Nerdy Adventures: 3 November 2013

First off, my adventures in Crochet this week...

I know it's late but,

Pretty much everything I have crocheted this week has been Halloween related. We had a Halloween raffle at work and I was asked to crochet something to make it Halloween themed. I made another tiny ghost using A Morning Cup of Jo's adorable pattern. I finished it in no time at all and thought that I should make something else as well. I decided on a pumpkin because it seemed like the easiest thing to make quickly. After a quick Google image search I found that there were loads of pumpkin designs out there. Lots of them appeared to be created by crocheting a ball and using a long tail of yarn pulled through the centre to create segments. The pumpkin turned out to be another really fast project. With the addition of a felt face, my pumpkin became a perfect Halloween ornament. I'm pretty impressed with it! The ghost and pumpkin in the picture aren't actually the ones I made for the raffle, I gave them away before I could take any pictures! To make up for it, I crocheted another pumpkin yesterday. This time I took LOTS of pictures.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to create the pumpkin shape.

The pattern is very customisable. You could use a crochet ball of any size or proportion. This one starts with six stitches, increases up to four stitches between every increase and has six rows of single crochet before decreasing back down to six stitches. The stalk is made by picking up a stitch in the centre between each segment. The stalk on my pumpkin has six stitches and is crocheted three rounds high.

I want to acknowledge that this design is heavily inspired by other pumpkins I found online. Even though I didn't specifically use these patterns the pumpkins from hip2thrift and Little Things Blogged where definitely inspiration - both are free patterns too if you'd like to make your own! Also these ones from Mohustore, which are so sweet and adorable, like all her designs!

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My gaming adventures this week have been fairly scattered. I spent a lot of my week nights working on Halloween crochet and going out for dinner (which is actually rare for me on a week night, but this week I went twice!). Despite not having a huge amount of time for gaming I did start three new games. The first was Costume Quest. I had heard of this last year but I didn't have a chance to play it (probably because it was only on Xbox live and PC at the time). It was on sale on the app store for Halloween and I couldn't resist. The game is a cute little RPG about a brother and sister who go trick or treating and find that their night is ruined by monsters who are trying to steal all the candy. It sounds pretty childish, but it's cute and funny and the game's heroes turn into giant manifestations of their costumes when they go into turn based battles. I played the game for an hour or so on Halloween and it felt like exactly the right thing to do. At some point I'll find some time to finish it.

The next game I started playing is also by the developers behind Costume Quest - Double Fine Productions. It's called Middle Manager of Justice! and its available for free in the app store and on Android. This one is definitely worth checking out. It's hilarious (especially if you have worked in any kind of bureaucratic setting before) and is pretty good for a free to play game. The basic idea is to hire heroes, train them and send them off to battle bad guys, all the while making sure that your heroes stay motivated and the citizens under your protection are happy. I'll definitely be going back to this one when I have the time. One tip for new players: make sure you buy a rec room as soon as possible or you will have a lot of sad heroes on your hands!

Finally I have one more game to discuss; a point and click adventure called Lilly Looking Through. This one was on sale on Steam. I watched the trailer and was charmed by the beautiful animations and art style. The game has a demo, which I immediately downloaded. It's a standard point and click adventure about a small girl who is trying to rescue her friend; nothing new there. The puzzles are based around a mechanic of moving from past to present by putting on a pair of magic goggles. I don't feel like this mechanic is new either, but it is a nice touch in this game. The real strong point are the charming animations. Real care and attention has been put into all of Lilly's movements and gestures as she interacts with her environment. It's just gorgeous. I've only progressed through the first six puzzle scenes but I'm enjoying it so far though. I definitely want to see Lilly through to the end of her adventure.  

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Despite all the gaming and crocheting I still found time for reading Dark Currents: Book One of the Agents of Hel series by Jacqueline Carey. I read this book for an online book club that I follow. I don't want to say the name of it because it's kind of rude and I worry that all the amigurumi on my blog would attract young readers and this is definitely an adults' book club. For age appropriate fans of fantasy romance books however, this book club is definitely worth your time!! It's hosted by Felicia Day (known for the Guild and her YouTube channel Geek and Sundry). The group has a panel discussion about a new book each month and posts it on YouTube. There are also forums on Good Reads to discuss the books.

Dark Currents is one of the better books that the club has read (in my opinion at least!). It's an urban fantasy murder mystery where the central character is a half-demon liaison to the Norse goddess Hel. The book strongly reminded me of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which I've read about six or seven of before I became bored with them. It's the same kind of idea; supernatural creatures coexisting with humans in a contemporary setting, multiple potential love interests... I prefer Jaqueline Carey's writing style however. I really enjoyed Dark Currents and will probably keep going with the series at some point.

That's it for this week. I'm not sure how full next week's post will be because Nanowrimo is in full swing! I've kept up with my word count so far, fingers crossed that I don't start slacking off!

Have a good week.
-Em.