anonymityblaize

Hello all! I have been terribly bad at the old eljay of late as things have been very busy busy in the real world, but thankfully in a good and exciting way, which makes for a nice change! I'm a bit more active these days over on tumblr and twitter so if you wanna come find me there, please do!

I'm off for family holiday shenanigans in foreign climes, but I'll be back in the new year with lots of exciting craft projects!

In the meantime, have a picture of superheroes celebrating Christmas!

I have no idea why I've been so reluctant to post about this, as I've been inwardly flailing for quite some time now. I guess I'm just not very good at bragging when I really have something to brag about. Anyway, enough faffing about...

The upshot is that my Forbrydelsen cross stitch pattern is going to be in The Killing Handbook: Forbrydelsen Forever!

It's exciting enough that one of my patterns is going to be in a book, but it was all made even more fabulous by the fact that Emma Kennedy is writing the book (and I loooooooove her) and Emma Kennedy emailing me was enough to have me flailing around like a mad thing. Then she said this on twitter and I just about keeled over from too much squee.


As if that wasn't awesomesauce enough, Emma Kennedy, glorious human being that she is, showed my Sarah Lund cross stitch to the wonderful Sofie Grabol who plays her, and let me know that she "absolutely adore[s] it."

And then, blog-reader, I died of over fan-girling. I am typing this from beyond the grave. I am on the astral plane of people who like liking things, with my ghostly arms permanently stuck in Kermit-like wibblyness and my voice about three octaves higher than usual.

I think I may have perhaps slightly given the impression of how excited and chuffed I was. So here ends my not-so humblebrag. If you're a fan of the original-strength Danish version of the Killing think about buying the book when it's out on November 15th!


And in unrelated news about actually related persons, my mother is still the coolest Mum ever, and I clearly got my awesome from her. Not only did she send me this handmade Tatooine collage as my birthday card, but she has just started art school. I'm still having trouble imagining Mama Blaize as a fresher, but I'm ridiculously proud of her.

My attempt to be a more outgoing person on the internet hit a rough patch and I backslid into lurkerdom again. I'm annoyed at myself for letting my social anxiety infect my online life, but I'm even more annoyed by how much stuff is old news now that I never got around to commenting on. Avengers, TDKR, the Olympics, the Paralympics, Brave, Leverage, Doctor Who, the fact that I find myself swept along with a great swathe of fandom into having feelings about freaking Teen Wolf - these are all topics I'd usually be sharing my opinions on, but it all feels like it's far too late now. Internet time is like dog years or something.

But I'm determined to keep trying to kick this lurking habit. So here's a very organized attempt at shaming myself into doing a whole bunch of stuff I've been putting off out of some weirdly misplaced stage fright.

Things I need to post here:

• Exciting stuff about my Forbrydelsen cross stitch
• Ron Swanson cross stitch & the pattern if anyone wants it
• SHIELD and Hawkeye t-shirts
• Batman sweatshirt
• Community cross stitches and their patterns
• Start on the 100 things posts (approximately eleven million years after averyone else finished theirs)
• Mama Blaize's latest piece of awesomeness
• Tardis t-shirt
• The t-shirts I call my "internet menagerie"
• Post another picspam (I think next up on the schedule should be "James Macavoy inexplicably climbs things" or possibly a picspam of hugging, I forget which. Or may just end up doing another smoking picspam, or one of hot wet men, beacause apparently I have about a bajillion pics waiting around for sequels to those!)
• Start commenting on people's journals again (I miss you all and am so sorry I've not been saying anything!)
• The armour hoodie I am working on just now that will probably be finished by the time I have posted all these darn things!

Things I need to do elsewhere on the interets:

• Put some stuff in my tumblr queue that isn't just reblogs
• List some cross stitch patterns on etsy, and put up a listing for custom cross stitch patterns and custom cross stitching
• Actually tweet instead of just lurking
• Update places I keep forgetting about like blogger and facebook
• Finish some more t-shirts designs and upload them to cafe press
• Make a hairdresser's appointment so I don't have to phone the salon
• Work out what service you need to use if you need to get an old paper driving license updated to a photocard, but you also need to change your name and your address at the same time
• Catch up on replying to comments and messages

Extra bonus bullet point that is a side effect of both these lists:

• Take decent pictures of things that are finished but as yet are sadly unphotographed and shared

They are actually longer lists than I had anticipated. Oh well. I have publicly admitted my failings as a denizen of fandom and the internet at large and can only endeavour to do better in the future! Onwards! Excelsior! Have a gorgeous gif as an apology for all this moaning!

I am going to give my thoughts on the Avengers time to percolate until it's out in the US and I can't perpetrate accidental spoilers. But I think it's fair to say that the capslock of squee will be out in force for that entry. I'm off to see it again tonight in fact. It's that good. But I'll shut up now.

Instead, I'll post a little piece of Thor and Loki craftage that I made ages ago and kept forgetting to post until now. I think this is officially Geek Lamp 3: <Insert terrible Asgardian pun here.>


( More pics... )

A few years ago Mister Blaize and I made a decision to get those nifty Cineworld unlimited cards. It's turned out to be a very smart decision financially, considering how many movies we go see. But it does occasionally lead to crazypants decisions like going to the cinema three times in the space of a week, the same week as we also went to see a Cirque du Soleil show. So my brain entirely melted from cultural over stimulus and I had to hide with a duvet over my head.

They were four very different experiences though, and I feel like I ought to be able to write a post on each one, but my blogging-fu has weakened due to lack of use of late, so the 100 things challenge is a very well timed bandwagon for me to jump upon. I think I'm going to do 100 things that I get ridiculously overenthusiastic about, and break it down into tens - 10 songs, 10 books , 10 movies etc. etc. Join me, won't you?




{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

So, some brief thoughts on my week of too many things, as a warm up exercise.

Cirque's Alegria was as stunning as Cirque shows always are. Especially a pair of female contortionists who were so flipping bendy I sometimes was confused about what body part was where. On the cinema front, Headhunters was totally not what I was expecting, in a totally good way. It's a Norwegian thriller co-starring that dude who plays Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones with that name I can't spell and can't be arsed to google right now. If you like a good art-crime/chase movie then see it if you can. Battleship on the other hand, I'd avoid like the plague. It makes the Transformer movies look like masterpieces. It really is as bad as the reviews are saying. I love me some Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgaard and it wasn't even worth it for them. Rihanna (Riannha? Rhianna? Another name I can't be done with spell checking.) was the best thing about this movie, and put in a performance actually resembling a human being, unlike any one else, which was really weird. Also, this a movie about ships that doesn't actually understand how water works which is beyond distracting. I went in with low expectations and was still disappointed, that is how bad this film is. I suffered, you shouldn't have to. And then at the other end of the spectrum was Cabin in the Woods - probably the most fun I've had in the cinema in a good long while. It wasn't as scary as I'd expected (I went in pretty blind, which is how I'd recommend seeing it - the less you know the more fun it is, I would imagine) but it more than made up for it in demented creativeness and a joyful reveling in horror movie tropes and cliches. I'll shut up about it now lest I end up in spoiler territory. Though I will add that I now reeeeeeally want Hollywood to wake up and cast Fran Kranz in more things. Although I do think that of a lot of Whedon alums.

I've been lax in posting pics of my Leslie Knope cross stitch, but I have managed to stick to taking the pictures every day. So here's a huge clump of them all in one. Should have her all finished and framed and ready to post tomorrow, which feels very appropriate with Parks & Rec being back tonight. I'm very excited - it's the first time since I started watching Parks that it and Community have been on at the same time. So I'll probably have another overload from awesome - It's terrible; I'm turning into some Victorian lady with the vapours. At this rate I'll explode by the time the Avengers have assembled! Anyway, here's some Leslie pics: ( Lots of pics under the cut... )

And finally, in this post of ill-fitting-together things, the Magic Mike trailer. I am simultaneously mocking it and also thinking it looks awesome. And I can already anticipate how absolutely ridiculous its fandom will be.

Scotland appears to have skipped spring entirely and jumped straight into summer. It's very confusing, but quite nice. The sunlight seems to have lifted my mood, but I still haven't got back into the swing of this regular posting malarky.

Saw the Hunger Games this week and thought it was amazing. I totally ugly-sobbed my way through the bit that seems to be making everyone cry. Jennifer Lawrence put in an incredible performance and I'm looking forward to watching her career go from strength to strength. And I am loving Woody Harrelson's career resurgence. I haven't read the books and given the massive pile of stuff I want to read that I haven't got to yet, I don't think I'll manage to get round to them for quite a while. Since that means I can't dive into the Hunger Games fandom without the risk of getting spoiled, can anyone answer a few questions I've got?

Under a cut to protect anyone who's not seen the film yet...( Read more... )

My Leslie Knope cross stitch is coming on in leaps and bounds. And I've been pretty disciplined about taking a picture every day which I'm quite chuffed about as I intend to do that with all my projects and never normally manage any better than a pic every few days. So here's how she's looking... ( under another cut... )
 

Hello, internets. I went into lurker mode for a bit there. I tend to do that when I'm a bit stressed out. Sorry if anyone's been expecting comments or anything from me, but I'm getting back in the swing of it now. I've still got a backlog of crafty stuff I need to post, and I really need to go on a new icon hunt at some point soon (I needs me some parks & rec and avengers icons stat!), but I'm going to ease myself back into the whole actually-participating-in-fandom thing by showing y'all the new cross stitch project I've been working on while I've been grumpy and brooding offline.

So, when I'm done I should have something like this:


It's moving on pretty quickly, but I wish I'd started this much sooner so I could use it as evidence of Leslie Knope's awesomeness that I would cross stitch her so I could persuade everyone to vote for Leslie in f_march_madness. But instead I'll just leave this here and hope you'll take it to heart!

Everyone's seen Kristen Bell having the world's most adorable emotional breakdown, yes?

Well, if you haven't...


And in honour of that adorableness, have a picspam of cute people and cute things. Cos we can always do with some cuteness.

( No apologies for teeth-melting sweetness under the cut )

P.S. I will get around to all those picspams of hottness I promised at some point soon!

So, lessons learnt since posting my Inception cross stitch o' doom:

1.) I need to learn to pick better preview images of crafts projects - the number of people who commented to say they initially thought it was just a print of the poster or something implies to me that some people might have scrolled on by never noticing it was made of cross stitch. Which is oddly complimentary but simultaneously frustrating!

2.) Apparently I'm a really fast cross stitcher. This is a revelation given that I was the worst and the slowest at everything in home ec classes at school. I totally Britta'ed that subject. Just a late bloomer when it came to crafts and such, I suppose.

3.) If I don't pay attention I will type "thabks" rather than "thanks" every single time. Every. Single. Damn. Time.

4.) Cross stitch pattern programs are evil. Why does each program need its own file type thus making all of them incompatible with each other? Because they are bastards, that's why. I kinda knew this already but reason #5 made me face this again...

5.) At least two people out there are foolhardy brave enough to want to try this for themselves, which is always very exciting to me. So exciting that I don't even mind doing battle with technology to get something shareable! So here, have a pattern. Do with it as you will, but credit or a link back here would be appreciated, and I'd love to see the results if anyone does stitch it!

( Click for the pattern! )