Guitar Hero 3
I've never been one to spend too much time playing video games. I'm generally not that good at them, with the exception of games that benefit from many buttons being mashed all at once (Soul Caliber, I'm looking at you). That said, we purchased a Wii in December of 2006 and since that I've found a lot more games that I'm decent at. I can stomp all over TheBoy when it comes to playing Mario Kart on the virtual console, much to his consternation.
One of the benefits of being at the LAN party last weekend (more on that soon, I came down with a massive case of exhaustion coupled with a large amount of fluid in the ears) was that I got to watch people playing things. Rock Band, for instance, breeds an awful lot of tone deaf singers, singing loudly. Guitar Hero looked complicated beyond belief, but also really really fun. Unfortunately, I didn't get any time to play myself and Sunday found me whining to TheBoy that I really wanted to play it. His solution? Let's go buy it. And we did. And after a few frustrating starts (boy, I cannot wait until they make the left-handed guitar for the Wii, so I don't have a whammy bar in my palm all the time) I managed to beat the game on easy by the end of the evening on Monday.
Since I beat this version, I've started back at the beginning in medium level. It's more challenging to add in that fourth note, plus more chords. Great fun though, I highly recommend it.
The Fist!
Today's Friday Fixation:
I'm too tired to link this to flickr, but I'm here, it's crazy, and it's awesome.
Shibui Knits Sock
Today's fixation is Shibui Knits sock yarn. TheBoy has been asking for socks since fall '04 when we first started living together. At the time, I made my father and one of my fathers-in-law worsted weight boot socks for Christmas. TheBoy? He got the yarn for his in a box. And then I only knit one.
Now, my husband, bless his heart, has big feet. Size 13 wide big. So I knew if he was going to get the socks he wanted I'd better find some yarn (and a lot of it) that I'd enjoy knitting miles of sock with. I always seem to get the urge to buy yarn around nine o'clock at night, after everything local is closed so I've started buying yarn online from Knit/Purl. It's semi-local (in Portland) and my orders arrive within 2-3 business days of placing an order. I think this was the third or fourth order I've placed with them since October or so and I've always been pleased. So while I wholly endorse the yarn shop, let's talk about the yarn.
Look at the colors! The depth of color is wonderful and their semi-solid nature is fantastic. I'm knitting this into a fairly dense fabric (9 stitches per inch on size 1 crystal palace bamboo double pointed needles) and it's still sproingy and wonderful as a fabric. The twist is wonderful, it's a very round yarn which leads me to believe that it would make wonderful tiny cables, although the socks are likely to be far more boring than that. Shibui Knits is a Portland-based company, so I'm doubly supporting my local community (although I believe the yarn is milled elsewhere).
I planned for each sock to use about a skein and a half of yarn, that's almost 300 yards each. They'll be primarily seaweed with contrasting toes, heels and a stripe at the top of the cuff. I expect them to take me a fair amount of knitting time, but it's the kind of knitting that sets my mind on auto-pilot. They'll be my "knitting with other people" project, or my "knitting and actually paying some attention to the tv" project.
ActualDesigns
I'm going to try to post something that I love on Fridays, whether it's something to buy or something to play or just something I can't get out of my head. To kick this off, I have the product review I've been meaning to write. Full disclosure on this one, I gain nothing monetary from this review, but the woman behind this store is a longtime friend of TheBoy, and I also think she's the bees' knees.
Without further ado, my favorite new bag!
My husband purchased this bag for me, from ActualT of ActualDesigns as a Christmas gift. We like to support crafters that we actually know [see also Strings and Yarn] because it's good for us and good for them. So when I requested this bag, I was pretty sure he'd buy it for me. Call me spoiled if you'd like.
At any rate, the bag is perfect. It's cute and sassy, and it unzips all the way with small stoppers at the bottom to keep things from falling out. There are pockets inside perfect for holding my notions; scissors, tape measure, etc. It will easily hold my wallet, mitts, keys and notions, a shawl in a plastic baggie, a giant ball of handspun yarn, a 3 month sized baby sweater and extra yarn and a paperback copy of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down which is, so far, a fantastic book. And, it stays relatively flat so it slides very easily into the inner pocket of my laptop bag when I'm carrying everything.
It's one of a kind, pleather with a great fabric lining and grossgrain ribbon straps. It was one of the first bags she made for sale so it has a few quirks but I like that about it. Apart from one zipper pull that likes to rotate itself and make for sticky opening I can find no fault with the bag [and the sticky zipper resolves itself easily when I add patience to the mix]. I have to admit that I feel a great deal of joy when I open the bag and get to see this:
Love that print!
Friday Fixation
I am totally obsessed with this game Untangle It's like untangling a really bad, virtual ball of yarn. Really satisfying when you get it all untangled, and really frustrating when it just keeps getting more and more messed up. It's a major timesuck though, don't say I didn't warn you.