All posts by Beth Lynn.

Tiny little review of a tiny little game: Love Letter

Last night, I had the opportunity to play a new game – it’s a short and sweet little game called Love Letter.  Michael and I played it while at dinner at the local Chinese buffet place – because why not have a little game with your dinner?

51Z6pBcHybLThe premise of Love Letter is simple – Princess Annette is pretty darn popular, and has quite a few suitors wanting to get a love letter to her.  However… she’s locked herself in a tower, and it’s your job to try and cozy up to the people closest to the princess in hopes of getting your letter to her.

61QKHd7QoBLThere’s a small deck of cards with various people from the castle, with different numbers on each card.  The number indicates how close that person is to the princess.  Each card also has a condition on it – for example, the Priest card makes it so another player has to show you their cards, and the Countess card has to be discarded if she’s caught with the King or the Prince in the same hand (scandalous!) – these conditions can make game play pretty interesting.

At the end of each round, whoever has the highest numbered card in their hand gets their letter to the princess, and they earn a token of her affection (which is a little tiny red cube).  Once a player earns enough tokens, they win the princess’s affection (and therefore the game).  The game can be played with 2-4 people, and the amount of tokens needed to win changes with the amount of people playing.  For two players, you need seven tokens to win.  It’s a pretty quick game to play, especially depending on what cards you end up with.

Michael and I managed to play through an entire game in a half hour – I was wiping the floor with him for a chunk of the game, as I kept getting lucky and getting the princess card (I mean, how much closer can you get to the princess when you’ve got the princess card?) – however, then Michael kept getting cards that made it that even once I’d gotten the princess card I’d have to discard it (and therefore lose the round, because the princess card’s condition? When discarded, you lose the round).  In the end, Michael swooped past me, captured the princess’s affections, and won.  I was so close, too – I was two tokens shy!

So, in short, this is a good little game to play if you’ve got a little bit of time to kill and want a small game to play – the entire game fits into a bag roughly the size of a dice bag, and doesn’t take terribly long to play.  It’s also pretty entertaining, too, and is pretty inexpensive to boot!  You can find it here on Amazon.

So, in short, The Crafty Nerd’s verdict?  Pretty darn awesome, and I suggest you give it a try!

 

 

Embarking on a new cosplay project!

Or, as I’ve been titling this project in my head, “How To Turn Yourself Into A Dragon”.

Toothless is best dragon.

Toothless is best dragon.

Yes, I’m going to try to put together a Toothless costume for the 2014 convention season.  I may even start as early as tomorrow.  And it’ll be my first time assembling a costume this complicated, especially without any sort of pattern!  I’m excited.  And kinda nervous.

I’m no stranger to the world of do-it-yourself cosplay.  While I don’t exactly have the skills for super frilly over-the-top costumes, I know where my strengths lie, and I work with that to make costumes that will look good, even being simple.  Like my Pinkie Pie costume, or my Fourth Doctor costume.  And I have done work without patterns before – Pinkie Pie’s skirt was done completely freehand.  I’ve also done three sailor fukus with no pattern (yes, not only did I dress as Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter, but I also dressed as my own fan character, embarrassing as it is to admit), and an entire Princess Peach costume as well – with varying levels of success.  I know what I’m about to enter into – this isn’t unfamiliar territory.

cute_black_dragon_hoodie_by_calgarycosplay-d31u6dkAnd I do have some visuals to work off of.  I’ve seen this around the internet in a number of places – this is one of them, as well as on DeviantArt – and while I’d love to buy one, I can’t really justify spending $300+ on a sweatshirt.  (And having made a Toothless plush myself, I know that a fair bit of work went into it, I’m quite sure, but is it really $300 worth of work?)  I’d much rather make one myself, too.  I had a blast making Toothless, and I’d love to do something similar, something on a slightly bigger scale, something fun.  And not to mention pretty darn recognizable, especially for the summer conventions, with How To Train Your Dragon 2 coming out in June.

So, how the heck am I going to approach this?  How am I going to start?

Determined dragon is determined.

Determined dragon is determined.

With determination, that’s how!  Heh. I figure I’ll start with stuff I’ve already got – I’ll be using the pattern from the Toothless plush for inspiration on how to construct the head and tail.  I’ll also take advantage of ready-made stuff – such as a pre-made sweatshirt and pair of sweatpants.  And the pictures posted of the sweatshirt give me quite a few ideas of how to construct things.  From there, I can construct Toothless’s little… head tentacles?  Not-quite-horns?  You guys know what I mean.  Anyhow.  I can construct a way to add those to a sweatshirt hood, and then add hand covers and wings and a tail.  (And maybe foot covers, for the sweatpants, if I can swing it.)  The most laborious part will likely be the scales – I have no idea how I’m doing those yet, but those aren’t my main concern anyway.  Those’ll likely be the last things I put on.

But yes.  I am going to make a Toothless costume.  And it will either be epic, or be an epic failure.  I’m leaning more towards epic, myself.  And of course, as I build the costume, I’ll keep everyone updated.  I know I have a lot of fellow Toothless fans who read the blog, and I want to share the process with you guys!

So, stay tuned – Project How To Make Yourself Into A Dragon will start soon.

 

 

Anime Music Videos of Yesteryear

I freaking love anime music videos.  I remember going around to people’s dorm rooms to watch ones they’d downloaded, in the days before YouTube, and keeping a collection of my favorites burned to CD to free up precious disk space on my computer. (Many of these were back from the days when all I had for hard drive space was 12 gigabytes, spread across three hard drives… my cellphone has more storage space than that now!) These are just a handful of my favorites – not all of them are available anymore, and a handful of them, including a certain Pikachu-themed video some of my friends might remember that’s done to a Mindless Self Indulgence song, aren’t exactly family friendly – and I do try to keep it family friendly here, for the most part – so here, enjoy some anime music videos from days gone by!

Jinnai and the Bugrom

I first saw this one at Otakon back in 2005, during an AMV competition.  The song promptly got stuck in my head for the next week.  It was really well done – I remember scrambling to find some paper to write down the name of the video, so I could find it when I got home, haha.

Evangelion: Engel

This is one a friend of mine showed me back in 2001 – I was in awe of how amazing it was, especially with the meticulous attention to lip syncing and everything… it was great!  Plus, the whole video is just… awesome.  Definitely one of my most favorite videos.

No need for Polka!

Because what’s an anime music video roundup without some Tenchi Muyo done to Weird Al? 😀

Mini Goddess – Everybody Have Fun

I think this may have been my first introduction to Oh! My Goddess ever.  I was… mildly curious, after seeing this – I knew it wasn’t the actual series, but I was all “hmm, just what the heck is that show about?”  (Interesting tangent – the Oh! My Goddess movie was the first DVD I ever owned.  I still have it, too!)

Sailor Moon on Jerry Springer!

What else can be said?  It’s Sailor Moon.  On Jerry Springer.  Thanks to Weird Al.  (Stick around and watch to the very end – there’s a pretty amusing mention of Save Our Sailors, a campaign to bring back Sailor Moon that many of the younger Sailor Moon fans may not remember (or even know about).  SOS was a little out in left field, to say the least…

Daft Punk – One More Time

And this last one is actually an official anime music video – way back in the early part of the last decade (yikes, I feel so old just saying that!), Daft Punk had an entire anime movie made for their album Discovery, and this is the first part.  The movie, for those curious, is Interstella 5555 – The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. (yes, lots of fives)  It’s really, really good, especially for what’s essentially an anime with no speaking roles.

Hope everyone enjoyed this peek into yesteryear – if anyone else has any favorite anime music videos they want to share, post them in the comments!

The Crafty Nerd goes to the renfaire!

I absolutely love renaissance faires.  It’s so much fun to get dressed up in costume and pretend you’ve slipped back in time to the Renaissance days… 028

…just like Bryan and I did last weekend, at the Ohio Renaissance Festival!  Despite me coming down with a cold, we still had lots of fun.  We watched some stage swordfighting, perused the wares of many a shop, and got to enjoy my favorite part of any renaissance faire – jousting.

079

 

Yes, the Knights of Valour were there at the Ohio Renaissance Festival, including a couple of favorites from the TV show Full Metal Jousting.  They do real, full-contact jousting – it’s really exciting to watch!  (And a little frightening when someone gets violently unhorsed…)

While sitting at the joust, waiting for the queen to arrive, I happened to see a rather familiar pair of people in the stands…

031Yes, even the Doctor and Amy Pond were in attendance at the joust!

040I do love finding the Doctor at renaissance faires… at last year’s Ohio faire, I saw a Tenth Doctor wandering around outside the castle walls, waiting for the faire to open with the rest of the crowd.  I also saw a fair amount of people wearing Doctor Who t-shirts, heheh.

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos I took at the faire, here’s a gallery of them all!  I will say, my new camera did a very good job of taking good photos from a fair distance.  I think this was a good investment for my blogging, that’s for sure.

 

 

The new scooter: a story told in photos

For those of you who haven’t been following the Facebook page, or who haven’t had to put up with me in person the past couple of days, I’ve been sick.  Not super sick, not “oh crap I should go to urgent care” sick, but sick enough to be whiny and spaced-out.  BUT.  I know my loyal readers are looking for something, anything, to read – so, I give you the story of my new scooter – mostly told in photos.

2013-09-20 13.13.43

Hey, look, it’s the scooter truck!  I wonder what could be in those giant boxes that say Genuine Scooter Company on them.

Continue reading →

A letter to Scooterlou

2012-05-05 11.41.58

Dear Scooterlou,

It’s been a good nearly two years together.  We’ve been through a lot of good times, a couple of bad times, and one really nasty time (I’m pretty sure I shielded you from the road that one time we were in an accident together), and rode 1,730ish miles together (give or take).  You’ve taken good care of me, and I’m pretty sure I’ve taken good care of you – aside from covering you in stickers, anyway.  And that nasty spill on College Ave.  You’re my first scooter, and I love you to death.

But… y’see, I think I’ve outgrown you.

I know, I know, you’ll say “but come on, you haven’t gotten any taller!  I’m short and dainty and perfect for you!”  But over the past twoish years, I’ve been learning about what I really need in a scooter.  I need something that, while being a 49cc scooter, can go up hills without sounding like it’s having an asthma attack.  Something that can go from zero to useful in a short amount of time at a stop light.  Something that doesn’t piss off the drivers behind me because I’m slowly making my way up to 35 miles an hour after turning onto a new road.  I also want something a little bigger, something a little taller, something a little zippier, something a little more reliable.  (And I’m not saying you’re not reliable!  I am, however, saying that you have been in the shop a couple times over the past two years, and I’ve heard Honda Metropolitans have certain things that get problematic as they age.)

I’m getting a Buddy tomorrow, Scooterlou.  And you’re going to end up finding a new home.

Continue reading →

Things that The Crafty Nerd has been up to…

I know, sometimes I’m not very good at this “regular posting” thing.  Especially during the school year.  I’ve got to kick my own butt about it, and remind myself “hey, you have people actually maybe wanting to read what you write, so you have to write something”.  Even if it’s just something little and silly like that pony creator I posted a few weeks ago, it shows you guys I’m still alive, right?

Well, here’s what I’ve been up to that’s keeping me from posting regularly…

Continue reading →

“I’m not that crafty,” he says.

My husband, who I’ve affectionately dubbed Mr. Crafty Nerd, claims he’s not crafty.
Mister Crafty Nerd, pondering his allegedly uncrafty status...

Mister Crafty Nerd, pondering his allegedly uncrafty status…

“I’m not a designer or anything,” Bryan says.  “I’m not crafty.”  But as you peek into his office, you can see some evidence of his creativity.  There’s a bookshelf that’s been turned into a standing desk.  A Nerf gun that’s been disassembled, painted, and reworked to look very steampunky.  Costume elements from his steampunk costume, worn at Gencon.  A backlit monitor stand, with LEDs adding some ambient light to his computer setup.  If you wake up his tablet, you’ll see a background with a space-commander-esque insignia and a widget proclaiming “Welcome Commander Hoey”.
Sure, he may not consider himself crafty in the conventional sense, but he’s definitely a creative guy.

Quick nerdy treat: General Zoi’s Pony Creator!

ponyWithBackgroundI won’t lie – I may have just spent a half hour making this little pony.  While I should have been downing coffee and preparing for work.  Her name is Raspberry.  Don’t judge.

For those of you of the pony persuasion, you can find General Zoi’s updated pony creator here – not only does it have more options to choose from, but you can change the angle of your pony’s head, play with new poses, and much more!  I could have spent a bunch more time playing with it, and seeing what accidentally awkward positions I could create (there was one pose where the pony’s head was in a ridiculously unnatural position, based on how I’d turned her head), but alas – work calls.

Go play with the pony creator for a little bit!  It’ll make your day better, I promise. 🙂

 

I have a t-shirt problem.

Yes, everyone, I have a t-shirt problem.  And it might be getting out of control, heh.

2013-08-26 17.15.36It hit me earlier this week, when I got this new t-shirt in the mail – found it on Ript during the last day of GenCon, ordered it when I got home, and promptly took a picture of it upon its arrival.  As I was neatly arranging my new t-shirt under Toothless, I thought of the many other t-shirts I owned, and thought it might be neat to pull them all out and see just how many awesomely nerdy t-shirts I had.  And so I did.

Continue reading →