Saturday stuff

Today started out pretty slowly - Steve woke up early and cooked us both breakfast (scrambled eggs and bacon on top of English muffins, with yummy curried zucchini chutney and tabasco sauce on top), then headed out to meet Alex T for a bike ride. I took some photos this morning, of my latest yarn, and put it up at my new shop. Yeah, I’ve got a shop! I didn’t want to mention it earlier as I only had a few things posted, but now I feel that I have enough there to actually point people to it. I haven’t sold anything yet, but I’m of the opinion that if your stuff is of reasonable quality (and I do think it’s good) then you shouldn’t have too many difficulties in the long run.

I love the yarns I have posted; I’d keep them all myself, but there is something really fun about going through the steps of selling something you’ve made. Taking photos, figuring out length, wraps per inch, writing an interesting description, then posting it all up on etsy.

Here’s what I put up today:

I also spent a little bit of time on Photoshop, playing around with creating a little logo. I know Photoshop’s really old hat for most people, but I’m really only starting to discover it now. I guess I never had a use for it before (or never thought I did), while now I want to try out things like creating a banner for my shop, and all of a sudden I’m messing around with layers, backgrounds, fonts, etc. etc.

Here’s the logo I finally came up with. (Let me know what you think.)

I think it’s pretty damn cool.

I then spent the rest of the morning carding some of Galadriel’s fleece in my drum carder (that I bought cheap off Trademe). It’s so fine and black - it’s gorgeous. But hard to get out some of the bits of grass and things that have gathered in there too. The carding seems to get out a lot, but because the fleece is so fine, it makes picking stuff out nearly impossible. I did about five or six batts in all (takes quite a few layers passed through the drum carder to make those though, the teeth are quite short) and then got a sore back from leaning over it all.

Anyway, we’re off to Alex’s for dinner now. No doubt we’ll be talking about Vietnam (his brother works for the embassy there and Alex went over earlier in the year)… should be good. I should go get changed though, I’m covered in fluff and fleece… (fluff from the massive cleaning frenzy we both got into later this afternoon.)

Latest review is up

At NZGamer. This one’s on the new Superman game. It’s just a preview, nothing flash. Just wait for the one I’m doing for Rise of Legends. (Due Friday, so should be up on the web next week I guess.)

In other news, my exam for American Gothic is next Tuesday. I’ve taken Monday off work and am going to have a good long cram. Have been getting in some work last week and this week, so I’m feeling relatively prepared, but this weekend will be the real test. I’m hanging out for a bit of a break though. I feel like I need a holiday!

What else have I been doing lately? Well, it was Queen’s Birthday on Monday, so we had that day off. I spent it studying (of course!), making bread (focaccia and pita bread), playing Rise of Legends, and my new fave, Dreamfall. It’s such a sweet game. And totally engrossing. Beautiful scenery, interesting storyline, cool characters. I really rate it.

Happy Birthday, Discombobulated!

Today finds us celebrating my diary-x fifth anniversary. Unfortunately, diary-x is not functioning at present. Gee. I was planning to celebrate my “birthday” with a bit of fanfare and promises of sending out mix tapes or something similar to anyone who felt like getting in on the feelgoodness of it all. Unfortunately I suspect I won’t be hearing from any of those people I’ve been in touch with via my diary over the years. In any case, if you’re keen, flick me an email and I’ll see what I can do.

It’s actually turning out to be quite a quiet day here at work, for some reason, so I guess I’m at leisure to detail a bit of what I’ve been up to. The weekend was busy; Steve did the Karapoti (as I mentioned earlier), coming in at around 3 hours 45 mins. The official times aren’t up yet so I’m just going by my watch. It was a quite interesting day though. I managed to get in a bit of reading for class (American Gothic), and even did a bit of knitting in the car. We both flaked out pretty early in the evening (disturbingly I think I was more tired than Steve was).

Sunday kicked off with a bottle of French champagne, as we gathered our stamina for the day ahead. Yes, champagne, and leftover meatballs and tomato sauce (home made, of course) on toast. Hmm… better than it might sound. We then kicked into overdrive (read: we left the house) to gather the rest of the supplies for the BBQ we were having that afternoon. It was a bit of a farewell sort of do, with Steve’s Raumati mates all coming round to say goodbye. It was lovely, and quite touching - a beautiful evening, with everyone sitting in the hot sun, eating lemongrass prawns and fish curry, drinking wine and beer and watching the sun set out over Kapiti Island.