Round Robin-thulhu

So, after finishing Christmas ornaments, I took a couple of days off and just played on the PS3 and had some other good times.

On Saturday I went to the local indie theater and watched Blade Runner (the "final cut") and then we went to dinner and just hung out at a favorite local place for a while.

And yesterday?  I spent the day playing with my stitching while watching a playthrough of Ni no Kuni.   I wanted to spend the day playing more Assassin's Creed, but the PS-Store was down on Saturday during their epic DDOS attack, and I ordered what I wanted from Amazon instead, so now I'll have to wait (dammit).

I'm in this weird holding pattern - there are two SALs I've signed up for, and the people running it are super strict about starting dates.  I mean, I get the second one - it's a race to finish a UFO, so that's fine, but there's a New Year, New Start SAL that's only supposed to strictly start on Jan 1... and I'm also waiting for the first installment of the Cloudsfactory SAL... it's just weird.  I have these things, all set and ready to go, but I can't work on them.

Instead I worked on an RR (which I should have been working on, anyway).  It's the next in my round robin with friends, and this one is Amanda's.    She wants us to stitch whatever it is that is "us", a nice motif or whatever.     I was spending a lot of time thinking about what to do.  I mean, everyone knows I do the cthulhu/octopodes thing, but is that what I wanted to stitch?   And then I was terribly concerned that I wouldn't leave enough space for anyone else if I did the wrong thing.  I originally thought of doing the Octopus from Blackbird Design's Octopus's Garden, but that might be too big, so I surfed around looking at different patterns, and I was always worried that they seemed kind of large.  And then I just caved and did an adorable Cthulhu I'd seen online.    I do like him.

He's done in Crescent Colours Spinach (the wings) and Desert Mesquite (main body).   I went ahead and stitched up and down, instead of side to side, for the wings, and I think it worked.

But then I thought I hadn't done enough, and while stitching this, I thought "wouldn't a little red meeple be awesome?"    For those not into gaming, meeples came about from the player pieces ("my" + "people") in Carcassonne, a tabletop game, but people generally refer to player pieces in most gaming as meeples now.    Red is both my favorite color and the color I try to always play when I'm gaming (hilarity ensues when I play a non-red color and end up moving the red player and/or generally being confused because I'm so used to red being mine).

I went ahead and charted one out... I think he came out pretty nicely.
He's stitched in DinkyDyes silks I had on hand.  This skein wasn't labelled, which leads me to believe it is Waratah.

And here is the placement on Amanda's RR.   I hope other people are brave enough to branch out - they're plenty of space, we just have to keep the correct count (off of the first part, which is Kathy's nutcracker, not necessarily from the basting lines).

Oh, and I did end up starting something new-new, but I forgot to take a picture of it.  It looks like I might run out of treasure braids (HAHAHAHA), and sadly it seems that 123stitch doesn't carry those.   I'll be calling a couple of LNSs in other areas to see if they have stock on hand they can ship to me.   Not having an LNS is just so utterly annoying.  I'd just buy my own place out if I could.