do sheep dream of electric socks?

star for christmas tree, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

not blogged in a while - got a new gamecube memory card off ebay so been catching up with some smash bros. but been busy today :) got some new normal-sized (midi) hama beads for a change, they're huge! made lots of things for keyrings and maybe some christmas tree decorations, but will probably wait til after the craft fair to put them up on etsy.

also in the post this week, my stupendously expensive order from sock dreams ($101/£50 plus £12 customs :s) but it was totally worth it - check out the haul on my flickr. if you hadn't guessed i'm a bit obsessed by socks.

if you haven't seen this marching band on youtube, you need to. they are *awesome*. they make me wish i had kept up with the tenorhorn when i was 8 and somehow been transferred to an american school where this kind of stuff actually happens. along with acapella singing groups and spelling bees. why don't we have this stuff in england?! and for some proper music, check out the awesomely named upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start - nothing to do with chip music i promise, just some pretty sweet post-rock.

off to watch the new episode of pushing daisies now! (it's ace)

wiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

hama crazy, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

just to prove i haven't been slacking ;) a whole stack of mini hama beaded goodness waiting to be ironed - if you look hard you might be able to spot some new stuff in progress!

also, yay! because i finally got my wii set up and working for the first time in my new place and on my new (but very old, and very small) telly. the silly thing didn't have a remote so i had to go and buy one of those universal thingies to tune it in. but it's all working now which is good cos i just bought wind waker from cex - cheaper than phantom hourglass (waiting patiently for christmas) and i never managed to finish it as i bought it for my (now ex-) boyfriend who then ran off with the save file. so yay, a whole new lease of life for all my old gamecube games - smash bros was the first one in, and donkey konga will be getting an outing soon too :D now i just need to find my memory card :s

the other yay! i got it working! is for my new printer - which i got for absolutely nothing off a lovely person from the manchester branch of freecycle :) it's ace, instead of throwing stuff away, people just give stuff to people who don't mind coming to pick it up and take it off their hands! recycling and getting stuff for free is all good in my book. good timing too as i hope to have some zines ready for the craft mafia market in december...

65daysofstatic tomorrow night! woo!

game city and other such fun

storm troopers love the wii, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

so much fun it took me a week to recover! as it might you too after you read this mammoth of a blog post ;)

so, first things first - nottingham game city was the 25th to 28th october, nicely timed for my half term holiday, and it was ace. didn't make it to see the lost levels on thursday unfortunately but got the train nice and early on friday to arrive just in time for the lego star wars talk with jonathan smith from tt games. he showed us the new wii version of the complete saga, complete with wii lightsabre (tm) - a wiimote duct taped onto his son's red telescopic toy light sabre, showed us all the new stuff they've added to lego star wars 1 and 2 (including the ability to fly the millenium falcon round the pod racing circuit) and also talked a little bit about the upcoming lego indiana jones and lego batman games (on which ign mis-reported and got all the comics geeks up in arms - yes, including me). got to speak to him afterwards a little bit about educational gaming and how all the kids i've worked with absolutely love lego star wars and we love playing it with them because the co-op mode is perfect for teaching them how to work together (when they're not killing each other with force chokes that is, which i note features heavily in the new arcade modes). anyway, there was a star wars panel afterwards, mostly dominated by some bloke from SFX, i played around a bit on some of the indiecade games (cloud was fun until i kinda broke it), wandered over to the art of the game exhibition which was either smaller than i expected, or most of it was hidden away (flickr evidence suggests the latter) but there was some cool jon burgerman stuff there (he designed the game on exhibition in london last year). then it was 3pm, time for the unveiling of wii lego star wars: the complete saga on the mahusive giant screen in market square, and the chance to have a go on it! darth vader went on it first, against a random jedi (jedi won, not sure how staged that was), then they let the kids who had queued up have a go (all were absolutely loving it and hilarious to watch) and then i got to have a go against some random guy who was actually more enthusiastic about it than me (hard to believe) and i kicked his ass :) the controls were pretty easy to grasp, although i didn't get to try out the force moves cos aayla secura apparently doesn't have any, but she was pretty damn sweet with a light sabre. then i checked out the demo pods in the marquee they had in the square and spent the rest of the afternoon teaching some kid how to play guitar hero, which was fun!

saturday i had to get up *really* early to get the train to get there for 10 as not to miss the opportunity to drink tea and doodle with the aforementioned jon burgerman. ok, i don't drink tea, so i had hot chocolate instead and whilst i was waiting for them to go get some from the shop, i made some katamari damacy papercraft that had been left over from the wonderland craft session on thursday. met jon, who is lovely and did a sketch for my sister who is a huge fan, did some doodling, met a cool new friend called elsa (*waves* yay i wasn't the only girl gamer there on their own!) and was promptly late for the are you indie? talk with the also aforementioned indiecade people and alice taylor of the *also* aforementioned wonderland blog. who i got to meet afterwards and swap moo cards with, along with cory doctorow of boing boing fame! it was interesting actually, making the connection between indie gaming and the 'handmade' craft market in that you respond differently and accept different standards from them than you would to more commercial products - but also that indie games and webcomics can follow a similar distribution/monetizing model in that you can give something away for free, and still make enough back from your fans to keep going.

anyway, next was the big show. keita takahashi of katamari damacy fame did his keynote talk (which is best documented on the wonderland blog here) which was weird, funny, awkward, insightful and introduced by alice herself, giving a big shout out to etsy and the videogame craft phenomena which was nice! i haven't actually played much katamari, since i don't have a ps2 (yet) i've been limited to a quick go on someone else's psp, which allegedly is quite hard and not particularly true to the ps2 game (phew, i didn't just suck then), but it is a really fun concept, and the art and the story and the music and everything is just ace. keita ended the talk with a small demo of his new game nobi nobi boy (it means stretchy boy, amongst other things) which also looks kinda fun - any game in which you can give a pig a piggyback, eat it, fly up into the air and then poo it out and watch it float back to the ground has to be worth a go ;)

next up was a talk entitled 'my mum' by ste curran of thetriforce.com which was basically about how his mum used to love gaming back in the pre-atari days, fell out of love with it when the industry got a bit teenage boy-focussed (guns and shooting and driving and killing people) and how he got her back into it (and got less bored with gaming himself) through the wonder of animal crossing (aka the 2nd best game ever). and how games should be broad enough to cater to everyone and not just teenage boys. kinda preaching to the choir in places, well especially to me as i did an internal 'yay!' at every example of what gaming can and should be doing, but nice to hear someone in the actual games industry be sticking up for the gamers who aren't all about the fragging. and also, to be termed a 'hardcore' gamer, cos yes, i have been known to import games from japan (even if it was donkey konga) and although the types of games i like best are usually lumped in with gimmicks and casual games, i do care about them alot. so much so that i'm half tempted to try and get into the industry myself, but that's a whole nother story... rushed straight out of that talk (which i have to note, was in one of the smaller screens of the broadway arts cinema, with stripey two seater sofas instead of chairs) and into the ARG talk, with guy parsons masquerading as an unfortunately-unable-to-make-it dan hon
from mind candy (the people who did perplexcity of which i was a (small) part of). so not much i didn't know, but nice to see guy again, and reminded me why, despite the bitterness surrounding the later stages of PXC, args are actually really fun. then a quick dash to page 45, the best comic shop in the world, where i got issue #1 of suburban glamour (click for preview) which i read on the way home and is absolutely gorgeous (and brilliant) and back to manchester for...

arcade fire at the MEN with my mini-me (little sister)! which was *awesome*. how they managed to make a huge arena feel like the manchester academy i don't know, but i'm terribly grateful as i nearly cried when i couldn't get tickets to see them last time round at the apollo. pics on my flickr, but nowhere near as good as the ones my sister took (she is an amazing photographer). got a nifty lenticular poster of the neon bible too which is now up in my room and looks like the neon sign is lighting up when you see it from different angles. i love neon :) i wish i was in the arcade fire, they looked like they were having so much fun. and i wanted the singy girl's boots.

sunday time! the trains were rubbish on sunday so my mum graciously offered to road trip with me so she could go shopping whilst i geeked out. due to rubbish traffic over high peak i missed the first 20 minutes of from russia with love: the documentary the bbc made about the politics, rights wars and general hilarity surround the birth and rise of tetris. quite funny to see how serious it got over one little computer game, that turned out to pretty much be one of the key reasons nintendo, and the gameboy ever got so big in the first place. there was an interview with the guy who made it, alexey pajitnov, afterwards which was just brilliant - he is such a lovely lovely man, who incidentally, plays with his pipes to the left (yes i asked the silly question, everyone laughed, it needed to be done.) i also got to ask him later on which version of tetris he deems to be the most definitive, to which he said the gameboy one, which was nice cos i totally agree, and was bewildered at the weird version they had in the cabinet downstairs where a guy was attempting the tetris world record. there was also a smaller talk downstairs afterwards where the *real* tetris nerds got to geek out even more about versions and rules and whether the s or z block is better (alexey said s, i think i agree) and inbetween there was a giant queue full of people wanting to shake his hand and i think he was a little bit astonished all these people wanted to talk to him! i got my tetris cart signed and couldn't actually believe how excited i was about it.

after that it all felt a little bit of an anti-climax, but fortunately i had more fun in store in the form of my good friend john who was in town visiting and we hung out and watched neils' hole in my shoe song (very topical for me at the moment) on youtube, and on monday went into manchester for a spot of shopping and hanging around in arty cafe's and finding john a new hat (and a lovely one it was too) so yes, there's more pics up on my flickr if you want to go have a look, thank you if you've managed to keep reading this far, and i'll update with more recent news later in the week!

bling bling baby

the bling collection, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

well it's finally up! earrings here, necklaces here and here, and a prize(*) to anyone who can guess what nintendo game the sprites come from :)

i guess i'm making a big deal out of this little collection because despite everyone loving the classics, it's using the obscure sprites that i really like best. making real life pixellated versions of real life things. like the mario coins, they're something you would expect to have on jewellery, but pixellated. it's not a new idea in the slightest, i have to admit that this collection from mike & maaike was a big inspiration to start all this. i just got a load more hama beads, including lots of lovely transparent ones, which i fancy using more instead of the opaque colours, just because the light shines through. and that's what pixels are, light, in essence.

so hopefully it's a range that can be expanded on, i have plenty more cool sprites and ideas, just depends what the audience reaction is, because although it sounds all rubbish and corporate or whatever, there's not much point me making stuff that won't sell, because i won't wear it (not cos i don't like it, i love it - i'm just not a jewellery person), and it'll just add to all the other crap in my room. maybe i should make things that actually suit me. hmmm, something to work on, along with aforementioned boy-appropriate stuff...

p.s. watched the life aquatic with steve zissou last night - very bizarre but in a good way :) want to see the new sigur ros film too, but the cornerhouse don't seem to be screening it :(

(*) well, it might be a metaphorical (or even metaphysical) prize. unless i come up with any wacky ideas ;)

shiny new things

shiny new t-shirts, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

i couldn't decide which one i like the best so you got all three! just in time for game city later this week (which i just booked all my tickets for, yay!) here are a selection of my newest geekiest t-shirts.

i've wanted the gamegirl t-shirt ever since i saw it in HMV when i was about 15 and skint, and then never saw it again. a while ago i decided to search for it and came up with a sold listing on ebay. the seller didnt have any more but said they would get in touch with me if they found one, and to my surprise, a few months later, they did! it's a bit huge, weirdly since you'd expect it to be girl-sized, but i can sort that out with the aid of my trusty sewing machine :)

the robot one came from florida as part of my 'sorry you didn't get to come on holiday with us' swag from the family. which also included a harry potter cushion, a spiderman i-dog, the latest arcade fire album, neon bible (which is ace and i am going to see them on saturday woo!) and some 'candy from the 80's' which is a) american (their sweets are weird) and b) smells funny.

the google one makes more sense if you read scarygoround (specifically this comic here) - i don't hate google randomly, i use it way too much for that, but i do sympathise with erin's sentiment here. on one hand, access to a searchable index of everything ever is amazing, and that you can find out almost anything so quickly is really cool, but on the other, it (along with mobile internet) has changed the nature of pub quizzes for ever which saddens me.

in etsy news, i just realised i hadn't listed anything in ages, so put this lovely necklace up for sale. the bling collection deserves a blog post of it's own, so that'll come later in the week when the others are up too.

sleepy

my ibook, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

this is what i'm looking at right now. not blogged much the past few days because work has been crazy busy, so i've been really tired, and crafting has pretty much been non-existant. except for the stuff i've had to do for work that is (i'm a children's & youth work volunteer).

so instead of pretty crafty pictures you get to look at my computer. my lovely shiny ibook g4 :) because i've just spent the last hour or so playing about with my links list (psst, over there ->) which i thought i would explain a bit about. friends links are basically etsy/crafty type people i know who have blogs and make cool stuffs that you may or may not be interested in. astareal is my friend ses's new business and she makes gorgeous jewellery and custom made felted dreadlocks. lupin makes lovely little things out of felt, including fake moustache disguises, one of which i bought for my friend jo and unfortunately had to post out before i could take a pic to put up on here. she also makes cool recycled map stationery, which i also bought for my friend sarah, as we are both map junkies. we would love to own some of bombus's decoupaged furniture. i shall save some of the others for a bit of a spotlight some other day when i am feeling too lazy to make anything myself to blog ;)

crafty links is full of the kind of stuff that inspires me. you already know about etsy, but one of my favourite websites is knitty.com for the amazingly cool and *free* knitting patterns. if you've seen me lugging around a red bit of knitting, it's supposed to be this. craftster is a brilliant (but very fast-moving) forum full of ideas and tutorials. instructables is again with the really easy to follow tutorials and instructions, and is more wide-ranging and techy than just craft.

webcomics - i'm addicted to quite a few. it's my early morning ritual to go through them all as i'm still waking up. copper is my absolute favourite, but it's very infrequent so sign up for the email updates. diesel sweeties is probably the most relevant as it's all pixellated just like my craft, but if i had to choose a webcomic i would like to be in, it would be scarygoround. i just spent £40 on SGR books and this t-shirt, which i have been coveting for a while. my geekier compatriots will appreciate the humour (and idealistic but awkward romance) of xkcd.

and now we come to miscellanea. alice, who posts at wonderland, is a minor hero of mine (she stands next to john allison). her blog is all about videogames, the social internet, and she regularly trawls etsy for gaming craft, of which she was kind enough to feature some of my stuff a while ago. she is also going to be at game city in nottingham which i *really* want to go to, if just to see the godfather of tetris, mr alexey pajitnov himself. on a completely different subject, scarlet mist is an ethical ticket exchange - if you ever need a ticket for a sold out gig, or have a spare ticket you need to get rid of, i urge you to check this place out. i absolutely despise ticket touts (especially ebay ones), and this site has come through for me (as both a buyer and a seller) on many an occasion, and it will only get better the more people who use it. orisinal is the best place on the web for browser based games, and disposable media is the pdf mag i used to write and design for (check out issues 4-6 in the archives).

how on earth do you keep up with all these websites, i hear you ask? well that's the other thing i've been playing with today. OMEGAZOID always had an rss feed if you knew to look for it, but now we have a shiny new feedburner link (the little orange thing) to make it easy. if you look back at my screen in the pic, you'll see a program called newsfire that i use - it basically collects all the updates from all my favourite websites into the app so that i can see when people have posted without having to go to the site to check. it's very handy :) and now you can do it with OMEGAZOID! there's all sorts of readers, from downloadable programs, to widgets, to websites that do it for you, see what fits, and feel free to comment if you need any help :) alternatively, if all that sounds a bit too techy for you, you can also sign up to updates by email in the little form.

anyway i think that's far too much blogging for one night, this is obviously what happens when you let it all build up ;)

immensity

white light, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

i went to see oceansize tonight :) they were amazing (as usual). i don't think i have smiled, or rocked out, so hard in a *long* time. i like this picture because the light overwhelms you just like the music does when you see them live.

anyway, on my way home, i stopped off at moonlight to get some ice cream (damn you, rob, for introducing me to that place) and then i got the bus home. on said bus, i managed to achieve my best ever tetris high score! 199 lines! \o/ *one* away from the elusive level 20 just as we were pulling into parrs wood. but at that point the pieces weren't getting to the sides even on full whack, so i had no chance. i love tetris (but only the original gameboy classic cartridge version, none of these 'new improved' efforts).

so yes, a pretty good night :D

p.s. went to see control last night, very good but very sad.

p.p.s radiohead day tomorrow!!!

graffiti and riots in manchester

mushroom graffiti, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

took this pic on the way to the night & day in manchester, to see stars last wednesday - nice to know someone out there shares the nintendo love :)

stars were excellent (see some pics on my flickr) so much so that i bought their latest album afterwards and upon reading the liner notes, saw that they knew a chap called daniel handler who had written an introduction for them, and played accordion. daniel handler, being lemony snicket's real name. so of course, i *had* to find out if this was really real, and by this time, most of the people had left the gig and some of the band were putting away their instruments, so we went up and asked the bass player, who was lovely, and got chatting to the drummer too, and it turns out that stars, (one of my new favourite bands) know lemony snicket (one of my already favourite authors)! how cool is that?

following the gig theme, went to see maximo park with leah last night, (again, see some pics on my flickr) who were very very good, but not as good as last time i saw them, and not as good as stars either, but both those are very high standards to live up to, especially in a larger venue like the apollo. blood red shoes supported first, and were better than good shoes who supported second. not quite sure why there was a shoes theme going on but paul smith did have some rather shiny red ones on.

anyway, what else? well my bluetooth is fixed, woo! but i haven't been making much else other than my uketsy secret swap item, which has involved a lot of very slow knitting. tis all finished now but i can't put it up until my swappee has received it (so after the postal strikes then). the white ghost earrings have sold to a lovely lady in spain, so out of all the halloween stuff there's only the necklace left! have put some different ghost earrings up as well, and might put another badge up in a minute...

mooooooooooo

your moo minicards are inside*, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

my moo cards arrived! well they arrived a few days ago, but i've only just got around to taking photos of them. you'll have to click on the photo or my flickr to see what they actually look like ;)

i had loads of pictures to take of the haul from my mum, dad n sister's trip to florida, but the bluetooth on my ibook seems to have died, making file transfer less easy than usual :s

the rest of my halloween jewellery has just gone up on etsy if anyone is interested, although the stupid postal strikes have started up again, so i can't post anything out for a few days which is annoying.

stars tonight! and oxfam now, must be off...

it's like christmas came early

ghosties, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

the above is my entry for the uk etsy challenge o' the month, october's theme being halloween. boo (the big ghost pin, from super mario) sold within mere hours of being listed! yay :) the other will be going up soon.

anyway, that's not what i came to explode about - two of the most exciting things of the entire year have been announced today!

scott pilgrim 4 is finished! if you don't know what i'm on about check out www.radiomaru.com or read my article about it in Disposable Media issue 4. i love scott pilgrim. i met bryan lee o'malley 2 years ago at Page 45 in nottingham and i think he is probably my favourite comic writer artist dude. scott pilgrim has everything you would ever want in a comic, including videogame references ahoy, obscure indie music culture, gorgeous art and textures and lots of canadian snow. i almost can't wait except that....

radiohead have just announced their new album is being released next week! aside from the awesomeness of the distribution model, and the fact that i was alerted to this news by one of my favourite webcomics, talk about instant gratification! it was only last week that zane lowe was saying he wasn't gonna talk about them working on it, for fear of pressurising them, and now, not only have they announced that it's finished, and is being released, but you can download it *from next week*. also, it seems you can pretty much choose how much you think the download is worth. which makes sense really, cos anyone who wants it for free, is gonna get it for free anyway, and the band know that, but also, most radiohead fans (like me) love the band so much that even if it *is* legally available for free, we will happily pay up to £40 for the privilege of owning the 'discbox' set of gorgeously packaged vinyl and enhanced cd.

*sigh* it's a happy day in rachel land :)

back to on-topic stuff tomorrow ;)