Gen Con 2024: t-minus 8 days

Posted on July 23, 2024
by Beth Lynn

Gen Con 2024 is a little over a week away, and I feel like maybe I’m actually ready for the con! (Well, mostly ready, anyway.)

Costuming: a change of plans

It’s not entirely unheard of that I change my mind about costumes for Gen Con, but I don’t usually change my mind with a week to go until the convention. 😅 In my last post, I vaguely referenced recycling a costume for this year’s Gen Con – the plan there was to go as Ezri Dax instead of Jadzia, since I’m a lot closer in height and body shape to Ezri than I am to Jadzia. (Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia, is six feet tall – which I didn’t realize until I heard her mention it on an episode of The Delta Flyers recently. For comparison, I’m a little over five feet tall, so I was more of a mini-Jadzia when I cosplayed her in 2019, haha.)

However, drawing on all those Trill spots by hand is a labor-intensive process, and I don’t entirely have the spoons at the moment to wrangle creating temporary tattoo versions of Trill spots, so I decided to go with something easier: I’m going to dress as Ëlinyr, possibly for all four days! (She’s definitely got a big enough wardrobe to make that happen.)

Granted, Ëlinyr’s looking a little different than she was last time I talked about her much on the blog…

During the 2023 season of Kishar, due to some fey nonsense involving one of her partners, Ëlinyr ended up feytouched! Which involves some fun new makeup, horns, and a lot of body glitter, haha. If you’re at Gen Con and want to say hi, the easiest way to find me is to look for the elf ears, red horns, and red swirlies on my face. (I’ll likely be wearing a different red dress each day, too.)

Other convention prep: business cards and badges

I mentioned in my last post that I ordered some new business cards – they came in a few weeks ago, and I love how they turned out! Here’s Shallan from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series showcasing the old business card with the new one:

Hopefully I’ll end up handing out lots of the new business cards this year – I want to get back into the swing of regularly posting in the blog, and who knows, maybe I’ll make some contacts at Gen Con this year that’ll result in some new content for the blog.

I also dug out something I originally bought to hand out at Gen Con 2020, but we all know how 2020 went – so these ended up languishing in a drawer in my desk for most of the past five years… until now:

Badge ribbons! Almost everyone at Gen Con loves collecting badge ribbons, and right after Gen Con 2019, I made these so I could hand them out at Gen Con 2020 as part of a “here’s what I’m cosplaying as today, come find me!” thing I was going to do.

Well, it’s four years later than I’d planned, but I’m still excited to trade these babies with other people who are handing out badge ribbons at Gen Con (like the person in the Fans of Gen Con group who made ribbons featuring the pattern of the old Indiana Convention Center carpet) or hand them out to folks who ask nicely! If you’re going to Gen Con as well and want a ribbon of your own, keep an eye out for my “That’s me!” badge ribbon at the top of my ribbon collection.

My Gen Con schedule

I’m not signed up for quite as many things as I’ve done in past years, but that’s okay – I’d rather avoid overwhelming myself by packing my schedule with events. Here’s what I’ll be up to at Gen Con, for those curious:

Thursday, August 1st

11:00 am: Bradley Beaulieu Book signing (if you haven’t read any of Bradley Beaulieu’s books, they’re great – I highly recommend the Song of the Shattered Sands series!)
2:00 pm: Cross-Stitch: Make a Dice Tray

Friday, August 2nd

1:00 pm: Cross-Stitch: Intermediate and Advanced Stitching

Saturday, August 3rd

3:35 pm: Different Drummer Belly Dancers at the Costume Contest Pre-Show (I’m really excited about this – this is my friend Margaret’s belly dancing troupe, and my work friend Katie sang on a recording that DDBD will be dancing to in the costume contest pre-show!)
5:00 pm: Mark Gunn: Sci Fi Irish Drinking Songs in a Kilt

Sunday, August 4th

11:00 am: Star Trek: Into The Unknown Learn to Play

Aside from that, I plan on wandering around the convention center in costume, looking for awesome cosplays to take pictures of (with permission, of course!), and braving the Exhibit Hall to visit some of my favorite vendors and artists, and find new enamel pins to add to my collection. I’m also considering bringing the Sailor Moon quilt I bought in 2019, pieced in 2020, and quilted in 2022 to show off to Quiltoni at the Craft Hackers booth, since I bought the kit from her and am really proud of how it turned out!

I’m also going to try to do daily coverage of Gen Con like I’ve done in the past, in addition to the usual cosplay and haul posts – who knows, maybe I’ll camp out at the Starbucks at the JW Marriott with my laptop and write posts there like I did in 2013. I’m really excited about going back to Gen Con after so long – hopefully I’ll run into some of you there!

What I’m Watching: 2023

Posted on December 26, 2023
by Beth Lynn

After I wrote that post about the Doctor Who specials, I ended up wandering through the blog’s TV review archives – and realized I’d completely forgotten about the What I’m Watching series I did for a little while in 2019.

Then I realized I used to have a lot more variety in my TV watching in the past. (Then again, before 2020, my life was a lot less of a wreck.) I still watch a lot of TV, but there’s not much variety in my TV watching lately as there was in the past.

Do you want to know what I watched in 2023?

Star Trek. Lots and lots of Star Trek. (Plus a little bit of Babylon 5, and a bunch of Stargate SG-1.)

Let me explain why TV watching this year has been a never-ending stream of mid-late ’90s/early 200os sci-fi and just about all the Star Trek I can get my hands on. (I apologize in advance, as this is gonna get rambly.)

When I’m not doing well, I tend to gravitate towards TV shows I’m already familiar with and know that I love. (You might have picked up on that from that Doctor Who post I wrote.) It’s like wrapping up in a comforting blanket or slipping into a favorite sweatshirt. I know what to anticipate. And for the past year, my TV hyperfocus has been Star Trek on a pretty much endless loop, broken up occasionally by Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1. It might be boring to others, watching the same thing over and over, but for me, it’s calming. It helps me unwind after a rough day, or calm down after a meltdown. (Yeah, that’s a new mental health thing I’ve been dealing with since the end of the summer – getting so overwhelmed with life that I just break down. I guess that’s what happens when I try to go from being an attic-dwelling hermit to trying to live my life like it’s 2019 without gradually trying to re-enter the world.)

Sure, I know that certain episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Discovery will make me break down in tears every time I watch them, without fail, but I’ve also watched both of those shows enough times that I know when those episodes are coming up, and I can let myself get weepy if I want or just skip over the episode if I’m not in a good headspace.

And since 2022 was pretty much obliterated by grief, and 2023 was spent trying to figure myself out again, I needed something comforting to watch at the end of the day to help me unwind from work, or distract me from post-LARP burnout when I got home from a long weekend at Kishar. (yes, I actually went to just about every Kishar game this year! But that’s a story for another post.)

So, I ended up gravitating to the most comforting show I could think of:

Star Trek, in all of its incarnations. (Well, almost all of them, anyway. I have… feelings about Enterprise.) I mean, come on, are you surprised? It’s me. If you know me, you know I love Star Trek.

I spent the majority of the year making my way through the Delta Quadrant with Janeway, keeping Deep Space Nine running during the Dominion War with Sisko, navigating the distant future with Michael Burnham, exploring strange new worlds with Captain Pike (and at one point, singing about strange new worlds), and dealing with the less exciting parts of starship life with Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, T’Lyn and Rutherford. (I think T’Lyn is my new favorite Vulcan.) It’s exactly what I needed this year: familiar faces and stories, and some new adventures thanks to Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.

And for the shows I watched that weren’t Star Trek, they were close enough that they’re enjoyable and comforting, even if I wasn’t familiar with them – like Stargate SG-1, which I watched for the first time ever earlier this year. It had the feel of late ’90s/early ’00s sci-fi that I love so much, and I found myself really enjoying the story and getting attached to the characters. Stargate SG-1 is a show I’d been meaning to watch for years – I’d seen scattered episodes on TV before, and it seemed pretty cool, but I’d never gotten around to watching it until earlier this year, when I tore through all eleven seasons pretty quickly. I need to re-watch it at some point, as right now the big thing that stuck in my head is the characters, and not so much the plot. I love Teal’c, who I nicknamed the show’s resident Vulcan Klingon. I love O’Neill being O’Neill. And I especially love how Ben Browder and Claudia Black found a home on the show after Farscape got canceled. Vala is sassy as heck, and I love her for it.

Babylon 5 is another show that fits into the comfort watching category. I love the story. I love the characters. The background music is… a thing, and the graphics are a little rough in places, but overall, Babylon 5 ranks right up there with Star Trek when it comes to my favorite TV shows. I love how we get to see a little slice of everyone’s life aboard the station.I love seeing G’Kar and Londo’s interactions evolve over the course of the show. Londo himself has one heck of a character arc, and he’s one of my favorite characters in particular. I love pretty much all the main characters, and am sad that about half the main cast passed away, many of them at a relatively young age. (It’s such a big thing that it’s been referred to as the “Babylon 5 curse“.)

So yes, this year was the year of comforting sci-fi TV shows. Hopefully in 2024 I’ll be able to branch out into watching other TV again – there’s certainly a lot of shows I need to catch up on, like Good Omens, The Witcher, and Wheel of Time. Maybe next year I’ll be able to properly bring back What I’m Watching, and not have it be Star Trek for months on end. 😁

Doctor Who: coming back to an old favorite

Posted on December 19, 2023
by Beth Lynn

For long-time followers of the blog, you might remember that I used to be a pretty big Doctor Who fan. I eagerly awaited each new episode. I bought Doctor Who goodies at Gen Con. I knit both variants of the Fourth Doctor’s scarf and cosplayed as the Fourth Doctor for Gen Con 2013. I listened to Doctor Who-inspired music. I even had my very own sonic screwdriver! (It turned into an actual screwdriver, which was pretty awesome.)

But by the time Peter Capaldi stepped into the TARDIS as the Twelfth Doctor back in 2014, I wasn’t enjoying the show as much as I used to. After one of the original showrunners for new Doctor Who left in 2010, the show lost some of its magic, and at the end of the Eleventh Doctor’s tenure, I decided maybe I needed a break from Doctor Who. I didn’t watch any of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctor’s episodes, and only started a rewatch of the Tenth Doctor sometime last summer when I was missing Rana pretty fiercely. I joined the Whovian Running Club in memory of Rana, too, but aside from that, I didn’t really get into Doctor Who much. I was really excited to hear that Jodie Whittaker was the Thirteenth Doctor, as I’d been wondering if the Doctor would ever regenerate as a woman, and that almost got me back into watching it… but not quite.

But then I heard that David Tennant was coming back to the show… as the Fourteenth Doctor.

David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor standing in front of the TARDIS, looking at his hands with an almost confused expression on his face.

… wait, the Doctor’s never had the same face twice – what’s all this about?!

Now that… that got my attention. (That and hearing that Russell T. Davies was coming back as a showrunner.) The Doctor never had the same face twice. Never. I may not have been super invested in Doctor Who over the past decade, but hearing that the Doctor regenerated with the same face he had a couple of regenerations ago? That got me interested. I needed to watch the 60th Anniversary specials.

(It also didn’t hurt that it’s now a lot easier to watch Doctor Who than it was when I first got into the show. It’s on freakin’ Disney+ now! Disney and the Doctor still breaks my brain.)

I waited to watch the specials until all three were released – because honestly, I’m more of a binge-watcher these days than I used to be, and I didn’t want to wait between episodes. I wanted to get the whole story in one fell swoop. I was a little trepidatious going into it – almost ten years had passed since I last watched any new Doctor Who episodes. I know I’d missed a lot. Was I going to be woefully confused as to what was going on?

Donna and the Fourteenth Doctor in front of the TARDIS, over a nebulous purple, blue, and orange background.

The Doctor and Donna, back together again.

I shouldn’t have worried. It felt almost like coming home to the Doctor Who I first fell in love with. Sure, time had passed and there were lots of new things (seriously, when did the Doctor learn how to make force fields with the sonic screwdriver?), but even with 15 years passing between the last time we saw Donna Noble and her appearance in the specials, it felt like I was seeing old friends again for the first time in ages. The dynamic between the Doctor and Donna is the same as always, and the monsters ranged from terrifyingly adorable to just plain terrible. It was exciting and familiar, and I loved every second of it. And after the rough mess the last few years have been for me, I needed that. I needed to return to something comfortingly familiar that still had some new stories to tell.

I won’t get into too many spoilers here, for those who haven’t seen the specials yet, but as someone who loved the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and their companions, this was a delightful treat that got me excited about Doctor Who again. And I’m really excited to see Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor – from the little bit we saw of him at the end of the specials, I feel like he’s going to be a very fun Doctor, and I’m curious to see where things go with him piloting the TARDIS. (Only six more days until we get to find out!)

Back in action! (Sort of.)

Posted on July 20, 2023
by Beth Lynn

…wait, what? What’s this? A post?

Yes, yes it is indeed a post! I am, in fact, still alive, and actually finally have the spoons to post something. I’m sure as heck not going to hit my “one post a month” goal I wrote about in my yearly celebration of the blog’s birthday (I still can’t believe that The Crafty Nerd has been around for a decade, holy crap), but I’ve at least got things to write about now that I’m actually regularly leaving the house again!

Continue reading →

Nerdy Tidbits: July 6th, 2022

Posted on July 2, 2022
by Beth Lynn

Yes, it’s the return of Nerdy Tidbits – a collection of random little things that may not quite warrant an entire post, but are still things I want to talk about. This edition of Nerdy Tidbits focuses on the soundbooth I’m working on, a cosplay idea I have, and some of my new favorite TV shows.

The soundbooth: a progress report

If you follow The Crafty Nerd on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve likely seen me post about the tiny home soundbooth I’ve been working on. It’s been eating up a lot of my spare time this week, especially in the mornings when it’s not oppressively hot in the attic. As a result, I’ve made a lot of progress on getting it put together!

View through the doorway into my soundbooth - black and teal felt tiles are visible on the walls.

A sneak peek at the soundbooth!

A lot of that progress is due to discovering that my quilting tools are also useful for to slicing up felt sound dampening tiles. The cutting mat, rotary cutter, and quilt rulers I dug out of various boxes have been very helpful for cutting tiles into various custom sizes. I only wish I’d thought of this sooner so some of the tiles I cut early on would have looked a little better.

A teal felt tile on a cutting board, with a big clear quilting ruler and a rotary cutter.

Hooray for remembering I have all these tools!

I’ll be making a full post about the soundbooth once it’s done, with a list of materials and tips for those of you who might also be interested in making your own soundbooth out of a closet.

Cosplay idea: Ensign Tilly from Star Trek: Discovery

I recently started watching Star Trek: Discovery, and have really been enjoying it – and last weekend, when I was thinking of ideas of who to cosplay as for the upcoming Indiana Toy and Comic Expo, it hit me: I should cosplay as Sylvia Tilly. Because, honestly, Tilly is me, but in Starfleet. (And in the future.)

Sylvia Tilly from Star Trek Discovery, wearing her Starfleet uniform.

oh my god I love Tilly so much, y’all have no idea

I absolutely love Tilly. Trying to find a good uniform for cosplaying her, though? It’s been a little rough. I can either get a $200ish uniform from Rubies that’s of questionable quality (based on the reviews, anyway), a $150ish uniform jacket and try to make my own pants, or buy an even more expensive uniform from Etsy that’ll be made to my measurements. (And I think it might be a little too late for that, given that ITCE is at the end of August.)

Or: I could get the t-shirt the crew of Discovery wears when they’re not in uniform, grab some running shorts out of my drawer, and be Running Tilly.

Tilly wearing a navy blue t-shirt that says DISCO on the front.

This would be the easiest Star Trek cosplay ever.

I mean, it’ll be comfy, easy enough to get around in, and inexpensive – I can get the Disco shirt on Amazon! Thankfully, it should be easy to find a wig; a Merida wig should work out pretty well, and combined with a Starfleet uniform or the Disco t-shirt, it should be pretty clear that I’m Tilly. (And I could be silly and find a big stuffed cat that looks like Grudge, and carry her around too!)

TV shows I’m in love with lately: Star Trek: Discovery and Our Flag Means Death

Speaking of Tilly: oh, how I love Discovery! Why the heck have I not watched it sooner? I’m attached to all the characters, I’m really enjoying the story, and I’ve cried many times while watching my way through the first three seasons. When it first came out, I heard a lot of complaints about how weird the Klingons were, but in retrospect I should have ignored them. Yes, they’re not typical Klingons, but once I got over the fact that they’re all bald and their tooth prosthetics make them sound like they’re talking around a mouthful of gummy bears, I found them somewhat interesting, and liked getting to know a little more about the history of the Klingons.

Plus, there’s a cat. How can I not love a Star Trek show that has a cat?

Oh, Grudge. She really is a queen.

Seriously, Grudge is the best, and I love how very much Book loves his cat. I need a big kitty like Grudge someday.

I also recently binged all of Our Flag Means Death over the course of a weekend, and I LOVE IT. I had heard so many good things about the show, and they are all true. This show is fantastic. If a story about an 18th century gentleman who decided he’d rather be a pirate captain leading an inept band of pirates and finding love in a very unexpected place sounds good to you, you should watch this. Really, you should.

Artwork of Blackbeard and Stede from Our Flag Means Death enjoying tea together.

Artwork by Karen Hallion – I’ve always enjoyed her work, and this one should be available on her Etsy store soon!

Somewhat related: I also love this drawing by Karen Hallion – and if you support her Patreon, the physical reward tier for this month includes an Our Flag Means Death sticker! Check out her Patreon here, and if you want to see more of her artwork, check out her website. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, and seeing the Our Flag Means Death artwork she’s done makes me a very happy nerd.

Nerdy tidbits as a podcast?

… so this is a silly question, but would y’all be interested in listening to the Nerdy Tidbits posts in podcast form? Because I want to make a podcast again. I really want to make a podcast again. I have my tiny soundbooth. I have equipment. I love editing audio. Heck, I could even record my own intro music, even if it is just a few chords on the ukulele. I struggle coming up with topics for a podcast, but maybe just focusing on the little random nerdy things that I’m excited about might work.

It’s definitely something I’m thinking about. Sure, there are a million podcasts out there already – is there much point in adding one more? Still, if it’s something I enjoy doing, I should do it, right? Hmm.

Either way, we’ll see what happens when the next Nerdy Tidbits comes out! Until next time, friends!

I wrote a letter to Pat Rothfuss.

Posted on June 15, 2022
by Beth Lynn

So, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know I’m a huge fan of Pat Rothfuss.

For folks who are new here: well, I am a huge fan of the author Patrick Rothfuss.

I don’t think I’d necessarily call myself a rabid fan, like how I used to be with Sailor Moon back when I was a teenager, but I am definitely a huge fan. I have almost every book he’s ever written (aside from the short story anthologies he’s contributed to and Your Annotated, Illustrated College Survival Guide – the former because I am a slacker, the latter because it’s ridiculously rare) – and most of those books are signed. I have prints of artwork based on The Kingkiller Chronicles – again, most signed by Pat. (The one that wasn’t signed by Pat was signed by the artist, Echo Chernik – and I’m ridiculously happy about that too.) I have almost all the jewelry that Badali Jewelry sells that’s based on the books. I’ve backed a bunch of Kingkiller Chronicle-related Kickstarter campaigns. I’ve owned three Eolian t-shirts (the first one I wore it so much it started falling apart, the second one just disappeared one day and I still haven’t found it). My car has talent pipe decals in the back windows. I cosplayed as Denna once. I quoted a line from The Name of the Wind in my wedding vows when Rana and I got married, and quoted The Slow Regard of Silent Things in the eulogy I delivered at her funeral. And I’ve been lucky enough to run into Pat at Gen Con three times – in 2013, 2015, and 2017.

… okay, seeing all of that written out kind of makes me feel a little ridiculous. Hey, when I get into something, though, I get into it.

So, what prompted me to write Pat a letter?

Anyhow. I’ve been reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things to my anxious cat Anya, to help her calm down after moving to the new house. She ended up moving a little later than the rest of us – there’s been a lot of reconfiguring of living situations among me and my chosen family lately, and J wanted to see how she acclimated to new people and new cats at the house after I moved out. Long story short: she had been stressed out due to sharing a house with five other cats, and not eating much due to one of the other cats bullying her away from her food, so we decided to move her here. After all, we’ve only got Peggy and Hannah here – and while they’re remarkably energetic for senior cats (Hannah is almost 13 and Peggy turned 15 in February, and they both still act like kittens at times), they’re also a lot calmer than the other cats Anya was living with.

Anya was not thrilled with having to move and hid in her crate here for a few days. Then it hit me: I saw a suggestion about reading to cats to help them get acclimated to new owners/homes/other stressful situations, so I pulled out my copy of The Slow Regard of Silent Things and read to Anya. It really helped her come out of her shell.

Photograph of me reading the book "The Slow Regard of Silent Things" to Anya, a small black and white cat. Anya and I are sitting in a large walk-in closet.

Yes, I am reading to my cat from the inside of a closet. Closets are Anya’s favorite places to hide.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is one of my favorite books ever, for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, I identify rather strongly with the main character, Auri. We are both anxious and easily overwhelmed. We both feel things a little too strongly at times. We both have trauma in our past that’s shaped who we are today. In addition to identifying with Auri, I also love the book because of Pat’s wonderful way with words. It is an absolute delight to read, and reading it out loud is an experience. The way Pat uses words to describe Auri’s thoughts, her feelings, and her view of the world is lyrically beautiful. I absolutely love this book.

Artwork of Auri from the book "The Slow Regard of Silent Things". Auri is underground, looking up towards a grate overhead.

Artwork of Auri from the author’s foreword in The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

It’s no surprise that I’ve been in rough shape lately. I’ve been healing from a lot of grief and trauma from just the past six months alone. Reading a book that I already had such an emotional connection to nudged me towards the point where I ended up overwhelmed with emotions, and I felt that I had to tell Pat just how much of an impact his books have had on my life.

So I wrote Pat a letter.

Writing to an author: not something I’ve done much of

I’ve only ever written to an author once before. I sent an email to Anne Bishop, another author whose books I’ve enjoyed, at one point back in 2007 (if I remember right). It was just a short thing about how I really enjoyed her books and thanked her for writing them. She actually responded to my email! I was so surprised – and so happy – to see that she’d read my email and made the time to respond.

Writing to Pat, though? That was an entirely different experience.

The letter I wrote to Anne Bishop was a short, couple-of-paragraph thing that I wrote while I was in a good emotional headspace. The letter to Pat is a four-page single-spaced hot mess of emotional rambling. I was crying by the time I got done writing the damn thing. I was very much not in a good headspace when I was writing it.

But you know what? It felt good to get all those thoughts and feelings down on paper. It’s something I’d been meaning to do for years – tell him what his books mean to me. I guess it took an emotional breakdown brought on by reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things to my anxious cat to finally get me to do it.

Dang, when I phrase it like that, my life sounds like a ridiculous hot mess right now. Having a breakdown brought on by reading a book to my cat is not a thing I thought I’d be experiencing in 2022, not if you’d asked me last year what I thought would happen this year. (I can say that about a lot of things that happened over the past six months, though.)

The letter itself

Anyway, back to the letter. It’s long, and rambling, and it talks about how much of an impact he and his books have had on me. About how him hugging me at Gen Con 2013 made my entire year, and how I was so thrilled that he took a picture of my Denna costume in 2017. How I identify with Auri, how much I love Slow Regard, and how I sat in the closet and read it out loud to little Anya to encourage her to come out of hiding. I wrote it last week, but haven’t mailed it yet – I keep meaning to, but I also keep getting distracted. (It’s also been way too hot to leave the house the past few days.) Besides, even if if it makes its way to him (who knows, it could get lost in the mail), I don’t know if he’ll actually read it. And even if he does read it, I doubt he’ll write back. After all, he’s a busy guy, and I’m just a small-time nerdy blogger who’s had a pretty terrible year that was made better by his books.

Even so, the simple act of writing the letter helped me feel better. I’ll take that as a win.

And who knows, maybe he will read the letter. Maybe he’ll even come check out the blog. (I pointed him to a post I wrote in late 2017 at the end of the letter, one where I rambled about how much I liked him.)

Well, Pat, if by some crazy twist of fate you do end up reading both my letter and this post: thank you for taking the time to read this small-time blogger’s letter, and for caring enough to come look at my blog.

(And I hope I haven’t scared you off. I know I can be a bit…extra. It’s the ADHD.)

What’s been going on in Crafty Nerd land

Posted on March 4, 2022
by Beth Lynn

I said I was going to start posting more regularly, so here I am! (Even though it’s been almost a month since my last post. At least it hasn’t been half a year, right?)

I’m currently in the process of coming up with some more exciting topics for blog posts, which has been a slow process. In the meantime, I wanted to share a little bit of what’s been going on in my corner of the world.

Rediscovering cross-stitch

I recently got back into the hobby of cross-stitching. I’ve completed two projects since last November, and I’m currently working on a third. Apparently I have a thing for hobbit-themed cross-stitch projects, since two out of the three projects I’ve worked on so far have little hobbit-houses as the focus:

: Project 1: a hobbit hole bookmark.

: Project 2: a stylized version of the Northern Lights.

: Project 3: Another hobbit house cross-stitch.

Long-time blog readers might remember the one I’m currently working on. Back in June 2019, I posted about starting that cross-stitch for Rana. After she passed, I dug it back out and started working on it again as a way to process some of my grief, and to give myself something to focus on. I’m going to give it to her mom when it’s done.

If you’re interested in the patterns, here are links to them:

Final Fantasy XIV: my first MMO in forever

I got back into MMOs again recently! I started playing Final Fantasy XIV back in… September, I think, and while I haven’t played in a few months, I’m going to pick it up again soon.

I fight using books! Because knowledge is power! 😀

Yeah, I’m playing Ëlinyr as an MMO character. Did you honestly expect anything different from me?

Ëlinyr is a summoner, which is the closest I could get to her Kishar class – in name, at least, since summoners are also referred to as evokers in FF14. The black mage class aligns more with her actual Kishar powers, but I like playing a summoner more – summoners get to use books as weapons! And if you’ve followed the blog for a while, or if you’ve played Kishar in the past few years, you know Ëlinyr loves her books. I play on Crystal/Zalera, in case anyone is curious, and I would be happy to play with other folks who play if anyone’s interested.

Preparing for season 10 of Kishar

Speaking of Ëlinyr: the new season of Kishar is coming up at the end of the month! Some big things happened at the end of last season for Ëlinyr – she lost one of her closest friends, Flint, during one of the final battles. Flint was previously the longest-running member of the Adventurer’s Guild, but with him gone, Ëlinyr is the next-longest-running Guild member, and may end up having to become the “responsible adult” for the Guild. Will she take on more of a leadership role in the Adventurer’s Guild? Is she just going to hide in the library forever and only come out when she needs to rain meteors down on the enemy to save the Guild? And will the event I’ve been referring to as the “elf wedding” actually finally happen this season? We’ll find out as the season progresses, and I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated on what’s going on in Ëlinyr’s corner of the world as it happens!

Virtual races and Running for Rana

One of the things I decided to do just after Rana passed away was to participate in the 2022 season of Whovian Running Club virtual races, since Rana loved Doctor Who and she used to run with her mom when she was younger. Not only have I done the first Whovian Running Club virtual race, the Roar Your Light 5k, but I also completed the Keep Your Feet 5k, a Lord of the Rings-themed Fandom Running Club race.

I walked the Keep Your Feet 5k in January, and two days ago I did the Roar Your Light 5k as a combo of walking and jogging and managed to do a 5k in under an hour! I know it’s not exactly fast compared to a lot of runners, but I’m still kind of new at this, and hadn’t gone for a run in AGES. Managing to complete a 5k in under an hour was a big accomplishment for me. (You can keep track of my Fanthropy Running Club races in the sidebar on the right side each page on the blog.)

Aside from everything I’ve already written about: I’ve been rewatching the heck out of Avatar and Legend of Korra to distract my brain from being depressed, reading a lot of books, migrating back to working in the office more regularly, and I’m slowly beginning to feel more like a human being and less like a depressed blob. Which is a good thing, right?

I am still alive, I swear.

Posted on December 3, 2020
by Beth Lynn

Yeah, my usual “post-Gen Con posting slump” that typically only lasts a month or so? This year, it apparently stretched into a four-month posting hiatus. That’s 2020 for you, I guess.

I thought it might not be a bad idea to at least post something to say I’m alive, and I’m hanging in there. I’ve got a couple of ideas for posts lurking in the back of my head. Who knows, maybe I’ll even actually get them posted sometime in the next month.

To give this post at least a little more substance, here’s what I’ve been up to during the past four months or so:

First off, I’ve been playing Blue Rose and Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition online via Roll20 pretty regularly. It’s been fun having the chance to play in multiple “tabletop” RPGs regularly – in the Blue Rose game, I play a Vata’an healer named Lin, and in the D&D game I play Reda the aasimar rogue. They’re both lots of fun to play. (I made the following avatars using this fantasy avatar creator – however, it uses Flash, so I’m not sure how much longer it’ll be around for.)

: Lin the Vata’an healer

: Reda the aasimar rogue.

I’ve also been sitting around, moping about not getting to play in Kishar this year at all. At least I’ve been able to funnel that Kishar-focused energy into a couple of projects focusing on everyone’s favorite sun elf. One of those projects was my attempt at National Novel Writing Month this year – while I didn’t win, I did manage to write 40,000 words about Ëlinyr’s life outside of Kishar games. It was a lot of fun to work on, and I got the opportunity to flesh out some of Alair’s character too. I also found out Alair was originally just supposed to be a one-off character J was going to play in one game, but then Ëlinyr was all “oooh he’s pretty”, and therefore our favorite elf poet ended up sticking around.

Speaking of Ëlinyr and Alair, and Kishar-related projects…

I started drawing again, after a long time (and I mean a long time) of not doing any drawing at all. And apparently I’m somehow still good at it.

Photograph of two digitalframed sketches of Elinyr and Alair.

aaaagh I have artwork that I’ve made PRINTS of and had FRAMED

Yep, I actually drew multiple drawings that I’m actually really pleased with. So pleased with, in fact, that I ordered prints of them. And even had them framed. If you want to see full versions of these, you can view them on DeviantArt – the drawing on the left is Reading in the library, and the one on the right is The Poet and The Scholar. (If you dig through my old drawings on DeviantArt, don’t laugh too hard at my older artwork. I know some of it’s terrible.) I even did some in-progress snapshots of The Poet and The Scholar while I was working on it, so I might share those with a ramble about my drawing process in another post. I especially love how that one came together, and how it turned out when it was printed.

Well, that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to recently – aside from work, anyway. I would say “I promise I’ll write more”, but I know me. Maybe I’ll be able to get at least another post or two up before 2020 ends – I’ll try, at least.

The social distancing nerd: two months later

Posted on July 10, 2020
by Beth Lynn

Oh, how optimistic I was two months ago when I wrote that post about what I’ve been doing, and how I was weathering the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. I thought, “surely I can write more blog posts. I’m home all the time and have no excuses!”

I was wrong.

Peridot from the show Steven Universe, flumped over the side of a bathtub in a depressed funk.

This picture does a darn good job of summing up how I’ve felt lately.

I underestimated just how much energy I spent on dealing with what’s going on in the world, though. How hard it would be to switch gears from work-mode to relax-mode at 4 pm each day. Since I’m working from home for the foreseeable future, I have one space for both work and recreational computer time — which makes everything I do at the computer here feel like work even if it’s not. Whether it’s video games or blog posts or coloring in drawings, if it’s in front of my computer, it feels like work.

I’ve also been struggling with a lot of life issues at the moment. I don’t quite want to talk about them right now but suffice it to say; things are rough in my little corner of the world.

Plus, this is me. Even in a good year, I can never keep up posting regularly for long. I think 2019 was a record-setting year in that I posted almost weekly from the end of January to Gen Con in August. Long-time blog followers know I struggle with posting regularly. I ended up giving up on the Crafty Nerd Podcast because I recorded two episodes and then paid for an unused Libsyn subscription for six months. We know I have issues with following through on things, heh.

So, what have I been doing during the two months since my last post? To be honest, it doesn’t feel like I’ve done much — at least, not much that’s worth writing about.

I have been reading — a lot. I read through the entirety of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. Well, re-read almost all of them is more accurate — I hadn’t read the last book until this most recent re-read of the series. I started watching True Blood back in March (since I never did finish it) and wanted to see just how wildly different the TV show was from the books in the later seasons of the show. I also tore through Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series, because I needed more easy-to-read urban fantasy in my life. Between those two series, I read 25 books over two months. (I’m a speedy reader, it’s kind of ridiculous.) Now I’m reading The Kingdom of Copper, which is book two of The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty — and I’m enjoying it.

Another thing I’ve been doing is crocheting a lot. I finished the Trio blanket I started in May, and then immediately started two more projects. My startitis is flaring up again, it seems. I’m going to try to finish all the projects I’ve currently got going before I start something new, though. (I know, I know, easier said than done.)

A whiteboard with a list of all the craft projects I'm working on - some date all the way back to 2017.

Not entirely sure if this is a complete list, but there’s definitely a lot on there…

You might have noticed that I mentioned coloring in drawings earlier — that’s because I’ve actually picked up drawing as a hobby again. I used to draw a lot when I was in high school and college, but ended up drifting away from it years ago. With some encouragement from my friend Kasi, I figured I may as well start drawing again.

Photo of a sketchbook, open to a pencil sketch of Ëlinyr.

This one’s still a work in progress, and I love how it’s turned out so far.

So far everything I’ve drawn has been Kishar-related, since I really, really miss playing in Kishar. I’ll branch out to other stuff eventually, heh.

One exciting thing I’m working on is planning out what I’m doing at Gen Con Online this year! With everything being online, I can schedule events back-to-back and not have to worry about finding out I’ve scheduled myself to be in LucasOil Stadium immediately after something held in one of the connected hotels. I’ve got a whole post in the works about my Gen Con online plans, so stay tuned for that.

Photo of my Gen Con 2020 commemorative badge. A label with my name, the blog's name, and my Gen Con ID number printed on it has been applied to the back.

You know I just had to customize my Gen Con 2020 badge.

Even though I’m not officially attending as press for Gen Con Online, I was granted a press badge for Gen Con 2020 — and covering Gen Con is a blog tradition. (I need to see if the folks over at Five(ish) Fangirls are attending any of Gen Con Online — if not, I’m definitely going to miss doing the post-con report with Rachel like we’ve done the past few years.)

In addition to all this, the Blue Rose game Kasi’s running on Roll20 is still going, and I also got the chance to do some Kishar dress-up recently too! (although honestly, do I really need a reason to throw on Ëlinyr’s gear?)

Photo of J dressed as his Kishar non-player character Alair, and myself dressed as Ëlinyr

Ëlinyr and her elf-sweetie Alair. 🙂 And the cloak I spent so much time making that I love so very much.

… huh. Writing this blog post has helped perk up my mood. I went into WordPress this morning with the goal of at least writing something. This post started kind of cranky and self-deprecating, but after writing a bit I’m feeling better — despite the Grammarly tone detector indicating my tone is gloomy. (I will say, the sad-looking emoji hits me in the feels.)

Screenshot of the tone detector in Grammarly - the top listed tone is Gloomy, with a rather sad-looking emoji.

Don’t cry, little gloomy emoji! I’ll try to cheer up, I promise.

Maybe I should try to blog more often, even when I don’t quite feel up to it. It’s definitely helped my mood today, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been doing the past two months. It might not be all that thrilling, but it got me to weite a post, and that’s something.

My 2019 in books

Posted on January 3, 2020
by Beth Lynn

Happy new year, folks! I can’t believe it’s 2020 already — it feels like Gen Con was only a few weeks ago. With 2019 at an end, I thought it might be a good time to look back on some of the media I consumed over the year, and what better place to start than with the books I’ve read?

I don’t talk about books nearly as much as I should on the blog. I read a lot, and I really should share more of what I read. However, I’m pretty terrible at describing books. I don’t know why — I just know that I struggle to do justice to a book when I’m describing it to someone. (Maybe that’s a sign that I should do more book reviews on the blog, and get more experience talking about books?) For my 2019 books, though, I want to share what I read over the year and touch on what books were my absolute favorites. So, with the help of Goodreads (where I keep track of my reading), I present to you: my 2019 in Books!

2019: The year of book series reading

There’s nothing I love more than losing myself in a good book series. Sometimes just one book in a particular setting isn’t just enough for me — I often find myself wanting to see more of certain characters and worlds. 2019 seemed to be the year of book series reading — I read through five different book series and worked my way through a chunk of two more:

The Others by Anne Bishop
The 100 by Kass Morgan
Kushiel’s Legacy by Jacqueline Carey
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey (well, the main series and two novellas, anyway)
The October Daye series by Seanan McGuire (only books 11 and 12)
The Song of Shattered Sands by Bradley P. Beaulieu (only book one and half of book two before 2019 ended)

Some of these I’d read before, like most of Anne Bishop’s The Others series, but that was mainly to refresh my memory before I tackled the last two books in the series. Out of all these, though, I think the best series I read this year was The Expanse (which, to be honest, I’m obsessed with).

My favorite series: The Expanse

I ended up plowing my way through the books in The Expanse after I finished watching season three of the TV show this summer. I couldn’t get enough of the storytelling and world-building, so I dove right into the eight-book series and finished it just in time for season four to come out! For those of you who enjoy science fiction, especially hard sci-fi, you’ll like The Expanse. If you’ve only seen the TV show and are worried that any differences between the books might make you frustrated, I can share my experience. There’s just enough difference between the two to keep me interested, and the changes made from book to TV make sense and don’t detract from the storytelling.

Runner-up: The Song of Shattered Sands

Now, I’m still only halfway through book two of The Song of Shattered Sands at this point, but I’m enjoying what I’ve read. The worldbuilding is well done, the story is engaging, and I find myself coming back to the books eagerly each day to see what Çeda, Emre, and the other main characters are up to.

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this series goes!

My full year in books

If you’re curious to see all the books I’ve read this year, feel free to check out My 2019 in Books on Goodreads! It’s got every single book I read this year listed, plus some additional fun stats about my 2019 reading.