Words of Wood

Some knitting photos from this summer. I always mean to make these posts more regularly! I've also been making various small things for people, including lots of baby clothes for my tiny new cousin. Those are less interesting photos, though, so here are three recent shawls.

Volcano shawl. My new love is gradient yarn. I bought this yarn from Wollelfe (they're in Austria) and found a pattern to go with it. Pattern is Lightning Thief.




Eleanor's birthday shawl. I can't remember what sort of yarn this was now. Pattern is Mayan Garden.




Rainbow dragon shawl. Made entirely from small bundles of 4ply wool I found in a basket in a charity shop. I still have a lot left over for future rainbow projects! Pattern is Sea Dragon.

Hello! This is mainly of use to people currently in Oxford. But I shall spam everyone with it anyway. Since I spend most of my LJ time spamming Ox-friends with fandom, it seems only fair :P

To copy the blurb I wrote for the Facebook event:

"On the week beginning 25th March, Exeter College is hosting the group Christian Concern to hold a conference. Christian Concern (http://www.christianconcern.com/) is anti-lgbtq rights, anti-Islam, and anti-choice.

We believe that these values have no place in Oxford and should not be implicitly supported by allowing the group to hold a conference here. Therefore we will be protesting on Turl Street, outside the conference, to make it clear that Oxford, and the student body, is absolutely opposed."

An article written for the Guardian about the situation is here.

So! I'm pretty sure I invited nearly all of you via FB, but this is another plug in case you'd forgotten. Come and join us, from 11 by the Missing Bean. We've not been allowed to know exactly when the people are arriving, so we'll potentially be there all afternoon, come and join us any time. Bring banners and stuff! (Don't bring glitterbombs, it's bad for the environment and we promised Exeter we wouldn't. Also we really don't want to be in trouble with the police.)

Also, in case it's unclear: This is in no way an anti-Christianity protest, many of the protesters identify as Christians. This is a protest against the hosting (and therefore implicit/implied support or at least lack-of-problem-with) a group with political pull which in the UK is one of the main campaigners against gay marriage, against abortion, against people who are non-Christian.

The LGBTQ campaign had a banner-painting picnic this afternoon in the parks, some photos are below the cut for your entertainment. I'm the one with the dinosaur t-shirt and the extremely frizzy hair, if you wanted to know. Also the one who's signs look like they were made by a 10-yr-old XD (I like rainbows, okay :P)

( Permission was given to use these photos as publicity. )

Expect a photo-heavy post tomorrow evening of how it goes! :D

This is what you need to build an Isengard:

1 quantity of gingerbread (the sort I use to make gingerbread houses at Christmas)
2 bags of Bassetts jelly babies
1 big box of Cadburys chocolate fingers (three trays of them)
2 packs of Flake bars (4 bars in each pack)
1 packet of Tesco Value 'flake and rasin chocolate clusters'
1 packet of Tesco Value dolly mix
1 paket of Haribo super mix (although we ended up eating this all before we started)
Cocktail sticks
Butter icing
A large table

You also need a friend who's as obsessed with Tolkien as you are, and therefore will back you up in your excellent idea. I used unbrokenwings91  (who I shall just call Zanna for the rest of this entry, since it's much quicker to type).

Method:
Build Isengard. Then takes lots of photos.  Zanna is much better at taking photos than I am, which is why I am in more of them (I'm the one in the purple t-shirt). Also, none of the blurry ones are hers ;)

A little preview of the finished masterpiece!



Now follow the cut for many more (and better) photos, and commentry :)
( Warning: Very, very image heavy! )

So I'm heading off to a 5 day LAN party tomorrow with about 50 other people (mostly guys).  Because it's the 5th LAN organised by these people I was commissioned to make some "fancy-looking" cakes to celebrate, in return for a £5 discount.  I've spent most of today (I'm not kidding - about 10 hours) in the kitchen making them, and right now I think I might "suggest" that I get a discount to the next one too, because methinks Shazz has no idea how much work baking and decorating cakes is, even amateur ones.  And right now I'm very tired.

Anyway, the cakes!  Top one's vanilla sponge with raspberry jam filling and bottom one's chocolate with chocolate butter icing filling.  The design is based on the game Team Fortress 2, which is the general favourite at these particular LANs.  It's a shooter with loads of classes which are recognisable in silhouette form, so I went about recreating that.  Character choices on the cakes are not arbitary, but contain too many in-jokes for me to bother explaining. Decoration is all fondant icing, apart from the slightly wonky piping which was butter icing, and they're each sitting on a standard size baking tray, to give some idea of size.  They're also higher than they look here, and the glaze is still drying, so they do look better when not camera-flash illuminated!

Just hoping that people like them when I get them there tomorrow!
( The cakes... )