New Collection

So I have been spending quite a lot of time on Tumblr of late because it is pretty much like crack to fandoms. I mean, it's awesome, but when I look at my Dashboard some days I have no idea how I ended up with such a random assortment of blogs that I am following on that site.

Originally I made an account so I could lurk a bit on a bunch of the Dragon Age sites and submit to Dragon Age Confessions from time to time. I tried to get a thing going doing a random funny photo a day of my daughter's My Little Pony toys, but that tapered out pretty quickly because I just kind of lost the motivation. But then someone sent me an anonymous ask (asks are really one of niftiest bits about Tumblr in my opinion) requesting "more yarn please." Probably because my account name over there is YarnAndTeaIsAllINeed (made on a random whim when I signed up because I was drinking tea and looking at a skein of yarn). But it was a nice little kick in the pants and so I have been trying every day to post at least something yarn or tea related--usually  a picture of yarn from my stash, new acquisition, finished projects, and teacups and teapots.

That has somehow led to me garnering a small handful of followers on the site, which is weird but also nice. So I am trying to spread the love and actually be part of the community over there. When people ask questions I try to chime in if I have anything to say on the subject. It's been kind of interesting watching it develop.

One thing I have started to really notice is the prevalence of animated GIFs in posts. Sometimes because they are funny, sometimes to express a reaction to whatever the post is about, that kind of thing. I know that GIFs have been around forever, but this is the first time I have really paid that much attention to them, because this is the first forum on which I find myself where they are actually a type of communication in and of themselves.

So, I have started collecting GIFs as a random little side effect of joining Tumblr. I thought I'd share with you a few of my favorites that I have come across so far.

(Note that I am not in any way claiming credit for these, they were just found and enjoyed on the internet. The two pony GIFs came from My Little Brony.)

Anyhoo, happy Friday, y'all.

Now I just need to figure out how to make some of these on my own.

Keep Calm and Continue Testing

So with a little less than a month until Mass Effect 3 hits stores, and less than a week until the demo is available to download, I think I am officially done with Star Wars The Old Republic. I haven't canceled my account just yet, but I am thinking that will be happening sooner rather than later.

On Monday I got to a pretty good stopping point: Done with Act One and the interlude, back on my starting planet. I was thinking I would mess around a little and pick up some extra commendations (world-specific currency) so that I could actually spend the few I had left for that planet. They can't be used with commendations from other planets, sadly, and I didn't have enough left over from my first run-through to zero them out getting something available from the commendation vendor for that world. Tuesday afternoon game time rolled around and I just couldn't bring myself to log in. I just really didn't feel like it.

So I fired up a new game of Portal instead. I needed a break from SWTOR, and I wanted something different. Portal is about as different as it gets. I played that Tuesday afternoon and evening and as I was getting ready for bed I though to myself, Yeah, it's okay if I don't get any further in SWTOR, I had a pretty decent run. Like I said, I had hit a good stopping point.

I think the straw that broke the camel's back, for me, was when I finally leveled up my Artifice crafting skill to full power and was looking at schematics to make lightsabers--the whole reason that I chose that particular crafting skill. I figured out which lightsabers I wanted to make for me and for my companion. Sure, I wouldn't be able to use them until level 47, which I probably wouldn't get to, but I could at least have fulfilled the goal of making one. Also, I could make a few for my friend who is also playing in thanks for being so patient with me and for making me so much awesome armor. I looked up the crafting materials required for lightsabers (which are actually pretty much the same across the board no matter what kind of lightsaber, which is cool), there was one material that I wasn't sure where to find. All of the other materials I actually already had or knew where to get and could easily send my companions for more. But that one item, when I went to look it up, turns out to only be dropped in group quests by level 50 bosses.

You guys know I had already decided on an end date for playing the game. I have also mentioned that I've more or less been skipping the group quests. Even after finally joining a guild with my friend and friends of his, my heart sank a little as I saw the discussion boards about that particular crafting material. There was just no way I was going to be able to procure it through my regular game play, not by the time I stopped playing. I could try to buy it on the Galactic Market, I am sure, but I can only guess how pricey such a hard-to-obtain item would be, and as I have mentioned before, my in-game money management skills have not been great (largely due to two things: the requirement to pay for new skills as you level, and the ongoing repair costs for equipment).

That was kind of the last thing I was holding out for, I think, being able to make and customize my own totally badass lightsaber. With that out of the question, I just didn't feel any compulsion to play again. I feel a little bit like a failure for crapping out so spectacularly on this game, if I am being honest with myself. Because I am quitting. But when the game is meant to keep going, even after its end point, there comes a time when you just have to walk away. Mine just happens to be a bit earlier than most, I guess. I feel like I am letting my friend down, and my guild, because they all seem like really cool people from the brief interaction I've had with them. But I can't keep playing a game out of a feeling of responsibility to someone else. That's not fun. They are all much better gamers than me, I know they will be okay.

Anyhoo, so for now, I'll play Portal, and probably Portal 2 after that. They are short games, and fun, even when I am banging my head against the wall in frustration because I can see how I need to get out of the chamber but I just can't make it work.... There will be the ME3 demo too, of course. I'll probably do a write-up on that for you guys next week. Then I am just gonna bide my time until the full game drops.

Yesterday I found this little gem on the internet. I think it is a very relevant cross-section of my current interests:

(Spoiler Alert for most of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2!!)

Who knows? Maybe between now and March sixth I'll get bitten by the bug and pick up SWTOR again for a furious frenzy before I put it away for good. I kind of doubt it, but hey, you never know. For the record, again, I do want to say that the game itself is absolutely AMAZING. It is just not for me. I think I'll just stick with fictitious promises of cake and saving Earth from the Reapers for now.

Although...if I happen to stumble across a mod for ME that makes Fem!Shep look like SWTOR's Master Satele Shan (both voiced by the super awesome Jennifer Hale), I would not say no to that...

Educational AND Fun

I have been playing Portal 2 since I got back from my trip and it is a hoot. In the first round it was just you, the sadistic AI GLaDOS, the turrets (friendly guardian robots that will shoot you as soon as they notice you), and the occasional companion cube. You have to make your way through a series of "testing" chambers armed only with a portal gun and your wits. Business as usual at Aperture Science.

In the sequel a new dimension has been added. As the game starts out you learn that something has gone horribly wrong at Aperture Science. As you make your way through more test chambers seeking an exit, you make a new friend, bumbling but affable AI Wheatley. He does his best to help you thwart GLaDOS and get the heck out. Unfortunately, you find yourself in an old abandoned early Aperture testing facility and must make your way up from there to be able to get back to the more modern facility and (presumably) the exit. I just made it back to the modern facility last night.

This time around, in addition to your portal gun and companion cubes, you also have various types of gel available to aid you. It was once upon a time being pumped through the facility and is now pretty much leaking all over the place. The different types have names but I can't remember any of them, I just know them by color. Blue makes you bounce, orange makes you go fast, and white turns any surface into one you can use for portals. Those portals used in conjunction with the various gels are how you make your way through the different chambers.

Basically this entire game is an exercise in problem solving and creative thinking. It is utterly delightful, even when it is frustrating beyond measure. Sometimes the way out of a room just requires you to examine your surroundings carefully. Sometimes it requires you to play with physics. Often it requires both.

In addition to the wonderful mental challenge, the game is just vastly entertaining. For one thing there has been an amazing amount of attention paid to the details. Every room is a little bit different from the last. The signs adorning all of the walls you pass in your trek are informative and amusing. They help to paint a picture of what went down as well as giving you all of the information you need in order to move on to the next chamber. Often something you pass in one little corner of the facility serves as foreshadowing for what you will encounter two, three, even ten chambers down the road.

Then there is the dialog.

Wow.

Now, let's get this straight. This is a solitary game (there is a co-op mode, but I cannot speak to it as I haven't played that aspect, and I understand it is a very different, though no less entertaining experience, but I am speaking of the single-player mode here). Even when you've got help from, say, Wheatley, you still pretty much have to do (and figure out how to do) everything on your own. Your avatar has no voice, no conversations. But GLaDOS and Wheatley both talk at you quite a bit, each in a staggeringly different tone, both roll on the floor hilarious. There are "encouraging" recorded announcements as you go through the testing chambers. In the modern part of the facility it is a friendly robotic Mr. Moviefone kind of voice. In the older section? It's J.K. Simmons as an over the top less than scrupulous business man. His lines are a thing of beauty my friends. A thing of beauty.

Portal 2, like its predecessor, is funny and smart and fun. My husband has already played it through twice. It is actually a pretty short game (maybe ten or twelve hours of play time, maybe less), which is fantastic, because that means you can play it over and over again if you want without getting the feeling you are just slogging through. When the game isn't moving along, it is because you, the player, are stuck, and therefore simply not paying close enough attention to your surroundings. Every "aha!" moment when you finally get unstuck brings with it the same feeling of triumph as bringing down one of the baddest bosses in any more traditional video game.

I think, no, I know, that once Baby Girl gets old enough to play PC games, this series is going to be the first one we fire up for her. She likes figuring things out, so it will be the perfect starter.

I can't wait to find out what the endgame holds in store for me. If it is anything comparable to the first game, then I have much to look forward to.

If you like puzzle-solving and snarky AI's, and have any interest in gaming, I cannot recommend Portal and Portal 2 enough. They are well worth anyone's time, I promise.

You Know What Would Be Really Cool?

Heads up, this post is gonna contain all kinds of spoilers for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, as well as speculation about a minor spoiler for Mass Effect 3. So...read on if you're not that fussed about spoilers, but if you are, well, you might want to think twice before continuing.

Last week Kotaku posted this EXTREMELY spoilery article (seriously, lots of spoilers, only click if you really don't want to be surprised) about some of the things we can look forward to in Mass Effect 3. The game was supposed to hit shelves New Year's Eve of this year but has been postponed until the end of next March, so I have been eagerly drinking in all of the information on it I can find.

The first thing that really struck me was the mention that there will be fewer available party members. Now in the first two games, you could only have two companion characters with you at any given time, but there were a lot of crew members you could choose from. I like the idea of paring it down. A big part of Bioware games is the relationships your character develops with the companion characters throughout the game, be they romantic, platonic, or contentious. With fewer NPCs to choose from to accompany you on missions, you have a better chance of building not only stronger relationships with these characters but also of leveling them up in better ways. You're going to have to put a lot more thought into how you balance each team member's attributes and talents if don't have so many you can just build each one up for a specific purpose. With so many team members available in the previous games, it was very easy to fall into just one or two party configurations, and I know I was guilty of totally ignoring certain party members once I had advanced their plot line as far as possible. With too many to choose from , it was easier to just stick with the ones I liked most. I suspect it will be more difficult to play favorites in the new game.

Ostensibly, you will actually already know most of your party members, since this will be your third tour around the galaxy with them. I will be curious to see how the game developers factor in all of the events of the previous two games to influence how everyone gets along at this point. It has been hinted before now that the choices you made in game one and in game two were gonna have some huge impacts on how game three plays out.

This brings me to my next point. The article on Kotaku mentions that all of the main characters from both games will be back, even if most of them won't be available for your party. But it also implies that either Ashley or Kaidan--your first two friends in the first game, both pretty much absent from the second--will be back as a party member in game three. Now, it is only gonna be one of them, of course, because if you played game one you know that (HUGE spoiler here, highlight the text to read) one of them died toward the end of the first game, so clearly the dead one is staying dead. Presumably the one who comes back will happen to be the one you romanced in the first game. It's possible this isn't the case, but I know I replayed an hour of the first game to make that be the outcome instead of the other way around. Somehow I doubt I am the only one.

During the second game, of course, you were given the opportunity to have a new romance since your former flame was AWOL. There is minimal sense of being unfaithful to your game one paramour however since you do actually run into Kaidan or Ashley in game two, but they refuse to join up with your mission and are kind of freaked out to see you alive at all. This is understandable since game two starts off by killing your character. You get resurrected by the shadowy corporation Cerberus, of course, but Kaidan/Ashley wants nothing to do with Cerberus and kind of throws a fit to find out you're working for them, thus closing the door on the relationship where you might have been hopeful for a more pleasant reunion. I, for one, was pretty pissed at Kaidan's reaction to the whole situation, so my Shepard turned into the awkward, yet willing, embrace of Garrus.

And here's where things get interesting. Because I can't imagine Garrus of all people not being part of my playable party. But if he's there and if Kaidan's back...well, I expect some fireworks people. Especially considering that Garrus and Kaidan were pretty much my go-to team all through game one. I am really looking forward to seeing that play out. But I am going to be extremely annoyed with Bioware if it is just one little scene and I have to choose and then everyone acts like it never happened. That will suck. I want this to be a big deal and I want there to be tensions that I have to work toward solving. I want the option to say "forget you both, I'm choosing guy C" (not that I would, but it should be there). I want the tension to affect the rest of the crew as well.

Heck, I almost want to play through as a guy and romance Ashley, who I never really liked that much, just so I could romance Jack in the next game and then get a huge smackdown between the two of them. Can you imagine? I mean, Jack would probably win, of course, she's scary. But still. This is entertainment, folks.

Anyway, so that's what I am saying I would like to see in the next game. I don't just want the stakes of the missions to be higher, I want the emotional stakes to be higher as well. I want Shepard's personal choices, questionable or justified, to have an effect on how everything goes. Is that too much to ask?

So while I am definitely going to be cutting back on the video games soon (gonna finish my Dragon Age playthrough, then do Portal 2 real quick), I will be making time early next year for replays of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 so that I can gear up for Mass Effect 3. Because, quite frankly? I am already pretty excited about it.

A Slippery Slope

Oh man oh man oh man. Bioware released the "final chapter" for Mass Effect 2 this week, a mission called "Arrival" that sounds like it serves as a bridge between ME2 and ME3, which is due out New Year's Eve. Of course what they mean by "final chapter" is "last new content," meaning no more new downloadable content (DLC) for Mass Effect 2.

I am okay with this.

I only got into exploring DLC with Dragon Age, so I never bought any of the Mass Effect extra content. Heck, I never even bothered to install the DLC that came free with my purchase of the game.

But now that I've discovered the joy of expanding the in-game universe, I thought it might be fun to see what there was to offer for Mass Effect. (This is partly to stave off my rising urge to play Dragon Age II again already. Or to replay Portal, what with all of the excitement being generated by that game's forthcoming sequel as well.) So today I purchased "Arrival" as well as another DLC that provided an extra companion character. I also went ahead and installed all of the available free DLC. I figured I could play through the new chapter and all of the other extra content would be available to me later on in the year when I do my replay of the first two games in preparation for the third.

BUT. But. Imagine my surprise when I opened up Mass Effect 2 to play "Arrival" and, unlike how the extra chapters in Dragon Age work, found that I just had to hit "resume" and go back to my ship and pick up where I left off. Not only was the new mission post-endgame available, I also had the option to go ahead and play all of that extra content if I felt like it. Huh.

I should be playing Epic Mickey if I am playing a video game at all. It is next on my list. My sister got it for me for Christmas and she is coming to visit in two weeks, I'd like to be able to tell her I have had a chance to enjoy her gift. But...but no. I am running around the galaxy picking up mercenaries and thieves and trying to drive impossible to maneuver land vehicles and completely getting my butt kicked because I have so forgotten how the battle controls work for this game...

As an added bonus, now that my character has successfully romanced Garrus, there is now an intercom in her cabin she can use to "invite Garrus up."

They can cuddle on the couch:

Or they can snuggle up in bed:

This tickles me greatly.

Isn't interspecies love sweet?

Ah, well, the galaxy awaits...

Dragon Age: The Ultimate in Replayability

Warning!  

This post contains potential plot spoilers for Dragon Age:  Origins and Dragon Age:  Origins--Awakening.

My character, a female elf warrior.

So I finally finished playing Dragon Age the other night.  I would say it took me about a month and a half to play through the game itself (Dragon Age:  Origins) and the expansion pack (Dragon Age: Origins--Awakening).  I forgot to check the actual hours played log, but I get about somewhere between 2-5 hours of gaming in on most days (usually it's a solid 3), so make of that what you will. 

This was a bear, but oh man, it was a pretty fun bear.  For me, hands down the most important thing about a role playing video game (RPG) is the story.  If a game doesn't have a compelling story that keeps me wanting to find out what happens next, then there's no reason for me to play it all of the way through, now is there?  Of course, two of the key elements to a compelling story are world building and character development, and Dragon Age excels in both of those areas admirably.  More on this in a bit.

Game play itself, is of course, also very important to making a successful video game. I am sure there are all kinds of definitions of what makes up good game play, but for me it boils down to how quickly the controls/actions in the game become intuitive.  I tend to give most PC games a little more of an adjustment period on this front (past the initial "training" portion of the game) because I am still getting used to keyboard/mouse controls versus a joystick/game controller.  I had years of not being very good at console games under my belt before my husband ever convinced me to try a PC game that wasn't Zoo Tycoon.  Of course, even with my learning curve, I have still jumped head first into PC gaming in the last year or so.  My poor console games are sitting sadly in their coffee table cubbyholes wishing someone other than the baby would take them out to play once in a while.  But I digress.  My thoughts on PC versus console gaming are fodder enough for their very own post, I think. 

Back to the game play in Dragon Age.  I would definitely give this a thumbs up.  It probably helps that three of the five PC games I have played prior to Dragon Age (Star Wars:  Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars:  Knights of the Old Republic II:  The Sith Lords, Portal, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2) were made by the same company (Bioware), and a fourth was made by an offshoot of that company.  But either way, I was able to pick up the controls fairly quickly and figure out how to access/use the items in my inventory, read the codex entries, find my active quests, and level my characters with relative ease.  Actually, once I got used to it, the character leveling process in this game is probably one of the best I've used so far. I don't know if that is because I am finally starting to figure out how I should be leveling or if it was actually a really good design though.

As far as combat goes in the game, however, well, I will admit I had to change the difficulty level to "easy" pretty early on and may have left that setting stand for the rest of the game.  Again, I am not sure if this was a reflection of the game itself or of my skill as a gamer.  I hate needing to put a game on the "easy" setting, because it does feel a bit like cheating to me, but with this game, I kind of needed it.   Even with the difficulty level turned down, there were still some places where I felt overwhelmed, though I will admit there were also many places where I could totally feel the "easy" kicking in and wished for a bit more of a challenge.  Having played through it once though, and having a better idea of how the leveling works and which skills/spells/specialties do what, I am looking forward to making it through the next time without readjusting the settings. 

The only aspect of the game play I really have to complain about was the maps.  They weren't even that bad, I just felt like they didn't give the level of detail I would have liked, especially compared to some of the previous Bioware games I've played.  I really think it is more that I didn't so much care for the artistic choices they made with them than that they were bad maps though.  But given the consistently insane amount of detail throughout the rest of the game, crappy maps are a price that I am perfectly willing to pay.

The basic story of the game is this:  The land of Ferelden has come under a Blight--a plague of darkspawn controlled by an archdemon.    Your character is drafted into the Grey Wardens, the military force specially charged with fighting darkspawn and ending the Blight.  Shortly after you join the Wardens, however, there is a battle with the darkspawn in which not only does the nation's king die, but so do all of the Grey Wardens save yourself and one other, Alistair.  

Alistair the Grey Warden

Together, you and Alistair must help reunite Ferelden in the wake of the king's death, and assemble an army to fight off the darkspawn horde so that you can slay the archdemon and end the Blight.  Piece of cake, right?  Of course, no one expects the two of you to do this alone.  So along the way you pick up many allies, forming a fairly formidable party.  

Morrigan, a witch of the Wilds.

Leliana, a member of the Chantry and former Orlesian bard.

Sten the Quinari

Wynne, a mage from the Circle of Magi.

Zevran, an Antivan assassin.

You get a puppy!  A mabari hound, I named mine Sirius.

Oghren the dwarf.

The story continues in the expansion pack, Dragon Age:  Origins--Awakening, and gives a nice little epilogue to the events of the main game.  You should, of course, import your character from the main game into the expansion pack, it's just silly not to (for one thing, you start out at a higher level, with more money, and with most of your inventory from the previous game).  In Awakening, your character has been sent to Vigil's Keep in Amaranthine to take over the lands forfeited by the traitorous Arl Howe during the events of Origins and to serve as the Warden Commander for the about to be rebuilt (by you) Grey Warden forces in Ferelden.  You quickly learn that while killing the archdemon did indeed end the Blight, it did not, unfortunately, cause all of the darkspawn to retreat.  Many of them are still roaming Ferelden (and Amaranthine in particular, of course).  Through the course of the game, you find out that some of the darkspawn have become sentient and there are two different factions, led by the Mother and the Architect.  It is up to you to rebuild the keep, recruit more Grey Wardens quickly, and to put an end to the darkspawn threat once and for all.  Your good pal Oghren is back for the new adventure, as well as some new friends.

Anders, an apostate mage.

Sigrun, a dwarf.

Justice, a spirit from the Fade pulled into this world by a demon.

Nathaniel Howe, trying to redeem his family name.

Velanna, a Dalish mage.

A large part of the game is, of course, developing relationships with the different members of your party.  As you gain their trust and loyalty through your in-game actions, companion quests open up for each character.  In addition to earning their approval or disapproval through your actions, you can also gain influence with members of your party by giving them gifts.  Throughout the game you'll find many items in stores or while looting that are designated in your inventory as "gifts."  Some of these might hold special meaning to party members--which you won't know unless you actually take the time to talk to your party members.

This is the first game I've played with the gift mechanic.  I was kind of annoyed by it at first (I may have given several items to the wrong people before I figured the thing out), but looking back now, I do like the idea of it.  The big advantage is that it allows you to gain approval with members of your party even if you don't ever actually take them with you on quests.  I, for one, tend to figure out a specific group for my "main" party and then only use those characters unless the story requires a different configuration.  This way, I still got to get to know the other characters, even if I didn't want to use them in my group.  That was nice.  (It also opened up their companion quests without taking them with me all of the time, allowing me to rack up more XP and therefore reach a higher level).

I think that by far the coolest thing about Dragon Age though is the fact that it lends itself to well to replayability.  I've already mentioned that I want to play it through again on the "normal" difficulty setting, but I also want to try out both the Rogue and Mage classes.  I might try it as a human, instead of an elf, and I might play through as a guy instead of a girl--I have a feeling that final conversation with Morrigan before you face the archdemon goes a lot differently if you are not a girl!  Honestly, I'm curious to see how the relationship dynamics with every character change based on your class/race/gender.  

Yeah, I know,  a lot of games give you this kind of versatility--I've been pondering a replay of Knights of the Old Republic as a guy for a while now, because then I won't feel so compelled to put up with Carth's whining--but Dragon Age went an extra step on this front.  In my (admittedly limited) experience, while you are given many options for your character's background, you actually start the game in the same place no matter what you choose.  You (maybe, depending on the scenario) get a little blurb about what incidents shaped your character based on your choices, and often dialogue options will come up based on your background, but you still always start the game in the same place regardless.  Dragon Age, however, has six different starting points.  The class and race you choose decides where you start the game (and the events are further shaped by your gender, I am sure).  For example, I chose Warrior for my class and Elf for my race.  This gave me the choice of my starting points:  City Elf or Dalish Elf.  Had I chosen Dalish, I would have started off with the traveling elves, and I am sure my interactions when I met up with them later in the game would have been quite different.  I chose City Elf, and so started in the Alienage in the city of Denerim, and got to have my wedding interrupted by the Arl's spoiled son.  This then had an effect on my game experience later on when I returned to Denerim and was tasked with solving some unrest in the Alienage--and gave my character a chance to be reunited with some of her family. 

On top of the chance to have at least six different game experiences, there is also quite a bit of downloadable content (DLC) for the game available.  I didn't purchase any of it this time around because I had the expansion pack, but I have already decided that when I do my replays, I will want to invest in that DLC to add yet another dimension of "new" experiences to the game.  They've even added a quest where you can go hunt down Morrigan after the original ending to find out what came from that pre-battle discussion.  Which, yeah, I totally want to do.  Heck, I might buy that at some point and play it through with my original character, just out of curiosity.  That plot twist just caught me off guard, and I want to know what happened, dang it!

So all in all, I would definitely say I am a fan of Dragon Age.  I thought Mass Effect had tied Knights of the Old Republic for my favorite PC game thus far, but (and I hate to say this, being the Star Wars fangirl that I am), I am pretty sure Dragon Age blew them both right out of the water.  While I am pretty sure I will play KOTOR again, I know I will play Dragon Age again, and multiple times.  Heck, after I got well and truly done playing, I got right on the internet to see if there really was a sequel in development, or if I had only imagined hearing that.  Not only is there a sequel, it's already scheduled for release (March 2011), and available for preorder.  In fact, if you preorder it through one of Bioware's approved vendors before January 2, you automatically get your version upgraded to the signature version for free, with lots of extra goodies.  So, um, yeah, I went ahead and preordered.  Man, I am psyched for March!

Kitties! Crochet! Life in General!

Okay, first things first.  *cough* Ahem.  *cough*

Don't forget to watch tonight's new episodes of Stargate Universe and Caprica on Syfy starting at 8 pm CST!!!

Right, then.  Getting on with it.

I've got a couple of finished crochet projects for you today.  Here's the birthday present I was working on week before last.  It was a poncho for a good friend of mine, her birthday was this past Saturday.  

Poncho of Happiness by Cori 2010.

The pattern I used for this was the Groovy Granny Poncho from Lion Brand's free pattern database.  (To see the pattern you may have to register with the site, but that's free, it just gets you a newsletter, which you can even opt out of.)  I love LB's pattern database.  Because one of their big lines is Vanna's Choice, designed by Vanna White, who crochets, they have a ton of crochet patterns as well as knitting.  And they have patterns for all sorts of different fiber types. 

For this project, I used their Homespun yarn, in Baroque, Amethyst, Edwardian, and Black.  I absolutely hated Homespun the first time I tried to use it because I am really just not used to the bulkier yarns, but now that I've worked with it a bit, I have to admit, I kind of love it a little.  It is so soft and warm.  The pattern called for one skein of each color, but didn't use it all up, so I ended up having enough left over to make one (with a few modifications to the pattern) for my daughter as well.

Pint-sized Poncho by Cori 2010.

Baby Girl models her new duds.

I am now hard at work on my next project, another birthday present, which I'll post more about once it has been given to its recipient.  

In other news, I thought I would share with you some photos of my kitties, since I am bound to mention them from time to time.  They are my furred children, so I thought you should get to know them a bit as well.  I have two kitties that live inside with us and suck up all of the love that I don't give Baby Girl.  They've done a pretty good job of adjusting to her arrival over the past year.  Wally pretty much took to her right away and has adopted a "big brother" attitude of sorts.  He is extremely patient with her and endures her vigorous "petting" attempts, because he knows he will be well repaid with love from me after the baby has gone to bed.  Also, they both love to play with my yarn when I am right in the middle of the tricky part of any given project.  Tony finally seems to be warming up to the newest addition to the family.  He no longer flees the room when she enters it, and will even let her touch him occasionally--though not without flinching.  I think a big part of his deciding to come around (aside from the realization that she is clearly not going anywhere) is that now that she is feeding herself, there is a lot more people food being dropped on the ground for him to get to.  

I do also have two stray kitties that I have more or less adopted, though they stay outside.  One of them, a Siamese that I have oh-so-cleverly (insert sarcasm) named Sy, is very personable and sweet.  Part of me really wants to bring him inside to live with us (after a visit to the vet and a bath, of course), but I know that wouldn't be fair to him, because he is so completely an outside kitty.  So for now I am just doing my best to make sure that he has a safe and comfortable place in our backyard, as well as a regular food supply.  The other stray (who I don't have a photo of) is definitely Sy's companion, and I know he eats the food I put out, but I only see him very rarely.  He is extremely skittish around people and tends to dash off the moment he realizes he's been spotted.  I have dubbed him Skittles. 

Sy, the stray Siamese.

Tony, who will be 6 in December.

Wally, at 9 years old.

I started playing Star Wars Republic Commando last night, but alas, I don't think that I am going to be able to play this one all of the way through.  It is in the first person point of view, and you're looking out through your character's helmet display, which is just crazy.  It made me a bit nauseated.  I had this same problem when I played Portal, but that didn't have the added craziness of a whole slew of control buttons to remember, so I was able to adjust to it, though I had to limit my playing to only about an hour at a time.  I don't think I'm gonna make it through this game though.  It's sad, because I really really love the books and was hoping that playing the game would add an extra dimension to my enjoyment of them.  But it doesn't really have the RPG aspect I prefer in my games, and with that plus the controls just totally throwing me off, plus the POV, I may just have to set this one aside.  At least for now.  On the plus side, I only paid $6 for it, so I don't have to get mad at the waste of money.  So it looks like I might be finally diving into Morrowind next instead, to my husband's great excitement.  He has been trying to get me to play that game forever.