

Ever. Really, I mean it.

For the past couple of days, the news has been telling us we were going to get buried in snow. 7-12 inches of it. Yesterday it was snowing real good, and so the main city schools announced that they'd be closed today. This was in the afternoon, so I'm assuming that none of the staff actually wanted to wake up early this morning. After all, we were supposed to get dumped on, right? Cue late evening and the snow pretty much stops. "They called off the main schools. I'm sure you'll have off tomorrow too," said my mom. "If not, me or Dad can drive you." Thanks mom... And you know of course I had to come. Actually, I am glad for the ride. If anything, I slept like crap last night and it probably wouldn't be a great idea to put me behind the wheel of a car even if it weren't all snowy out. Now I'm just hoping my evening classes will be canceled so I don't have to be here all freaking day.

I've got some cool pictures of all the snow I'd love to get up here soon. <3

Rain

2010-01-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

Rain rain,
go away.
Come again another day...

...then again it may melt the remnants of that snowman. Go ahead and rain a little more. I want my scarf back.

I <3 Kirby

2010-01-10T03:10:00.000-05:00

Look what I managed last night!

Holiday Specials

2009-12-04T11:18:00.001-05:00

'Tis the season of the holiday specials. I don't think it's possible to describe just how much I love them or to even explain my reasoning. Rudolph, Grinch, Twas the Night Before Christmas, Frosty... Some of my favorites of all time. Something about seeing them every year just makes them better and better.

One thing that I've noticed over the years... I can tell where commercials were originally intended to be...or at least where they usually are. And I notice when the networks put them in odd places and cut parts out to fit in more commercials. That is one of my commercial pet peeves...that and those little commercials that pop up in the corner or along the bottom of the screen DURING the show. Watched the Grinch the other night. Darn network put commercials all over the place. I must say it was smart of them for their removal of the original fade outs that marked the inteded commercial spots...but I'd rather see the whole thing. Not only did they cut a few scenes (which I must admit get overlooked a lot...even our old VHS tape from when I was little has one scene missing), they also shortened scenes!

But I'm not going to dwell too much on that. I saw Rudolph the next night on another station and it was the whole thing. Commercials may have been moved around, I'm not as good with this one, but nothing was cut out. And there was one scene that gets skipped a lot that was included.

Still, networks having gone crazy with commercials or not, it's still way more fun to watch them on tv than on tape or dvd. Why? No idea. But it's always been that way for me. Movies, favorite episodes of shows, and specials are infinitely more fun when watched on tv.

My earliest (and one of my favorite) christmas special memories is sitting in our living room eating dinner (chicken in mushroom sauce), which was always a treat when we didn't eat around the table, watching Twas the Night Before Christmas. I still say that's my favorite of all the specials, probably because of all my favorites, it's on tv the least. Which is ok with me, as long as it's played once I don't want to see it a million gillion times. <3

I won I won!!

2009-11-30T13:29:00.000-05:00

I won!

Last one?

2009-11-13T04:58:00.000-05:00

I swear, I swear... I'll stop posting these. But I gave myself the challenge of making my way up to 20K in a half hour. That amounted to a little over 1100 words, which I made and then kept going to beat, since I was halfway through a paragraph. :D

First milestone!

2009-11-08T17:11:00.000-05:00

Another NaNo post, but hey, it's pretty much all I've been doing lately.

I beat 10K last night! Which means I'm only a little over 3K behind. My goal for today is to get caught up for once, though it may be hard since I'm starting a whole new section in a whole new area, which means I have a lot of things that need defined. Will be fun though. I've been working towards this point since I introduced my second character practically. :D

Random art time! I drew this a few days ago. It's sort of one of the scenes I've written. There's a few differences of course. They ought to be sitting. They ought to be rather dirty and rumpled by now. They have been underground for a while now after all.

It's supposed to be a tunnel, not a hallway, by the way.

And because it's fun, I decided to write up a little survey about NaNo for you all. Feel free to use and pass around all you want.

Your Most Common:
Beverage: Green tea or Green tea with mint
Music: Brad Pasley's "Play" cd (mostly instrumentals), various assorted favorite (country) songs, and some random music I found online that helps set the mood for some of my scenes.
Clothing: PJs
Time of Day: Late at night. So late in fact, that I might as well change my timezone on my profile.

Do You:
Let people read what you've written? Short excerpts...sometimes. But no one gets to read the whole thing until it's edited to the point it no longer embarasses me.
Read your story from the beginning? Once. I more likely read through from the beginning of a scene to help get my mind back into the right mood.
Edit? Only stuff that's going to drive me nuts, like attrocious spelling errors or really badly phrased things.
Write notes for yourself in the story? Nope! I want my word count to only reflect the story, which also means no chapter/section titles.

I'm getting faster!

2009-11-06T00:42:00.000-05:00

I promise to stop filling up my posts with these random word count buttons, but it's a sign that I'm getting a little faster at spilling out thoughts. Most words in less time this go around, and that's even with being interrupted a few times. :D

NaNo Update

2009-11-05T01:06:00.001-05:00

Chugging along, though a bit behind in the count. NaNo is a ton of fun though. Current Word Count: 5353

Ran into some writers block today... Which is partly because I'd somehow gotten into a boring rut in a boring cave. To the point where my character was counting the pebbles she passed simply to pass the time. So I collapsed the cave roof and made it flood. Nothing smacks you out of a rut like random danger.

Also, I gave myself the challenge of writing 1000 words as fast as I could. Thanks to Write or Die, I made it in under an hour. :D

Thank you Write or Die, for helping me move my plot along some. My character has gone from being knocked unconcious and under water to being warm and well by a fire. :)

I went and done somethin' crazy

2009-10-31T04:38:00.000-04:00

Need I say more?

At this very moment I have no plan at all. But I'm doing this because it's fun, and thoroughly expect to end up with 50,000 words of crap.

Adrenalin High

2009-10-29T11:05:00.000-04:00

One of the things I love about taking a physed class is that random goofy high feeling you have when it's all over. Spazzy, bubbley, can't stop talking once you start. It's fun. Crazy, but awesome. You can probably guess why I'm currently spazzing about it then. Fencing just let out and boy am I hyper. And of course there's no one to spaz to so random typing to the rescue!

Perhaps I need to put this random energy to use. Unfortunately, by the time I figure out what I want to do, it's faded. And then it's tired me instead of hyper me trying to get things done.

Hey, the commercials for the new Christmas Carol movie have got me thinking...I wonder what that story would be like from any other character's point of view. Say from Bob's point of view. One day your boss is a cranky old miser, insisting you come into work even though it's Christmas. The next day he shows up at your door with toys and food and a general personality flip. What would you think about that?

I must say, having some energy for a change is nice. I've been sick since Friday and subsequently lethargic and unfocused. Well, I'm still unfocused, but it's a different kind. I kinda like the lethargic kind of unfocused. It's the perfect time to read or fall into daydream. Maybe not the best time to take a drive. After all... Daydream + Driving = Splat

And I think I'm gonna end this spaz fest here before I start drawing pictures of flattened motorists. O_o

More leaves, you lucky ducks!

2009-10-14T02:00:00.000-04:00

<3 Fall

2009-10-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

I consider myself lucky that I live in an area of the country where the trees take on fall colors ranging from yellow to purple. The smell of fallen leaves and grass is enough to put anyone in a cheerful mood. Throw in the faint scent of fires and that wonderful cold air smell and you've got the smell that will forever be linked in my mind with October and Halloween.

Life, Sticks, and Spinning in Circles

2009-10-01T11:52:00.000-04:00

Aka, welcome to my new blog. I'm easily distracted and will probably neglect this thing just as much as the rest of the internet, but I wanted to have somewhere I could simply spew words all over a page when the mood hits. Don't expect anything profound or even coherent.