D&D Dice Bags

D&D, or Dungeons and Dragons, is a game that I got into completely by accident. A little group of the Physicists have been playing it for a while, and I went along with a friend because she liked a boy there and didn't want to go on her own. It took a little getting used to, but I loved it.

My first campaign is finished now, and I had an awful lot of fun with Nini the goliath barbarian. Imagine a huge ginger woman who thinks she's only ten because she only has ten fingers to count on. Nini believed she was raised by rabbits, but it turned out they were just small fur-cloaked people that raised her after her barbarian village was ransacked. It was a lot of fun sending her on a voyage of self-discovery from which she learned very little. (Good at swinging a great-axe though!)

Campaign number two is going to start soon, where I will be playing as Ib Layzafeyse, a goblin who calls herself a laser monk. To be honest I just wanted to be able to use the kung fu/tai chi motto -"You're f*cking with my chi."

Instead of borrowing dice from the DM (dungeon master), I decided to buy my own. And all dice need a dice bag!

Dragon egg dice bags! As always it's a free pattern on Ravelry. The one on the right I made first, and it's so big I can fit my fist in it. I did 3 rows of 8 crocodile scales following the pattern, two rows of 7, two rows of 6, then one row of 5. I did a row of hdc at the top. 

Let me tell you how to reduce by one scale neatly:

The usual v-stitch pattern is this: 

*(dc, ch 1, dc) in next st, skip 2 st*

To reduce a row by one scale: 

*(dc, ch 1, dc) in next st, skip 2 st, (dc, ch 1, dc) in next st, skip 3 st*

To reduce a row by two scales:

*(dc, ch 1, dc) in next st, skip 3 st*

Then just sl st to the first v-stitch as before and carry on with the scales like usual.

The first one I made I'm calling my prototype. I next made a smaller one which I much prefer (otherwise I'll be tempted to buy enough dice to fill it!) by discounting step 4 in the bottom. At the end of this one I did *dc, dc, skip 1 st* around the top and then threaded my string through the skipped spaces, which makes it look a bit more eggy when it's closed.

I hope my little modifications are clear enough. The big scaly bag I'm going to give to 'girl who fancied boy' to foster a new character alliance, although Miss Layzafeyse does not play well with others.

I'm excited for my dice to arrive! Expect more photos when they do! (They're so prettyyyyy.)

Limpet x

Luna the Crochet Dragon

Just wanted to share my latest project with you. I got commissioned for the first time! My best friend Tanya from secondary school asked me to make her a purple dragon. I sent her some photos of crochet dragons and she chose this one:

Luna the dragon in her new home.

I took a long-awaited trip to London to visit her and we had a really fun weekend. It was filled with calisthenics, old chick-flicks, food, and a Captain Morgan's themed night out where we got loads of freebies. Tanya was the envy of her whole student flat and Luna got lots of love and cuddles; she's practically a house pet.

Confession time: I thought it'd be really easy to put Luna together on the train up there but it ended up being quite an involved operation with lots of sewing. So after 4 hours of bumpy public transport her tail wasn't finished and she had no eyes! Tanya didn't mind me finishing her off though and was fascinated by the whole process. I'm really proud of Luna and a little sad to give her away.

The pattern can be found here on Ravelry. It's in Spanish but is easy to follow with Google translate. For more dragon-ness I added some small wings from the crochet cthulhu pattern here where they have a nice photo tutorial.

This is the second time I've finished my crochet at the last minute, but I'll try not to make a habit of it. Also, just look at Luna's eyes, she's so cute!

Limpet x

Baby Octopus Crochet

On Sunday I went to the christening of my boyfriend's cousin's baby (1st cousin once removed?) and it was the first christening I've ever been to. I didn't even have one myself and my boyfriend had a naming ceremony instead because his parents are hippies. It was the first time I'd met this branch of the family and I can now proudly say I've met every single one of them. Boyfriend family challenge = complete!

Anyway, I wanted to make a good first impression so I thought I'd make a baby toy with my new-fangled crochet skills. I started it on Thursday and finished on Saturday morning as we were driving up in the car (I had to buy some black wool from ASDA on the way for the eyes.) Here he is, sitting on my knee in the car:

Fiona's Needle Book

Introducing: the very first gift that I made with my sewing machine!

My friend Fiona lent me her sewing kit ages ago so I could use her embroidery threads for some cross stitching. As a thank you I made her this needle book, as she didn't have anything to organise hers.

Butterfly Box

First, I want to apologise for this Sunday post not being a Friday post. I tried my best but I was away from home and had bought the wrong camera cable with me. I don't know where this other cable came from, but it was one of those awful ones that are only for one thing and yet you have dozens of them. All the pictures were right there waiting but I couldn't get to them!

In absence of the photos for what I wanted to write about, and in keeping with it being Mother's Day recently, here's the birthday present that I gave my mum last year. It's a 15cm wooden cube with a photo on each face, except I did a little cross stitch for the lid.

A Christmas Card in February

I went 'home-home' last week to visit my mum and brother, seeing as I had a bit of free time. I wouldn't say I regretted it, but it became apparent very quickly to me that I've outgrown the house of my parents. There was just something weird about it, I felt out of place. Maybe more on that in a later blog post, though.

Unbeknownst to me, we'd been booked in for dinner with the grandparents I haven't seen in a few years. My mum asked if I'd got them a Christmas card or present and said that she hadn't either so I'd have to make one. Oh and by the way we're leaving in an hour so I'll have to make it quick. Surely it reaches a point (like February) when you can just cut your losses and forget about Christmas cards, but she was quite insistent.

I made myself a mug of tea, grumbled to myself a bit, put on the tv, and sat down with all the craft supplies the house could offer. I miss my alphabet stamps already. *sad face*

Luckily for me, I found this pair of crimping scissors and set of rubber stamps in the cupboard that I never knew we had. I have no idea where they came from, and they needed a good wash beforehand.

The ink pad was all dried up and I didn't have my craft supplies with me so I experimented with using felt tip pens instead. I found one that took longer than the others to dry which was perfect. I had to work quickly to cover and stamp the thing before the ink dried and went patchy but the poinsettia stamp looked really pretty like that, so I decided to use that one on my card.

Using some shiny gold paper as the main background, I made a really simple Christmas card. Using the snowflake stamp multiple times on some blue paper, and the poinsettia stamp on a bit of crimped ivory card, I layered them at slightly jaunty angles. Unfortunately the poinsettia stamp didn't come out as nicely as I wanted in the final version because I'd practised on a different type of paper. I also used the snowflake stamp again with a blue felt tip to make a matching envelope.

Also, these matching bookmarks! Made with the same materials as the card with the addition of a hole punch and some ribbon. They were starting to curl up quite badly so I sandwiched them between some heavy books as they dried. I know that home-made paper bookmarks are something you usually get little children to make and give to people, but I don't see why they can't be refined a little for a more mature audience. I was really out of ideas and time, too.

And there we have it! A 30-minute(ish) solution to a family argument. (With my mum, not my grandparents. They wouldn't have minded either way. It's sometimes just easier to give in to what people want, though.) The visit itself went surprisingly well, it was nice to catch up. My grandma also makes amazing roast potatoes, and that made everything worth it.

Merry February!

L

"Alice: Madness Returns" Cross-Stitch

I will start by saying that every time I see this hanging on my boyfriend's wall I feel immensely satisfied. It's the first big cross-stitch project that I've finished and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. 

It's an A4 piece of Alice Liddell and the Cheshire cat from American McGee's game "Alice: Madness Returns" and I used a free program called cstitch to get the pattern. The backstitches, border, and text are all made up (it's surprisingly difficult to find a pattern for suits of cards.) The whole thing took about a month to do in the odd hours of me being alone and it was finished just in time to give away for Christmas (as in, I think I wrapped it up on the 24th.) The boyfriend loves this game and actually has a tattoo of Chesh so I think I did good. Here's a huge picture of it:

I framed it before giving it away, of course; I'm not some kind of monster.

Some close-ups of Chesh, the writing, and the backstitches used for Alice's face:

The text reads "How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate that your condition is not permanent." Because Chesh is pretty bad-ass.

However, the only problem is... what if I have to match this level of effort every time?

Sew long, suckers.
L