Minecrack

My BIL purchased a game on the xBox 360 called Minecraft. It came out first for the computer, and I watched a few videos about it online. It looked incredibly boring. Your character pops into a world with nothing on him, and you have no tutorial that tells you what to do (a bit like a metaphor for life I suppose).

DH convinced me to play it with him, and after my initial "this is stupid" reaction,  I played by myself. And oh my goodness is it addicting!

I spent the first ten minutes hacking away at dirt and trees, shoving into my (I'm assuming) pants pocket on the way. Then I accidentally pulled open the "crafting" menus and found out that I could turn my blocks of wood into planks, which could become a crafting table. Since I had nothing else planned with the wood, aside from maybe stacking it attractively in a corner,  I figured I might as well.

With a crafting table placed in the middle of the woods, I walked around to explore. I came across a bunch of cows, pigs, and sheep, and hacked away at them with a block of dirt until they died. Hey, I needed to eat! Then it became dark and I came across a funny looking green creature. I thought that maybe it was a strange mythical animal, and approached to whack it with my dirt....and was promptly blown up...and lost all my dirt and wood. =.=

So I started again. And was killed by a zombie.
So I started again. And was killed by a spider.
So I started again. And this time I dug myself a little hole in the ground and sat there as soon as the sun went down. I was not going to die again!

All this happened a week ago.
Since then I have made myself weapons and armor, I have figured out how to mine for iron and diamonds. I have even made myself a cozy little house with a basement right next to my old hidey hole. Which was blown up because I forgot to close the door and a darn green thing followed me down. >.>

Minecraft, I have learned is a lot like Legos. Only it's on the xBox. You're given a world of materials that you can shape into anything you want! But in order to really enjoy the game you need a project. You need to want to make something otherwise you'll get bored after a while. The only thing holding you back is your own imagination....or exploding green things...and zombie...and spiders.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to playing. I left cow in charge of the house, and I'm sure that he and sheep are going to tear the place apart...and that desert to the left really needs a gigantic obsidian castle in the middle.

Oh come on!

While I sat in the school library today, arguing with a school laptop, I glanced up and saw a girl sitting across the way, moving her hands in a very familiar rhythm. Even though her backpack was in the way (out of which hung a bright pink strand of yarn), and she was sitting at an angle to me, it was easy to see that she was making a hooking motion with her right hand. In her lap was a mass of pink and I got so excited to see someone else doing something crafty in public that I almost got up to talk to her.

And then she lifted up her left hand, presumably to untangle herself from the pink. And in her left hand she held a loom....

COME ON!! D=<

Suffice it to say I hunkered down even more on the couch and didn't move. Instead I argued with the dumb laptop a little more and studiously ignored the loom of lies. By now, you lot probably know my thoughts on looms and the lies it produces. If you don't know, go read this entry. I've ranted about looms before.

*grumbles* Looms....knitting....pah!

Thoughts of a designer

The ground was covered in frost, crunching softly underfoot. Frozen puddles blended in with the walkways, making them hard to see and dangerous. The morning air bit at fingers and noses; breath came out in puffs. The coffee in my cup had been brewed a while ago. The splash of half and half the barista had added wasn't enough to mask the bitter taste of coffee left standing too long. But at eight in the morning it was the best I could do on campus grounds.
Swirls of steam curled out of the cup as I carefully popped off the top. And then, I saw it...

GLOVES! Oh my god I need to make some gloves with swirled designs all over it. Like steam rising off the cuff or something. And then I plopped the top back on and pranced off to class.

And that is pretty much how my brain works most of the time. Especially when I think about designing something new, or when I decide I want to try a pretty new pattern. My mind is kind of all over the place like that.
In other news I'll hopefully publish a new pattern in the next couple of days or so. My testers are taking entirely too long in my opinion, so I might just publish it without waiting for the last three people to finally get it together. I suppose I shouldn't be too miffed since they are doing this for free, but for goodness sake, even with Holidays it should not take someone over a month to knit a pair of mittens or fingerless mitts. Ridiculous...

Imma be a teacher!

I went on a mini job hunt the other day, stopping by all the local businesses I frequent to see if they were needing any help. So far nothing. Then again I shouldn't have expected any different since the holidays just wrapped up, so a lot of places are letting their seasonal employees go. But when I stopped by my LYS (local yarn shop) I was told that she does need some instructors. So after a lot of thought I decided to give it a go; if it doesn't work out I can always just tell the owner that I'm not cut out for instructing people.

I'm getting stuff together to teach a color work class, and I'm getting excited and nervous all at the same time. There is no date set yet, and I pretty much get to decide what day anyways, since the owner told me to get back to her with what time would work best for me. But while I'm browsing through patterns I can't help but wonder what people would want to practice with. My first color work project was a pair of Totoro mitten for my little sister. Mittens...so I'm not exactly the best person to come to when it comes to simple projects. But I'll figure it out and hopefully come up with something interesting. I can always practice on my sister-in-law I'm sure...she knows the basics, how hard can it be to teach her how to knit with two color at the same time?

No-Years Resolutions

Every first of the year I make resolutions; work out more, eat healthier, drink less, make more friends (I hate people so that usually doesn't pan out), be an overall better person.
This year I didn't. I did not make a single resolution. I never keep them anyways, so why the hell bother? And so far, I'm doing better at my no-years resolutions then I do any other year.

For example, today was the third day that I struck up conversations with total strangers. Now if you know me, you'd know that I hate talking to strangers. Maybe it's a combination of being told "don't talk to stranger" when I was little, and classmates teasing me for my accent when I first came to America (children can be incredibly cruel) that has deterred me from taking to people. But so far, I have struck up conversations on three separate occasions, with three separate people. Mom even asked "what's wrong with you?" today when I proudly announced I talked with someone for nearly 10 minutes in line. Lines are amazing places to talk to people.

School is going...well? I feel like I haven't learned anything yet,. Then again it's only been three days. I should probably give it a little more time, huh? OH! I did learn something actually; I now (sorta) know what all the stuff in a legal citation means. Like when they have the case name and then a bunch of numbers and abbreviations. Yay for learning. =3

Bug has been getting hardly any use out of her. I spun up some very pretty roving that BIL got me for Christmas (well, I picked it and ordered it, he paid for it) but had to stop because I only have 1 bobbin left and I need it to ply together some Targhee I'm working on. That should be my hint to buy more bobbins I s'pose.

Damn...you're all still here

So the world didn't end on the 21st. I wonder how many people crawled out of their underground bunkers on the 22nd only to realize that they are now in major debt. Poor bastards. My sister and I in the meantime spent the "end of the world" playing Skyrim; a ridiculously addictive fantasy video game where you have special powers that let you absorb the souls of dragons.What I especially like about the game is that while there is a central story line that you follow, you can always tell people to f- right off, walk in the other direction, and do side quest for the next week that have absolutely nothing to do with the main story. It's great. So that is how my little sister and I would have perished if the world would have ended; fighting video game dragons.
Look on the bright side, with all the end of the world dooms day prophesies that haven't passed we can all turn to our children and grandchildren one day and go "You know...I survived the end of the world..TWICE!" They'll either think we are the coolest people in the whole WORLD (only to then realize that everyone "survived" and that we're not actually special and awesome), or they'll think we have gone completely mental. Either way I'll get to hit people with my cane when I'm older and no one will think anything of it 'cause I'm crazy grandma. It's a win-win situation.

School will start on the 2nd, which I am terribly excited for but dread at the same time. One of my online classes already has the "classroom" open, with an early assignment already posted. Being the go-getter that I am, I already did the assignment and leisurely read through the other responses. My conclusion thus far? half my classmates are idiots that need to revisit middle school grammar. =.= It simply never ceases to amaze me that people who have only used English for their whole lives still can't spell properly, or form a coherent sentence.
This of course makes me wonder if my traditional classes (sitting in a classroom) are going to be any different. Gods I hope so. Otherwise I might have to throw books at people. I simply don't have time or the patience for any more Courtney's in my studies....that reference will only mean something to like 5 people, who have heard the story of Courtney. And I'm sure those people don't even read this blog.

Oh! here's a random thought.
When you look at Mayan calendars, they were usually carved into stone, right?  Could you guys imagine being the poor soul that screws one of those calenders up right before he's done? Like one chisel stroke too far to the right? one notch too many in the tree looking thing? Would you tell someone? "Sorry High Priest, I sorta messed up our calender." Or do you just leave it and then move to a different city? start living off the jungle and never return...make friend with a jaguar...integrate yourself into their society and become King of the Jaguars...

I need to stop reading fantasy novels.

Le spinning update

Honestly though, it's more of Le-I'm-bored-and-need-something-to-do-while-the-alpaca-washes post. But that's a long title.

I got a surprise day off from work today, and spend the majority of it doing absolutely nothing. Didn't even bother calling my future college to check on something. Whoops. I can always do it tomorrow. Might make the husband take me up to the school to find some stuff out...after all, he's gotta be good for something.

I'm doing far more spinning these days then knitting. Mostly because I have nothing of interest to knit while I'm at work and Thing 2 is napping. And I'm getting kind of tired of knitting fingerless gloves and socks; imagine that. The stole I'm testing for mom is interesting and keeps me entertained for a while, but because it's lace in every row, and there are 205 stitches (or something like that), it's not a project I can put down easily.
But all the spinning is making me even better at what I'm doing. It's made me turn out things like the pictures below here. "Soot" was a "I wonder what it will look like if" kind of yarn. I held two chunks of roving together and drafted them out together. The beaded one was pretty much the same thing, with the added element of "how will it look with beads?". Mom liked it so much I'm making her her own skein; out of merino =D. There are a little over 950 beads in the yarn. No, I did not count, I used the tiny bit of math skills I actually picked up from the last class. Math...who'd have thought, right? The pink/orange/yellow yarn is what was left of the Targhee/Silk blend I purchased. I wanted to play around with some of Mom's dyes, and that is what I got. It was also an attempt at making longer color sections in a yarn...I'm hoping it actually turned out that way. But since I won't be knitting it up, and have in fact put it into my Etsy shop *cough*shamelessadvertisment*cough*, I can only wonder and hope that it did what I wanted it to.

'Desert Diamond' 2-ply
with cotton thread

'Soot' 3-ply fingering weight

'Sun set' 3-ply
fingering weight

I'm not sure what I'll work on next. I have enough roving from ParadiseFibers to keep me going for at least a little while. I might focus on knitting for a little bit too. Give Buggy a bit of a break...poor wheel. But I really wan to work on some of the alpaca fleece first. I've never spun alpaca before, so it should be interesting. Especially since it's still in lock form. =3 I also want to make the beaded yarn again in shades of blue with blue and clear beads. Maybe I'll flip a coin.