...and it was something alright. This Anime, like the Manga it was based upon manages to make you feel so uncomfortable in a variety of ways from the overly graphic violent tones paired with unapologetic streams of blood splashing everywhere coupled with over saturated scenes of fanservice ranking from Sailor Moon-type of revealing to the unconditional tropes of a distasteful Hentai you would watch to point out how cringy and ridiculous it is. The moral undertones in this series makes to wonder why it was even planned to begin with, and while some characters have potential to grow into a sympathetic trope themselves, it gets thrown out the window in the very next scene with aforementioned themes.

However there's one character in particular that makes this Anime even worse than you could ever tolerate watching, that character being Mugen Kurumi AKA The "War Nurse," who is potentially the very worst Anime character I ever had the displeasure in watching. Her very, VERY questionable portrayal as a healer AND torturer comes highly polirizing at best.

It makes me uncomfortable that Square-Enix was involved in the publishing of this series as well. You *could* watch it for the sympathetic feelings towards characters like Asuka and some actually good battle scenes, but I doubt you could get past a couple episodes much less the entire thing.

On the other hand, went on downloading Streets of Rage 2 on my phone and had a great time in nostalgiaville, so it did ease the uncomfortable feelings I experienced watching that Anime at least.

On the one hand I just found this layout to be a good match for the central three heart beads. But on the other, I rather liked the green eyed monster angle. Picked the toggle to match both the hearts and the studs on the black metal beads.

I mentioned the other day that I mostly used these slides as snowflakes, and as I had 2 of these apple beads, I thought I'd go for a Snow White theme, with bead ends looking fluffy and snowy.

The final (still so hard to believe!!) season of Boku No Hero Academia started airing last week. If you would enjoy watching it along with other fans, come join us over at bnha_fans! Like with previous seasons, we're sharing thoughts and reactions every week (without manga spoilers on those posts, to keep it friendly for anime-only folks :)).

I haven't been writing because I've just been plugging away on my Tunisian crochet afghan and it would be incredibly boring to read day after day of my getting one or two rows done.

But today I measured it. And I'm at just about 40 inches. So I've added about 6 inches to it so far this month.

I worked on the cross stitch this morning, and finished all the gray! Then I noticed that something was off, and recounted. Oh yes, I missed a row. Rippit, rippit... and put in a row wrong! Rippit, rippit... I finally got all of the left side put in properly, and then the middle bit. And then, you guessed it, I had put in the middle row wrong! Rippit, rippit... argh! Then I put in an extra stitch, but managed to notice before I got to the next row. Oy! But the gray is all done now! It's a good thing that they put in extra thread, because one strand got pretty mangled with the frogging. It's also a very good thing that I started in the morning, because I might not have finished putting all the gray stitched back in if this had happened in the later afternoon.


[ID: A cross stitch project in progress, in gray and turquoise thread so far. All the grey stitches are completed, showing the outline of a gray mouse wearing a turquoise scarf. End ID]

Only had the four of these blue ones, so decided to link them to some glass painted as stone balls, and put some ice blue glass pearls in as a sort of middle ground between the white and deeper blue. Then added the gold spacers and glass seed beads to finish things out.

Day 12

I put in a few rows of gray thread on the cross stitch, to finish the head and start the body of of the creature:

[ID: A cross stitch project in progress, in gray and turquoise thread so far. A head with round ears is complete, with some stitches done on the right side of the body. End ID]

And then we were out and about; I took my knitting bag along. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, I finished another baby hat. (I told you that you would see a lot of baby hats!)

[ID: A knitted baby hat, in two colorways of variegated yarn. End ID]

Day 12

I stitched 2 1/2 needles of gray thread in the cross stitch; there's a tail now!

[ID: A cross stitch project in progress, in gray and turquoise thread so far. A head with round ears is complete, as is the right side of the body and a tail;the left side has a few short rows completed. End ID]

Loved this set of charms and decided to make an all-metal look for it. The large beads are metal, E beads are a gun-metal grey finish, and then it has alternating silver, gold, and copper metallicized plastic cubes. I wanted a blocky look for a building blocks of life theme.

Following on from yesterday, after the butterfly not working in the original blue layout I chose a different blue theme with smaller beads. I kept it quite simple because I already had a theme idea for the other one, one of flowers and insects. ( Read more... )

Recently found out more about that other kid in Digimon Tamers and his connection with Rika Nonaka. As it turns out, he's the protagonist of some Digimon games released for the WonderSwan gaming system which connects Digimon Adventure 1 and 2 with Tamers, with the Tamers Anime being the conclusion to his story.

Ryo's connection to Rika is that he's the sole person she ever lost to in the Digimon card championships years before the events of Tamers, and when he disappeared she became the Digimon Queen. Mind blown.

I put another two needles of gray thread into my cross stitch project, which, unfortunately, including frogging back 20 stitches and restitching, because I managed to not put in a row, even though I thought that I counted three times!


[ID: A cross stitch project in progress, in gray and turquoise thread so far. A head with round ears is taking shape. End ID]

Given this is the second big frogging that I have had to do, maybe I'm not quite ready to go back to my full cover, lots of confetti, very large project. :/

Sometimes necklaces come together quickly but very often it's a trial and error process. So I decided to share a recent evening trying to come up with a necklace for a pendant I've had for a while. It was one of a pair on clearance and they were intended for bracelets but I decided to try and use them anyway.

I decided to run this pendant horizontally and was first trying to find beads that might match it. It was a problem because none of my beads fit the blue exactly, many of them either verging into green or aqua blue shades. ( Read more... )

I've been quiet here, mostly because communal_creators is still going on and I've been lurking/chatting there instead. But I figured I might as well check in here with an update:


[Image Description: A pivot table showing I crafted nearly 12 hours in October so far, just missing one day.]

I touched eight different projects. Some of those are LARGE projects - I'm making a Central Park Hoodie and a Motion Picture Mosaic Cardi. I do not expect to be done with either any time soon, but any progress is GOOD progress.

I play in a crafting game on Ravelry called Nerdopolis, where we get themes to craft to each month. One of the themes this month is "The Games We Played" - craft something inspired by a board game you played as a child. I immediately thought of Mousetrap and thus tried to make an Victorian Mouse but the start was more fiddly than I wanted to deal with at the time, so I gave that up. I considered other patterns inspired by Mousetrap, but eventually decided to make the pair to my In the Weeds Legwarmer that I made earlier this year. My inspiration will be Hungry Hungry Hippos which has a red playing board. I need a legwarmer more than another amigurumi, so this is a good decision on my part.

I don't have any finished items that I care to show off yet. I did freehand a Final Fantasy XIV Ascian Crystal in crochet for a Nerdopolis challenge, but it only came out so-so, alas. But I'm hoping to finish some small-to-medium projects this month.

I started late again today, as I was out all afternoon; I went to a bead shop among other places, but left buying only two strands of beads that were on sale! Since I was a bit low on energy, knitting is easiest. So, I completed the hat that I started yesterday. The purple came out much more strongly in this hat!


[ID: A knitted baby hat, in two colorways of variegated yarn. End ID]

This reversible pendant seemed to have some astrology symbols so I decided to match it with gold stars. Because that was very bright I wanted to tone it down a little with darker beads. This shell strand had rather a lot of variation of color so I also paired it with a single light brown strand.

I didn't get to crafting until late today...

I finished off a needle of gray thread, maybe about 20 stitches, and then the light failed and I called it good.


[ID: A cross stitch project, in progress, with turquoise and gray thread. End ID]

And then I put in 10 rows on a baby hat, because I don't need light for that... and then, dinner was ready.


[ID: 10 rows of knitting on a purple knitting loom. End ID]

I have several of these clustered crystal slides, and I'd made them as snowflake necklaces a few times, but it always struck me as a honeycomb shape.

I decided to set these with a strand of freshwater pearls that included different shades because it made me think of how honey can be all types of colors, I guess depending on the pollen bees collect. I added in a few miracle beads to break up the pearls a bit, and also because they have a glow to them in the right light which I felt would call back to the pendant.

I knitted another baby hat (you're probably going to see a lot of these). I'm knitting with 2 different skeins of variegated #3 yarn. The hats are coming out a bit more muted than I expected and less stripey; I guess there's a lot less purple in the purple variegated yarn than I thought.


[ID: A stripey knitted baby hat. End ID]

I have made 4 necklaces with these painted quartz chunks and most have used a pirate theme. So I wanted to do something a bit different this time even if it did fit the season!

I don't know that I really did get away from it as the color scheme is very much what I've done before (and the lock toggle remains fitting). But perhaps it's a bit of pirate bounding instead of outright pirate garb 😉 I definitely think it could be worn without anyone immediately spotting that.