stitching, gaming, relaxing
I took this week very easy in an attempt to stay healthy. lord_kjar had a sore throat for a couple of days, and I didn't want one, but would have been exposed to whatever triggered his. So I drank lots of echinacea tea and rested and had frequent hot showers, and managed to avoid most symptoms--I did get some sniffles accompanied by random sneezes on Friday, but they were gone by Saturday morning. This is good because we had company for a gaming day on Saturday. One of our local friends runs a mini gaming convention here in Luleå at not quite random intervals wherein everyone who wants to participate fills in a google docs spreadsheet with games they are willing to run, puts their names next to games offered that they want to play, and lists which days/times on the appointed weekend they are free to play. He then devises a schedule wherein everyone who wants to play plays in some games in all of the time slots they signed up for, possibly even the games they said they wanted to play (though I gather that he puts more effort into seeing that each game has the appropriate number of players than in matching everyone to their first choice games--since most gamers will be happy with most games, even if some sound more fun than others).
Life being busy lord_kjar and I only signed up for the shifts for Saturday day time and Saturday evening this time, which is good because it gave us Friday evening to finish recovering from the cold, do some grocery shopping, and tidy up the house a bit. Saturday during the day we ran a session of the While the World Ends game (he blogged about the last time we did this), and in the evening we participated in a game of "Squire's Oath", a rules-light fantasy role playing game set in a world wherein young people come to the castle to start their training as a squire--a path that could ultimately lead them to being knights, or harpers, or healers, or any number of other careers. Having done most of my gaming in games like D&D which are really rules-heavy (and having relied on friends who had the rules books memorized) these sorts of games are quite a contrast.
I like the much easier playing style, and the fact that when things happen it takes no longer than it does to tell about it for it to happen (even when dice are involved), rather than a 15 second battle lasting 45 minutes. However, being a reader, not a writer, I am not yet completely comfortable with the fact that *I* have to make stuff up about what we discover. I would rather say "I look for tracks", and be told what I find, rather than saying "I look for tracks, and I notice..." Perhaps because life is more like the former--I decide what to look at, and what to do with the information I find, but I don't get to decide what is actually present in the world to see.
The other players, clearly, are not inhibited by the "make stuff up" part, and they gleefully added in any number of plot twists that I could have happily lived with out, as well as others that I was delighted to hear about. But then, the difficult to experience plot twists are what make it an adventure, aren't they?
Today we slept in (he much longer than I), and this afternoon we are expecting a visit from a friend who will go to Folk Dance with us in the evening.
In other news, I finally took photos of the Bronze Age technique of the overcast blanket stitch edging that I have been experimenting with (and like so much). I like this technique much better than plain blanket stitch--plain blanket stitch tends to have issues snuggling up to the edge of the fabric and staying there (in my experience), which are solved by winding another thread around the blanket stitch. When I first read of this technique on figure 27 of this page I assumed that it was done in two steps, first the blanket stitch, then doing the overcast stitch with a new thread on the needle. However, when I sat down to do it I decided to start the stitch in the middle of the thread, with one half of the length set aside for the overcast stitch, and the other for the blanket stitch. By wrapping the second thread around the first as I went I was able to do both stitches at once, using only one needle, and never needing to switch the needle to the overcast thread at all.
I like this ever so much better than plain blanket stitch, and doing that extra twist does not really slow down the process at all. I did this using a thin single ply wool yarn that is easy to twist a new length onto (which is good as one needs to use fairly short lengths while stitching because otherwise it bunches up and breaks), so now it looks like I did the whole length of the project with a single continuous thread. Once I work my way around to the beginning I will loop the last stitch through the start and then tie it off--so there will be only ONE lose end for the whole project to weave back through the stitches.
Life being busy lord_kjar and I only signed up for the shifts for Saturday day time and Saturday evening this time, which is good because it gave us Friday evening to finish recovering from the cold, do some grocery shopping, and tidy up the house a bit. Saturday during the day we ran a session of the While the World Ends game (he blogged about the last time we did this), and in the evening we participated in a game of "Squire's Oath", a rules-light fantasy role playing game set in a world wherein young people come to the castle to start their training as a squire--a path that could ultimately lead them to being knights, or harpers, or healers, or any number of other careers. Having done most of my gaming in games like D&D which are really rules-heavy (and having relied on friends who had the rules books memorized) these sorts of games are quite a contrast.
I like the much easier playing style, and the fact that when things happen it takes no longer than it does to tell about it for it to happen (even when dice are involved), rather than a 15 second battle lasting 45 minutes. However, being a reader, not a writer, I am not yet completely comfortable with the fact that *I* have to make stuff up about what we discover. I would rather say "I look for tracks", and be told what I find, rather than saying "I look for tracks, and I notice..." Perhaps because life is more like the former--I decide what to look at, and what to do with the information I find, but I don't get to decide what is actually present in the world to see.
The other players, clearly, are not inhibited by the "make stuff up" part, and they gleefully added in any number of plot twists that I could have happily lived with out, as well as others that I was delighted to hear about. But then, the difficult to experience plot twists are what make it an adventure, aren't they?
Today we slept in (he much longer than I), and this afternoon we are expecting a visit from a friend who will go to Folk Dance with us in the evening.
In other news, I finally took photos of the Bronze Age technique of the overcast blanket stitch edging that I have been experimenting with (and like so much). I like this technique much better than plain blanket stitch--plain blanket stitch tends to have issues snuggling up to the edge of the fabric and staying there (in my experience), which are solved by winding another thread around the blanket stitch. When I first read of this technique on figure 27 of this page I assumed that it was done in two steps, first the blanket stitch, then doing the overcast stitch with a new thread on the needle. However, when I sat down to do it I decided to start the stitch in the middle of the thread, with one half of the length set aside for the overcast stitch, and the other for the blanket stitch. By wrapping the second thread around the first as I went I was able to do both stitches at once, using only one needle, and never needing to switch the needle to the overcast thread at all.
I like this ever so much better than plain blanket stitch, and doing that extra twist does not really slow down the process at all. I did this using a thin single ply wool yarn that is easy to twist a new length onto (which is good as one needs to use fairly short lengths while stitching because otherwise it bunches up and breaks), so now it looks like I did the whole length of the project with a single continuous thread. Once I work my way around to the beginning I will loop the last stitch through the start and then tie it off--so there will be only ONE lose end for the whole project to weave back through the stitches.