Nomadic Gamer

2017

Gaming

Unboxing Specially Marked Snacks

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Every so often I’ll get an email from a company or a game representative asking me if I’d be interested in trying something out. I typically say yes, because why not, they’re usually a lot of fun. This time I was approached by a kind representative from Mrs. Freshley’s asking if I’d be interested in sharing some information about specially marked (FFXIV Stormblood) snacks, and they offered to send me a few products to try. As far as I’m aware we don’t have Mrs. Freshley’s up here in Canada, but I’ve never been one to turn down free snacks (cough) so I accepted and they arrived this week! I actually decided to make an unboxing video, my first and quite possibly my last because I had so many technical issues. Still, I put it up on YouTube for everyone to watch. These baked goods were held up at the boarder for a day due to customs (we’re really cracking down on imported snack goods eh..) but they were still delicious if you like cupcakes and cinnamon buns with a ton of icing.

I downloaded Blippar to try to scan the packages and get the code that you can then use in game – but no matter how I tried to scan or which product I couldn’t get it to work. I’m not sure if I was doing something wrong or it was my location or some other issue, but I’ll keep trying so that I can hand those codes out to readers / viewers. I’m also handing the sweet treats out to a few locals who have expressed interest. I wasn’t an enormous fan of the cinnamon rolls (personally) but the chocolate cupcakes were delicious (I basically devoured two of those off screen later). You can find out more about Mrs Freshley’s products here, and you can read about the awesome contest they’ve been holding for the past few months here. If you’ve got any tips or tricks on how I can make Blippar work properly don’t hesitate to let me know in comments!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

Adventures in RimWorld

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RimWorld is one of those games that I never get bored of and if I do, I just go download some new mods from the steam workshop and it’s like a completely different game. I’ve been playing RimWorld as my weekly stream game because it’s something that I’m pretty familiar with and it’s easy to step away from the game if I need to here and there. Things are automated, and I find it relaxing. Your millage may vary of course. Especially depending on your difficulty level.

I have been playing on the extreme setting (the highest one) with the randy random scenario, which means all events are random. In my last adventure my colonists only died because of my neglect. I was playing on tribal which is something I rarely do because I really dislike not starting with power. You spend so much time researching I feel like you can’t actually get anywhere. Anyway. I had forgotten which buildings were marked as Ancient Dangers. Maybe there’s a mod that will remind me and cause me to step away from those places. I remembered two, but ended up opening the third one – HUGE mistake.

My colonists who were of course tribal and didn’t even have power had absolutely no means to combat the mechanoids that popped out. By sheer luck we had a single gun (equipped by Scopique) and he was able to take out one of the scythes, but we still had a second one along with a centipede. To say everyone died a fiery death would be an understatement. It was carnage. There was absolutely no way to escape.

So I’ve started the colony over. This time with three crash landed survivors, which means they have power. Welshtroll is also proficient in the Force, so once he works the skill up he’ll be able to choose the light or the dark and use his powers. I’m hoping that this colony survives a bit longer so that I can show off some of the neat stuff you can do – and so I’ve bumped DOWN the difficulty level of the game in order to do that. I’ll still have some awesome events, but maybe every stream won’t end in slaughter.

I won’t be streaming today (Tuesday, October 3rd) as my little guy has immunizations, but I’ll be back at it this Thursday, October 5th, 2:30pm PDT. Catch me over on twitch, and don’t forget to give a follow so you get notifications of when I’m going live.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Spinning Yarn

Dusting Tom Thumb

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Not too long I bought my first spinning wheel. I didn’t know enough about buying them at the time, but I was impatient and bought it anyway. It was a used wheel called a “Tom Thumb” which is from around 1980, made in New Zealand. It’s missing a few parts, most notably four knobs that match the two I have. One goes to the orifice hook, one goes to the second lazy kate, and the third goes to.. I can’t remember what. The maiden head was cracked and my husband managed to sand and repair it last year. We had intended on refinishing the entire piece and getting it running properly, but then kiddo made his early appearance and it got put aside.

I took it out today to give it a bit of love, shine it up and make sure she still runs (which she does). I have it set for double tension right now, but I need a piece to hold the footman to the wheel, I’m using a paperclip right now and lets just say it’s awkward. Ideally I’d like some sort of nut or bolt along with some felt so that the footman doesn’t rub and make a lot of noise (like it does now). I also bought a new orifice hook for it, it won’t match exactly, but that’s alright. In the meantime I set out to see if I could find a woodworker who could make matching knobs for me. I’d like to restore this wheel to her former glory, it’s an incredibly solid wheel that I’m sure has seen some good years.

Ideally, in the (far) future, I’d like to purchase a new wheel. Maybe an Ashcroft Traveller. I also own a few drop spindles (one wooden and two 3D printed) that are a lot of fun to use. In order to get better at spinning you need to practice practice practice practice – and I just haven’t had the time on top of everything else. If it’s a hobby you enjoy though, to make the time and find it some where. So that’s what I’ll do. You can see the yarn I’ve spun so far over on my Ravelry page – some people have amazing yarn. That’s the level I want to get to, and I will, with practice.

Knitting Yarn

Knitting Hats for Winter

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It’s getting pretty close to winter here in British Columbia, Canada and my kid has out grown all of the cute little newborn hats that he got last year when he was born. I made him a handful, a little pumpkin and some plain ones. He was so small that in the NICU his hat could have been worn as clothes.

Instead of buying him a new hat that he would just outgrow in another year I decided to knit him one. Hats are fast knits and it’s rewarding to see something you’ve made being worn. He’s too young to appreciate anything fancy, so I picked a simple pattern by Tin Can Knits called Barley.

There’s an issue with the pattern before the decreases. You end on a knit row and continue with another knit row to establish the decreases when you should end on a purl row. That’s the weird wonky line at the top before the hat starts to curve. It doesn’t affect the warmth of the item at all and it’s something my kid certainly won’t care about so I decided to just leave it be and finish knitting it. It’s made from an extra soft acrylic yarn from KnitPicks called Might Stitch. The hat is (of course) too big for him but I figure he’ll grow into it. Hopefully not too quickly.

Crochet Knitting Yarn

Crafting Pet Peeves

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Hey, it happens. Sometimes things bug us or rub us the wrong way. Today while I was working on my scarf I came across a pretty big pet peeve. In the screenshot above you’ll see one skein of yarn that transitions between pink /purple / blue and various shades of those. It’s ‘chroma’ by knitpicks, and it also varies in thickness from thick almost bulky, to thin, almost lace. The problem is smack dab in the middle of that picture where it abruptly shifts colours with no transition even though the rest of the scarf has transitions.

Turns out the yarn was split in two places, and it threw everything off.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I don’t mind the thick / thin consistency as it’s advertised when you purchase the yarn, but I don’t like splits in yarn, and I don’t like the issues caused by those splits. In this case that bright pink should have slowly transitioned to a light purple and then to a blue but instead a huge chunk was missing (all of the blue, and two purple transitions). I didn’t have enough yarn to fix the problem manually so because I was already near the end of the scarf I decided to just try to ignore it and cary on.

I’ve been working on this scarf since August 19th. Scarves are a LOT of work – and this is probably the first and only time I’ll make a scarf in fingering weight (she says unconvincingly). It is much quicker to knit something in bulky weight yarn, or at least worsted. I tend to like fingering weight yarn because it’s lovely sock yarn which is my favourite thing to knit. My yarn stash has a LOT of fingering weight (you can find me over on Ravelry as Stargrace, of course). Thankfully, the scarf is now done, and it looks great on me. We don’t get a lot of really cold weather here, so I wanted to finish it in time for fall to get the most use out of it. It’s one of the only pieces I’ve actually knit for myself.

Do you have any knitting or crochet pet peeves? What do you do to combat them (if anything can be done) and how do you avoid them from happening in the first place? Let me know in comments!

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