Rambling at large

[I haven't had any decent sleep in two days so excuse me if this is just a wee bit incoherent.]

1. I think my subconscious is trying to write my November NaNoWriMo novel for me. Except that I may have to consider moving my noveling month to August because November is a busy time at the office.

2. I have finally settled on a name for the yarn shop that I would really like to open in the future. It will be an easy-to-remember name and it will also be a tribute to my significant other, who is relentless in pushing me towards my dreams.

3. I really want to watch Toy Story 3, but am having a hard time figuring out when to go to the cinema since I only get weekends off, and weekends means tons of kids. I'm not exactly anti-kid but I do hate watching a movie and then some ill-behaved kid screams, cries, moves around, or kicks my chair.

4. The next movie I want to see, after Toy Story, is Inception. So looking forward to Nolan's next work. I really like his very cerebral stories, and this just promises to be the pinnacle of them, what with that kickass tagline: "Your mind is the scene of the crime" or something like that. Wonder if there are any parallels to be drawn with copyright and intellectual property.

5. Current food cravings include a proper spaghetti with meat sauce. Wonder if I could get my parents to cook some for me.

6. Dare I ask how much a Dollfie Dream, the Aoi model would cost? Base price is 39,900 JPY - that's about 21,000 PHP. No clothes or shipping/handling yet. Looks like I'd have to have a minimum of 30,000 PHP on hand - OUCH.

[Incoherence ends here, I hope!]

Inventory for a future little crafting shop

At lunch with the family for a combined birthday and Father's Day celebration yesterday, the topics bounced all over the spectrum of ideas, but the one I got stuck on was the idea of opening a little shop where I could sell crocheted stuff.

Here's the list of things I could sell:

1. Scarves. This is really my type of project; heaven knows I've made enough of them and talked about them, on this blog and elsewhere.

2. Watch caps.

So who got the one I was making last week? My dad. He was quite pleased and said he'd wear it to work, since some of the production houses he works with have super-cold offices.

3. All-purpose mini bags.

This particular specimen contains RPG dice, but the width is just right for most mobile phones. It's then a matter of sizing the bag accurately in order to completely accommodate units ranging from an iPhone to the wide range of Nokias to my mother's Samsung smartphone...for this, the possibilities really are endless.

Hmm. So now all I've got to do is get cracking and start making. Right then. I can haz crafty tiemz nao?

"The rest...is silence"

Well, yeah, I DID say I was a big reader - that doesn't have much to do with being a big theater-goer.

So yes, I have read almost all of Shakespeare's plays, but I have never actually gotten around to seeing many of them performed on stage. I think the only major one I've seen was Richard III - and that only because it was "local" (UP was putting it on) and "sentimental" (my partner was playing a couple of one-liner roles) to me.

During a recent night when I didn't come in to work because of an inability to talk properly without bursting into huge, wet, joint-racking coughs, I managed to catch the TV version of the BBC production of Hamlet from 2008 or so. You know, the one with David Tennant in it, and Patrick Stewart?


This photo is likely to be from the stage version instead of from the TV production, as the "Alas, poor Yorick" speech was given outdoors in the latter. (Of course it would be; in the Denmark of the story, the cemetery is outdoors.)

Impressions:
- Well, of course, the juxtaposition of Shakespeare's English with modern dress is jarring and effective.
- The clear use of cameras as metaphor and as a device to facilitate soliloquy - very modern and metafictional. (And, on an unintentionally creepy note, reminiscent of the Weeping Angels!)
- Patrick Stewart is far more evil when he's playing his villains subdued. Whew. You can feel the menace radiating off him in waves.
- There was a very clever person in costuming, I think - during the "Get thee to a nunnery" scenes between Hamlet and Ophelia, Tennant is wearing a shirt printed with a muscular chest and abs - directly over his own chest and abs, of course. Cheeky!
- How can anyone fence in jeans? I mean, at least Laertes wore a proper fencing uniform at the climax....
- Horatio plays it very, very cool at the climax - but you can still feel how bereft he is, being the only main character to survive the ending.
- Poor, poor Ophelia. I'm sure I'll feel more ripped-up if I should see a traditional staging of this story. What little screentime she gets - and especially in her madness scenes - she really shines in.

I probably owe it to myself to see the Ian McKellen film of Richard III although I am definitely a fan of Gloucester. I HATE the portrayal of the poor man as a villain; blame the book The Daughter of Time for that mindset......

Super hobby mash-up mode!

In the previous entry, I mentioned I'd gotten my fannish mitts on some dice.

Now I'm writing this post to show off the bag I've made for the dice.

It all started with me racking my brains for a present for a family member. I tried to follow the Easy Sideways Hat pattern from Lion Brand Yarns, but gave up in favor of a retread of the hat in this entry.

But that left me with a medium-sized piece of crochet work that was all dressed up and had nowhere to go - and I definitely wasn't in the mood to simply frog it out (i.e. rip it back down to the component yarn).

So it was a bit of an inspiration when I finally decided to make a go of creating a dice bag - by sewing the cloth together to create a pouch. The results are amateurish, but definitely encouraging.

Here's the bag with its contents out for display.

Because the pattern in the hat called for a "ribbed" crochet effect caused by working single crochet only into the back loops, the completed bag is pretty neat to touch.

The bag is a drawstring type.

I braided together three pieces of yarn and hooked the resulting cord into the top of the bag.

The bag, closed and ready to go.

Not bad for a first attempt! If I can acquire more dice I will probably make a larger version of the bag to carry them around in.

Yeah, I KNOW, there is something surreal to be said for the coming together of crochet and tabletop dice-based RPGs, but you know what? I'm hardly the only one doing this sort of thing....

"At last, my arm is complete again!"

And you know, it says a lot for my general chosen fandoms and interests that I had no idea where the quote that makes up the post title came from until five seconds ago.

No, I'm not about to mince people into pies, move to Fleet Street, or sport a weirdo Bride of Frankenstein hairdo.

I'm just going to report about an accomplishment that makes my fannish heart VERY happy.

Acting on a tip from a friend at my office (thank you so much!), my partner and I ventured to Greenhills yesterday morning after shift in search of dice.

[At the end of this previous entry I had rather loudly lamented the utter difficulty of finding proper RPG dice hearabouts.]

But the tip was good and I soon found myself in possession of this:

Real Chessex-brand dice, guys. This is the basic 7-piece set.

My partner teased me for getting dice in black with red numbers, saying that I'd wound up buying Twilight dice. Hell no. These are MY dice.

I've turned all the dice in this photo so their largest numbers (and number of sides each) are facing up. Two of the dice are both ten-sided, one marked with the numbers 1-0 (0 being 10) and one marked with the numbers 10-00 (00 being 100); the latter die is for percentiles, I guess.

Now that I know where to get dice I will probably buy another set before the year is out. I like having lots of dice on hand. Never know when I'm going to need them.