Violet Fun Fur Scarf Part 2

As predicted, I was not able to finish the Violet Fun Fur scarf today. I have gotten a good start on it though. I think that I've doubled the length of the scarf from yesterday.

Violet Fun Fur Scarf

I started working on a Violet Fun Fur scarf yesterday. Alas I am still not finished with it today. I've only finished about a foot and don't think that I will be done with it by tomorrow either. I am hoping that it will be complete by the end of this week.

Fun Fur Scarf 13

I finished making an Indigo Fun Fur scarf yesterday. Indigo is a "print", I don't know why. Fun Fur prints have less yarn per skein. Instead of the typical 1.75 oz, Fun Fur print yarns only have 1.5 oz per skein. I don't know why Indigo is a print. It's a pretty Indigo color that is less blue and more indigo than Sapphire with flecks/specks of white in it.

Fun Fur Scarf 12

I finished making a Sapphire colored Fun Fur scarf today. Sapphire is a little darker than royal blue.

Fun Fur Scarf 11

I finished a red Fun Fur scarf yesterday.

Matrix Belt

I made a pink and black belt using Matrix today. It has long fringes hanging down off of the ends. The fringes are 36 inches long.

Matrix Yarn

I tried using Matrix yarn for the first time today. I had high hopes for it since it was on sale for $1 a skein at Michaels. There was a decent looking belt pattern on the label that I was hoping to be able to make. The picture on the lable was rather small so I was unable to actually see the whole belt itself, but from what I could see of the belt, it looked rather decent. I really couldn't resist the fact that the yarn was on sale for $1 even though it is normally 5.99 or 4.99.

I was very disappointed with the yarn. It is extremely hard to work with. It is similar to 2 pieces of thread with some chunks of other color sandwiched between at even intervals. The color that I had bought was pink. I now see why the yarn was on sale. Not only is it difficult to work with, the end result isn't even pretty. Good thing I had only bought two skeins. I can't crochet with this yarn either since the yarn is so thin that I can't see where my stitches are.

Fun Fur Scarf 10

I finished a pale pink Fun Fur scarf yesterday.

Fun Fur Scarf 9

I finished a red Fun Fur scarf yesterday.

Fun Fur Scarf 8

I finished knitting a Fun Fur scarf on Sunday. It was a varigated color called Citrus, which is a combination of yellow, blue and green.

Zing Scarf 2

I finished knitting another pink Zing scarf today.

Red Heart scarf

I made a scarf on the 12th. Mom asked me to make a scarf for my great aunt's 90th bday party. Of course she didn't tell me till Thursday night (I think. It was definitely last minute). I then had to find some yarn to use. She wanted "dark colors". I found some Red Heart varigated yarn called "Blueberry". It contains blue, purple and white. It is actually quite pretty. After I finished crocheting it, I realized that a diamond pattern in white could be seen on the scarf. I finished the scarf in one day. I didn't use the whole skein of yarn to make it, which I usually try to do. I was just tired and didn't want to keep crocheting anymore. It was long enough anyway, a little shorter than I prefer, but not bad.

Cello Scarf 2

I made another Cello scarf today. It is a purple color. It is a little on the short side. There was less yardage on Cello skeins than in Fun Fur, even the varigated skeins of Fun Fur.

Cello Scarf

I just finished knitting an off white Cello scarf. Cello is similar to Fun Fur, except that the strands coming off of it are longer. Also, there is less yardage for the same weight of yarn. Cello is made by Jo-Ann. I do not like Cello. For whatever reason, the strands coming off the scarf do not "stick out" as is typical with a Fun Fur scarf. I think this is because the strands sticking off the yarn are too long, thus when I knit the stitches, the yarn strands stick in the stitchwork done. As a result, there is not much "fur" coming off of the scarf. The scarf took about 3-3.5 hours to make.

Zing Scarf

I finished making a pink Zing scarf on the 11th. Zing is similar to Fun Fur, except the yarn is a little stiffer, it has sparkles/glitter in it and has more yardage per skein. I believe there is ~77 yds per 1.75 oz skein, whereas Fun Fur has ~ 64 yds per 1.75 oz skein.

Fun Fur Scarf 7

I finished knitting a Fun Fur scarf yesterday. The color was called Peacock, which is kind of a light teal/green-blue color.

Fun Fur Scarf 6

I finished knitting a Raspberry colored Fun Fur scarf on the 10th.

There Goes my Yarn Diet

I was supposed to be on a yarn diet. I was doing so well too. I mean I've finished 5 scarves already and I bought at most 2 skeins of yarn so far. I don't actually remember buying any, but I'm sure I did.

Today, I went to Michaels to try to buy some more cookie sheets. They ran out of cookie sheets. I was able to get a Christmas mug (with penguins on it) for 30 cents. Unfortunately, they also had a sale on all types of yarn. Many of the "expensive" yarns were $2. I am therefore sad to admit that I bought 8 skeins of yarn. Now, hopefully I will be able to use up 8 skeins of yarn in one week. Otherwise, my diet will have failed.

I bought 3 skeins of Zing in pink. I really like Zing since it is sparkly. I also bought 2 skeins of Zing in blue. They only had blue and pink left. I also bought one skein of Matrix. It's a ribbon yarn and I've never used it before. There was a pattern for a belt on it, so I thought that I could try it out. I also bought a skein of Cha Cha in red/purple and one skein of Cha Cha in purple/yellow/green.

Amulet of Samarkand

I finished reading The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud yesterday. It is the first book in the Bartimaeus trilogy. Although it was an interesting book, it was definitely a kid's book. The writing style was simple. The storyline was suspenseful, though not extremely so. Overall I'd have to say that it was a decent book. I don't regret reading it, but I did not enjoy it as much as other books I have read. I will, however, probably read the other 2 books in the series.

Fun Fur Scarf 5

I just finished making another knit Fun Fur scarf. This one is Black.

Fun Fur Scarf 4

I just finished another Fun Fur scarf. The color of this scarf is "Fiji". It's a magenta, white and light indigo colored scarf.

Cha Cha Scarf

I finished a scarf made from Cha Cha yarn today. I started it yesterday or the day before. Cha Cha is similar to Fun Fur, but is more "fuzzy", and therefore the yarn "sticks together" more and is flatter.

Fun Fur Scarf 3

I finished my third Fun Fur scarf of the year. This time the color was Ivory. This is a pretty, light shade of cream. There is a similar color called Champagne which is a darker shade of cream and is more yellow. Personally, I think that Ivory is much prettier than Champagne. I started the scarf yesterday and finished it today. I doubt that I'll be able to finish another scarf tonight, but perhaps I will be able to finish another one by tomorrow.

Fancy Fur

Michaels' has a sale on Fancy Fur. The yarn is originally priced at 5.99 and is on sale for $1. This means that it is 83 1/3% off. Sounds like a great sale, right? I went to Michaels today (the sale started Sunday) and there was absolutely no Fancy Fur left. Fancy Fur is Fun Fur with a strand of another type of yarn going through it. I don't remember what the other strand looks like or what it is made of. I really don't think that Fancy Fur is THAT popular that it would be entirely sold out. Admittedly, it was an extremely good deal. I'm just sad that I wasn't able to get any yarn. I thought about going to Michaels on Sunday, the first day of the sale but I did not want to go to Michaels two times in one week (since I'd probably buy double the amount of yarn). Had I known that Michaels would be out of Fancy Fur yarn, I would definitely have gone on Sunday to purchase some. I guess it's better that they did run out of yarn. This helps me with my "yarn diet".

Baby Sweater

I finished another baby sweater yesterday. The pattern is so quick and easy to make. It's also really cute. This is the 3rd (I think) time I've made this sweater using the pattern. The first time I made the sweater, I didn't really understand the pattern and as a result I miscounted the number of stitches I was supposed to do. Therefore, the sweater was much WIDER and it was supposed to be. As a result, it's going to have to go to a baby who is quite wide. I don't have a picture of it since I already gave it away.

This baby sweater was made using Baby Soft yarn with a varigated yarn called "Her Jean". "Her Jean" is a mixture of green, pink and blue/purple. Unfortunately, this yarn has a dye lot and the yarn color can vary widely depending on the dye lot. I had a small amount of a "dark" dye lot, half a skein of another dye lot and a full skein of another dye lot. As a result, the sweater is 3 different "shades" of Her Jean. I don't really think it's that noticeable, though.

Darth Bane

I finished reading Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn today. It was a great book and I really enjoyed reading it. I've never read any books by this author before, but I'd definitely read another one of his books.

This book is part of the Star Wars "series". It's probably more appropriate to call it the Star Wars "universe" since the setting for the book is "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". I've read other books that take place in the Star Wars universe and have really enjoyed some, while being very disappointed in others. The reason I would not call these books a series is because a series is usually written in some type of order and by the same author. These books are written by a number of different authors. These authors must read each other's books because the stories do not conflict, even though they often use the same characters or are continuations of each other.

I was rather disappointed in the last Star Wars book I read, Betrayal:Legacy of the Force by Aaron Allston. The writing and the storyline were OK. I've read Allston's other books set in the Star Wars universe and thoroughly enjoyed them. He is a great writer and the other books contained a good deal of humor. Betrayal barely held my attention. I can't point out any reason why. The book wasn't poorly written, it just wasn't as good as his other books.

Because of my disappointment from reading Betrayal, I was reluctant to read Darth Bane. First off, it is set in the Sith era, so I would not be familiar with any of the characters. Most of the other books focus on the Jedi or other "good characters". This book showed why the Sith, the "bad characters", are the way they are and made them more human. I'm glad that I read Darth Bane, though. It was a great book that held my attention the whole way through. All though it was not an extremely suspenseful novel, it was definitely a page turner.

I was, however, disappointed by the ending. I felt that Karpyshyn ran out of ideas and felt that the book had to end, so he pulled an ending out of the air. The ending could definitely have been improved.

Scarves

I'm off to a good start this year crafting-wise. I've already made 2 scarves. True, they were Fun Fur scarves which are pretty easy and quick to make, but still.

This year I'm going to try to "lose yarn". This is similar to other people trying to lose weight. The trick to that is for caloric intake < caloric output. I figure that if I can use up more yarn than I buy, then next year, I should have less yarn than I started out with this year.

This SOUNDS easy. All I have to do is just not buy any more yarn. This is harder than it sounds, since craft stores keep sending me 40% or 50% off coupons and/or having REALLY good sales on yarn. I mean if a yarn normally costs $5.99, but this week the yarn is on sale for $1, that's just too good of a sale to pass up. I mean that's over 80% off!

The first scarf has the color "Confetti". It actually looks better in real life than in the picture. The second scarf is white.

WOW

I played World of Warcraft for the first time yesterday. I have to admit that it's an addicting game. That said, I also have to say that I was disappointed by it.

Although the graphics were well done, I didn't think the game controls were very intuitive, but that was probably because there was something wrong with the settings. In order to move in the game, I had to use the arrow keys. Normally, I use a mouse, click some place and my character runs to that spot. Also, in order to pick up items, one has to right click. In all the other Blizzard games I've played, I simply just left click.

Another thing is that I really don't know how to play. Obviously there are some items which I can not equip because I do not have a high enough level. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get to that "level". It isn't just a matter of gaining experience and leveling up. I don't know how to "level up" my character so that I can equip better items.

I also don't know what half the items that drop are for, besides selling for gold. I also don't know what use is gold in the game. In other games, one buys stuff. In this game, I didn't really see any good items to buy that didn't require those silver tokens.

I do like the idea that you can use these "silver tokens" in order to "purchase" spells and other things. You can gain these silver tokens by doing quests or leveling up.

Another thing that drives me nuts is that I don't have a map. I don't know if there is simply no built in map and most of the players have been playing so long that they've just memorized everything or if I simply don't know how to turn on the map feature. As a result, I never know where I'm going.

Maps are especially important when I die. I've never been that good at computer games. My rpg characters are constantly dying. In Diablo II, if your character dies, you have the option of going to get your body, or simply exiting and restarting the game. If you restart the game, your character's body can be found in town. You could potentially lose items, but at least you don't have to run all the way back to your body.

While I'm on the subject of dying, I also find the fact that there are no healing potions annoying. Like I said above, I'm not that great of a player and have come to rely on healing potions to keep me alive. In this game, there is "food" which will heal you, but you have to be sitting down to eat it. That means that you can't just heal yourself in battle. Actually, you might be able to heal yourself in battle. There is a healing spell. In order to use the healing spell, however, you have to click on the spell and then click on yourself. When I'm in the middle of a battle, I'm spend most of my time trying to kill the enemy. It's hard to try and do that and then be able to switch over and heal yourself in the middle of the battle. It just takes skills that I just don't have.

I think my problem is that I just don't understand most of the controls in the game, and how they work. I think that I would enjoy the game much more if I read the guides on the website or sat down with a hardcore WOW fan who can explain how the game works. All that said, I did enjoy the game and played for hours without realizing how much time had passed. If it hadn't been so late, I would have probably played much longer.

I AM still waiting for Blizzard to come out with Diablo III, but who knows if/when they will ever come out with that.

Day One

I've always wanted to write a diary or journal, but I keep forgetting to write more than one entry in one every couple years. Since today is New Year's day, I decided that I want to start a blog to keep track of things that I've been doing. We shall see if I remember to actually write another post before the year ends.