Knitting a Beanie Plus a Chihuahua Story and Nintendo

"I walked over to the knitting needle chest, slowly undoing the catch and lifting the lid open. I eagerly reached into the size 7 needle section pulling out a short cable circular needle. It was time, time to take the next step into my knitting life. I was going to make... A Beanie Hat."

Hey everyone! Today's Friday once again and wow I've actually been running this blog for three weeks now. I've been enjoying writing this blog and it's definitely been a learning experience for me. It seems a lot of my blog posts are becoming multi topic blogs but that makes it more interesting right? I will still be doing single topic blogs but only when the topic is big enough so I'm not rambling.

Anyway to get things rolling let's talk about knitting! Now if you saw Monday's post I uploaded a brand new video of me actually knitting and talking about what I'm knitting. (You can view it here) I really enjoyed doing this video so new ZAK Knits are on the way! Now I actually have to update you all on the dishcloth I was working on in the video.. It's finished! Yup I finished it a couple of days ago so here it is.

It actually came out so much better then my first dishcloth. I'm very proud of myself, like holy moly I just completed another project. That's two projects done within two weeks. Now comparing it with my first crazy eights dishcloth there's a lot of difference.

On the right is my first finished dishcloth and the left one is my second dishcloth. I used the same yarn and needles for each of them, but because my gauge has become looser (I've been relaxing more so it's loosening up.) my newer one looks a lot nicer and doesn't have a dip in it like the first one.

My mum also finished her crazy eights dishcloth and even know my newer dishcloth had a lot looser gauge mum's still came out bigger. She told me it's because she's a super loose knitter and that my dishcloth is more to size.

Another item I was working on in that video was a Christmas themed Simple Dishcloth using a pattern by Spinfoolish on Ravelry. 

I'm just a little over halfway done on this and it's looking very much like Christmas. I absolutely love how the colors are coming out and the stockinette stitch makes it even better.

Now onto my brand new project.. So I've wanted to make one of these since I started but didn't want to start it until I had at least a couple of simpler projects done. I am making a beanie hat!

As of writing this I am 5 rows in but I did have a couple of hiccups in the beginning. Actually I even unpicked a whole row and switched patterns completely! In the beginning I was using a completely different pattern but it was a strange one and I didn't like how it was coming out so I casted on two extra stitches (112 in total... I have a big head.) and I switched my pattern to one by Cara Jo Miller on Ravelry. It's a Basic Norwegian Star Hat and you're probably going to ask "Why are you doing a colorworks as your first hat? Isn't that a bit advance?" well maybe it's me asking myself that... I know I shouldn't be doing colorworks so early in my knitting saga but I really love the pattern so I'm taking a dive and having a go at it, if it doesn't work well... I can always convert it to a normal beanie. The Yarn I'm using is Worsted Weight Caron Simply Soft H97003 Chocolate 9750 (No Dye Lot apparently), it's 100% Acrylic and the skeins have 315 yards (288 meters) of yarn in them and it weighs 6 ozs (170 g). I actually showed off this yarn I believe in my yarn stash blog last week. Now being that this is color works I'm using the same yarn for the colorwork but the color is Bone 9703. So it's going to be a brown and beige colorworks beanie. It should look pretty awesome in the end so I'm going to keep at it.

So putting down the needles now I have something to share. So I've always wanted to write stories and such. I've always had ideas swirling in my head for as long as I can remember but I've been a fool. A lot of my ideas I've never written down so a lot have been lost to time. I don't know why I put off putting my stories out there for so long, maybe it was lack of confidence? Recently, thanks to the blog and some other things I've been writing a lot. Putting things down in a writer's notebook for once and finally making my ideas a reality. This idea I'm about to share is a little... Very little one-shot I wrote randomly a couple of days ago. It's so short I don't even know if it counts as a story but I thought it was funny enough to share. It's about a Chihuahua who gets into mischief.

Parcels and the Chihuahua

There it sat on the coffee table, a small stack of unopened letters, lifeless and unknowing of the small blonde Chihuahua staring at it from across the room. The small pup licked his chops, he knew his owners were out of the room and the temptations were killing him, he wanted to tear the letters to shreds. He let out a whimper and edged closer, his owners would be furious but who would suspect him? Up until now he was viewed as an innocent cute puppy and the other dogs in the house would be blamed first. Who would suspect such a puppy with such big round eyes? He pounced up onto the table; he could take the temptations no more. A curly black poodle looked up at the Chihuahua, growling in an attempt to stop him but it was too late, the mail was in pieces and shreds.

So yeah there it is, I thought I would post it on the blog, I don't know if it was worth posting but I found it funny. I really want to post more of my short stories and even longer stories here (Longer then this one of course) so stay tuned for that.

Anyway now I gotta talk about this awesome new 3DS demo that was released...

Yup the Sun and Moon (Unlimited might I add, never runs out) demo was released last Tuesday. I talked about my impressions on this game in a way earlier blog post but the demo still blew me away with the huge graphical jump from X & Y to Sun & Moon. The game is so immersive it feels like you're actually in it. The demo may not have a huge amount to do in it (Hey, it's a free unlimited demo.) but it definitely gives you a good idea on what to expect from the main games.

I don't want to spoil anything from the demo so you should definitely check it out yourself by downloading it from the Nintendo 3DS eShop. You're given a special Pokemon that you can transfer to the main games once they release as well as some special items to send as well. It seems like there are new events that are going to be happening in the actual demo as there are people who say to come back in a certain amount of days. Also a certain group of people who I love so much make an appearance in the demo and I gotta say they have a bone to pick with you. *wink*

So yeah don't forget to check it out because I have no idea if these daily events are linked to the date or just the amount of days you've been playing it.

Still speaking about Nintendo they announced something HUGE! The Nintendo NX (I mentioned it in my Nintendo 64 blog) was finally revealed after a whole year of speculation as the Nintendo Switch! It's an awesome looking console/handheld hybrid with removable controllers. Here's the trailer so you can see the whole thing.

Amazing right? We still have no idea what the price of it will be but it's looking to be an amazing console and I will need to invest into this little beauty. I actually love the fact they're switching to cartridges (I know it means my Wii U games won't work on it but the console is small enough to fit in with my other consoles.) and the fact you can detach the screen and take it on the go is incredible. The Wii U gamepad was just a projection screen pretty much but this, all the hardware is actually built into the pad itself. You can detach the controllers for all sorts of options but it looks like they're releasing a traditional pro controller as well. 

Now the games.. Oh man have they got a lot of games and companies coming to the machine. What caught my eye the most was definitely that new Mario game. I gotta admit I'm a Mario nut I have so many Mario games and I love playing all of them. I've been a Mario nut since the N64 and my love for the red & blue plumber has not died. It kinda looks more like a Super Mario 64 type game unlike the previous Super Mario 3D World so I'm pretty excited to see more on it. How about we call it... Super Mario Switch? Sounds like a pretty cool name actually so Nintendo if you haven't named it yet hit me up I got some cool names, haha. Some other games they showed off was The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild which is coming to both the Switch and the Wii U, Skyrim, which was a huge surprise I didn't expect Skyrim to be coming to the Switch, Splatoon (Which I'm assuming is Splatoon 2), and a brand new Mario Kart. Now at first glance the new Mario Kart looks like Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U but it's probably in early developments and there was a lot of new stuff in those couple of seconds that tell me this is definitely not Mario Kart 8. Another thing I noticed that no one has actually pointed out is that there are Amiibos sitting on the TV table, so yeah Amiibos are back and usable on the Switch, yes?

One thing I'm not quite sure about is where does the Nintendo 3DS stand on this? This is clearly a successor to the Wii U but will the Nintendo 3DS still be around despite the fact that this is also a portable system? I have no idea but Nintendo has stated it's a home console first so I guess we'll have to wait and see. There's actually a lot they still haven't said but the console comes out March 2017 so they'll reveal more by then.

So I'm going to end this off for the day, this has been a really long blog and I hope it's not been too long... Week has been pretty busy and I suspect things will be getting busier for me over the next couple of weeks and months. I'm going to SWITCH back to knitting my hat... That was a really bad pun I am so so sorry.

See you on the next blog!