Cheklov's Stuff

So I love to weave. Specifically inkle and tablet weaving. I'm not great at it - the same problems with row counting and my inability to remember numbers that plague me in my attempts to crochet and knit are in full force here - but that doesn't stop me much. I usually stick to very simple tablet weave (WHICH I HATE THERE ARE SO MANY BEAUTIFUL PATTERNS UGH) and basic inkle patterns. I've got my little loom strung up with one such simple pattern right now. Very basic, as you can see. The pattern is as follows: It makes a cute little An Tir-themed trim though, so it's very handy. However, you might notice that my loom is quite small. In fact, working over an inch wide band gets pretty dicey when advancing the warp, and it only makes around two yards of trim, more if I'm careful and think harder about my tension peg's placement than I usually do. But it was my first functional loom, and it's great for travel, since it fits i...

Picking up where we left off , I had just pulled forth a mysterious package with a sticker labeled "Ice". It contained a lovely twill fiber! The "Ice" colorway for this month, one ounce of a South American wool and viscose tweed. The color is lovely, and I begin my apologies over my phone not being able to really convey the lovely colors in this month's fibers. Now into the main fibers. Again, the colors really don't come through on my camera, but this is GORGEOUS. Merino and Mulberry silk, three ounces of the colorway "Not Today". So many lovely shades of brown, and so sinfully soft. Believe you me, everyone in the house rubbed it on their face and went "Oooooooo". Merino and Mulberry silk, three ounces of the colorway "Blue Eyes". If anything, this is even more beautiful than the other fiber. The navy tones and even a little of a teal/aqua color. The second picture is me trying to block the light to...

The time has come! I am doing shit again, and we're going to start off with an unboxing, hurrah! I recently discovered and signed up for Paradise Fiber's Fiber of the Month club; a subscription services for spinning related items. I watched the ChemKnits unboxings extensively before I caved and decided to commit. It's basically $35 a month for a box of 6-8 oz of fiber goodness, with other assorted goodies, and that includes the price of shipping. A pretty sweet deal from everything I've seen. Paradise Fibers has an incredible attention to detail in their themed boxes, and I went into this expecting the entire box to be gloriously on point - and I was right. May 6th rolled around, and to my delight - lo, my first box! I spoiled myself enough to know that it was going to be Game of Thrones themed, but beyond that, for once in my life I avoided spoilers. Glorious box! I actually had my housemate send this picture to me while I was at work. A few hour...

And once again, I shift stories for NaNo. Hey, what can I say? I fell in love with the concept behind Scrimshaw again and am scrapping it and rewriting it from nothing but duuuuuuust. We'll see if I can finish it without being filled with hate this year.

Well, we're getting down to a month until kickoff, and of course I have a new NaNo rattling around. SO WHY NOT let's run with it and toss this out as another potential idea. First snippet of blah blah coming at you: Setting: Sci-fi masquerading as a fantasy western. Takes place on a planet with some odd attributes and a few native species. The planet has very limited ecosystems – primarily sea, plains, mountains, desert and temperate rainforest – other areas are usually fleeting for reasons covered later, except for arctic forests and plains. It is a very, very large planet, and highly rich in minerals, gems and metals, but there are a few problems. The planet received human settlers by accident. A colony ship got to close to it and went down on the surface; previously there had been warnings that the whole system was sort of a Bermuda triangle of space; sometimes you could pass through fine, other times you’d never be heard from again. The colony ship was attempting to outrun ...

So, I took a rabid detour into a different NaNo, so take a quick look at what might have been: At the moment, the characters are going to be split into two separate parties, which, for convenience's sake, are going to be labeled Team E and Team I, for reasons about to become obvious. Please note these are the end-story characters, and I plan to kill a loooot of people along the line. Team E Elke (before and after), Khosa, Durgin and Riktic Team I Inka, Iridi, Tannis and Vigil

Humans and orcs don’t have innate magic. Most sentient races have at least an affinity, but humans and orcs, except in special situations (like twins, who have a magic affinity for a lack of magic more than anything else), do not. If a human or orc (or one of the other races who is not strong enough innately) wants to be an “arcane” caster, they need to bond with a symbiotic, microscopic bacteria that changes the way their bodies react to magic on a molecular scale once it’s accepted. Because they don’t have innate magic to fend the magic-enhanced illnesses off, humans and orcs are very vulnerable to magic disease – like lycanthropy. Most common ways of picking up magic if you are human, orc, or not a strong enough magic user ~ Apprentice to a magic user. They can produce a blank strain to infect someone with, which is the most gentle way to go about it. Not generally the strongest in magic, they usually become wizards because wizards cast spells by yanking from the ...