Going for the gusto

I'd love to have this cardigan done on Wednesday and be able to wear it to Thanksgiving. Its going to be nice to have, but I'm getting bored. it needs to get done or it won't be done. Know what I mean? ;-)

Night pics of how far I've gotten since last night:

See how the pattern is 'growing'?

Wondering if its going to have enough length. 

The wonderful thing about lace type projects is that they allow for growth through blocking. Of course, its deceptively short right now and making me think that I may want to try to add a 'chart f''. I'm not though.

So as of right now, I'm done with Chart D. Yeah, stayed up late last night and got six rows of Chart C done. Finished the last two rows of it this morning and then started Chart D and worked half of it. Gave myself an hour of LOTRO, then dinner making. Another little bit after dinner and then while catching up on shows we missed last week slogged out the last eight rows of the chart. That's 4008 stitches for the day. 2976 last night. I'm about 81% done according to my math, but it may be off, because I just realized I missed a setup row for the ribbing.

Just twenty-three more rows to go! I'm increasing another thirty-six stitches so each row is 444 stitches, if you want to have some math fun. ;-)

50,678 stitches

This is what it looks like with that many stitches:

Middle of Chart C and I have D and E with an inch or so of ribbing to do. It's still kind of bolero-ish right now, so definitely need those rows!

Spent Sunday afternoon in the kinship. Jenna and Heidi came over as planned. Heidi brought Kathy along too. Brent met us online near the beginning of where we all started together. It was fun spending the afternoon all together in the same room gaming. We're going to try for a few more in person sessions before Heidi makes her final move back east to Pennsylvania.

Jenna's planning to come over after work on Tuesday. She needs to come to the JoAnn's Superstore by us to fabric shop for the weekend.

We're doing another household beach trip over Thanksgiving weekend. William has work and homework that he'll have to do so he'll be home keeping the home fires burning. 

Surprise Game Night

Thursday's are LOTRO game night with Heidi, Jenna, Brandon and I. Wednesday they put up the new game and made a lot of changes. To the point that last night we decided that we should just start with all new characters.

So we switched over to Elves and had the introductory quests to do and a little bit online together where we could. Heidi though was having problems with her laptop, so wasn't able to get as far as the rest of us.

She talked with Brandon during the day and it was decided it would just be easier for her to come to our house so he could look at it and since she was here, just game. I thought it wasn't fair not to have Jenna, so we called her and had her come over.

There ladies on the sectional couch and Brandon at his desktop. Lots of laughing and interesting comments abounded. ;-) Heidi's character got a companion bear, so lots of comments about following a fluffy butt by me. They got to hear all the new player comments I was making and Brandon's pithy replies. I have to push Z to talk and sometimes that's hard to do while also pushing all the buttons during combat.

We had so much fun that it was decided that they would all come over again on Sunday for the next game day. Brandon just has to double check that his D&D game isn't on earlier in the day. Heidi lives waaaaaay across town and it was late when she left, so doesn't want to have to worry about that with a Monday morning work day.

I was only able to get 8 rows of the Chart B done today with all my other chores. I'll have a picture of it in the morning. Here's what it looked like this morning:

Little bit left on that fourth ball. I'm on five now.

Close-up of the setup length of the four chart As.

It might be affecting my world view

I mentioned that I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online. The character we started out with is a Hobbit and the Guardian class. So I'm a female tank. ;-) She's been fun to play and it wasn't until the other day playing by myself that I got into a situation where my character actually died. Brandon told me that getting to level 30 before that happened is unusual. Balgilfeda, the Hobbit plays with Brandon, Jenna and Heidi's Hobbits. It's been interesting playing in a larger group. This is my first time doing that.

Oh, yes, on the X-Box when they had those fun Marvel Avenger games where the four of us could all play together I had fun. (I usually played Wolverine, you might sense a theme here.) The camera view of Halo and the coordination I couldn't pull together. So didn't get into the shooter games.

Brandon and I used to play Diablo and Dungeon Siege together on the computers and I missed those days. So it was nice when we were able to get me a laptop that can play LOTRO.

To get more experience we created some elves and we've played with Jenna on those nights that Heidi can't play. It lets the three of us still have fun, but not progress our other characters. She's in the Huntress class and an archer. We had been playing them for a bit that I had to do a mental shift that I was no longer a long range hitter but have to get up close again when playing my Hobbit.

They are bringing out a new area - Helms Deep in the game, so there are some sales on things that you can buy in the store. Some of them are things that you would get if you paid the monthly fee for the game. My budget isn't there right now with the holidays coming up, so will have to wait until after the first of the year to pay for the game. It will also be a test to see if I'm still having fun playing!

My point?  Brandon told me to create ANOTHER character! Just so I could get the turbine points to open up the Gold I can have. I'm really tired of all the messages popping up about it too. So this character might be one that I just play by myself. It's been interesting not playing with others and flying through areas. I have enough experience from the other characters that I know what I'm supposed to do. This one is a Human in the Captain class. It seems kind of similar to the Guardian in that I can take a lot of damage and if I do play in a group, will be the focal point to protect others.

We finally got to see Thor tonight. I'm going what is that Dwarf doing here? This is Volstagg's character. He was awesome looking! I think that the actor they got for Fandral looks like the comic book drawing. Still need to figure out the armoring. I was looking at the partial that Frigga was wearing and trying to decide if she was a leftie or not. It covered her left shoulder and I decided that had to be her shield hand, if she used one. Later she had the sword in her right hand but did do a hit with her left.

We stayed to the very end and saw the little teaser with The Collector.

I'm still working on those 4 repeats of Chart A that are the setup for the skirt of the cardigan. Not as much done today as hoped, maybe tomorrow.

If you want to come play LOTRO with me, or us, let me know!