Gaming Craft

I like gaming. The social aspect is fun, yes, and story telling, but it's this whole crafting/art project portion that really hooks me.

As I've aged I'm finding it a little harder to just make things willy nilly without thought as to why or for what purpose. I've tucked about as many little monsters about the house as Adam will let me. I've given ones to many friends and all family members. Why make more things? Well, making things is FUN! But... why? That's where gaming comes in. Now I'm making not just "something" but rather a prop or an accessory. A visual aid for something that involves more people than just me. Purpose.

Up until this point I've mostly been playing in games but 2016 is the year I dip my toe in trying to run them. Picked up the D&D 5e suite of books/rules and have run 2 little one-shot games for my friends. Wouldn't say they've been that successful but I've definitely enjoyed having friends over and having an excuse to think creatively. The first game involved a 2 level map where I drew the ground on graph paper and then had a tree branch level drawn with dry erase markers on a glass shelf (resting on several cardboard tube tree trunks). The second involved a dungeon map slowly revealed as people explored it.

Turns out peeling off square by painful square of "fog of war" isn't super fun. Also, candy colored "fog of war" really doesn't add to the "dungeon crawl" vibe... The problem wasn't the taping down (that actually worked super well) but just the general scrabbling for a hold on tiny paper piece in order to pick up. One takeaway from it though was that drawing the map was a good exercise in thinking about the story and helping me build out an idea. Drawing is my best way of building a narrative- something I've known for a while.

Another delightful gaming craft recently worked on was the Rogue Trader Yu'Vath Battlestation Assault Plan. Given a rather math-y description of a patrolling ships around a point of interest, friend Nate and I wrote a little simulator to help find the best approach. Mind you, this is for a game I'm not even in. Was thrilled to have a valid reason to use the three.js library again and limber up my mind, wrapping it around 3D math/space/modeling. Not sure how long Nate will host it for, but the simulation is up at this site right now. [code posted on Github]

While not really a craft, I've found games (mine but especially others') to be an excellent source of sketching and art. Friend Kelly drew the characters from a game and then flattered me by asking to help with inking/coloring it. I appreciate that with her effort/interest/involvement I managed to overcome the wall of white space most my sketches hang in and provide the vaguest of something for background (drawing backgrounds being my majorly failed 2015 New Years resolution). Never mind the fact that it's mostly a munged photo I found on the Internet...

I was going to follow this up with several more gaming sketches but alas this week's plot didn't get far enough...

Along the gaming craft tangent: applying game content to other activities. Friend Suko and I continue our once-a-month shooting. I've marked my arrows with names of 4th Terminus characters and not only does it help me improve my aim/track my shot history but it also tells a story with every round. "Oh Hayley, once again going off target. Morgan, always flies true. Jayce, right where I send him and look at that- the Jaya arrow is snug up against him. Again." What I need to do now is figure out a better way to label the arrows. Right now I've scribbled the names on the nocks (over half of which need to be re-aligned) but the ink rubs off so easily there.... Anyway, the important take away is that once I named my arrows and could track which offset/corrections were needed for each I was able to hit the bullseye three times with the arrow named Jaya. Just saying. The other arrows need to start pulling their weight.

In conclusion gaming is fun. Friends are great, telling stories with them is a fantastic way to pass the time, and using said content to overlay on other actives makes everything better.

Completed: Book binding

My five editions of the first two volumes of 4th Terminus are done. An epic (for me) feat started just after I quit work (July 15th) and completed almost three months later (October 7th).

Many many thanks to both friend Suko for her copy editing time & efforts and friend Scott for the inspiration & assistance on the binding project overall. Scott has been into book binding for many years and was good on his promise of helping me out when I finally found something I wanted to print & bind. Of course, I think original promise was to assist with "a book" rather than a printing run of ten at once. Luckily Scott is the right kind of nerd in all things and seemed to enjoy as much as I the challenges & differences unique to mass production.

No irrecoverable mistakes were made! Really, the only goof was that I should have affixed my end papers BEFORE I pasted on the crash. Instead, I wound up hand trimming them and adding them in just before the covers went on. Smoother gluing of end papers to cover and better shoulder position/size would have helped things, but I assume I'll just get better at that with practice.

The guillotine cutter was magical and made my lame hand-bound signatures transform into some professional looking content. It also left behind little black smudges on my beautiful white paper. Luckily Scott and I had already been discussing the idea of speckling the page edges- the smudges just made it a requirement. Purple & black were selected for reasons and did an excellent job of hiding the blemishes.

Scott bravely operated the foil heat machine, facing down a number of hiccups/problems. Turns out the foil and the book cloth don't mesh well. Maybe next time leather is needed? Regardless, all of the printings look great and really gave the books an old library book vibe. Which is good.

Turns out mass-producing books takes TIME (especially when we're semi-figuring things out as we go) so after the cloth was printed & covers were cut, Scott and I parted ways as our time was up at the the Center for the Book. Great place, that. Will be going back again for classes. Knowing what I know now, will be much faster/better prepared when renting equipment/space/time in the future. Anyway, it meant the cover construction and assembly happened at home, unsupervised. I think it went pretty well.

I wound up gluing most the covers on at the session in which I handed the books out. Time management. It's hard.

Knowing what I know now, I'd say the steps for the next run of books I do will be as follows:

• Determine page size & pages per signature
• Lay out book in LaTex
• Print ALL the books at once (Office Max has different bulk prices, maxing out at $0.10 per page(side) when you hit 500 pages)
• Fold & stitch signatures
• Fussy cut & glue end pages
• Glue crash
• Measure things! Have estimates!
• Rent space at the Center for the Book
  • Trim pages on guillotine
  • (optional)Splatter pages w/ inks
  • Cut chipboard for covers on sheer
  • (optional)Foil press title onto spine
• Build up spine
• Assemble cover
• Hope really hard that you didn't fuck anything up
• Affix cover to book

One of my main regrets was that I didn't take better photos throughout the process. My phone camera is pretty weak-sauce. Luckily friend Suko took some excellent photos of her books! (and if you follow either of us on other social medias, you're probably sick of seeing them over and over by now) Re-posting them here, with her permission, for prosperity:

Completed: 4th Terminus quilt

The quilt is done and has been out of the house for over a week. Success.

This is the first quilt I have "finished" the quilting for and put through the wash. Yikes, what a heart attack! I was not prepared for the state it came out of the wash in and almost burst into tears. Turns out A) quilt batting holds a fuck ton of water and B) light colored fabric is SUPER transparent when wet. Thankfully one of SF's little mini October heat waves helped shed the water and the fabric returned to it's opaque state upon drying. Those first couple moments though... All the track stitching was done in red and while I clipped the threads, I didn't trim them back as short as I should have. Which meant that veins of red creeped out from the tracks when it was wet and all the character portraits had spider webs of black thread behind them.

I'm shocked to say the quilting process was rather fun. And this is the first time I've abandoned the use of a frame and just quilted in my lap. Would not do so for the primary stitching lines that holds everything in place (yay for having a quilt frame for that!!) but for the "filler" stitching, it worked well. While I continue to swear that "the next time" I'm shipping the damn thing off to be machine quilted by professionals, I do find it to be quite appealing to add custom stitches specific to the quilt design. Used masking tape to help guide the lines, and that proved to be very useful. Have also used masking tape to guide applique sewing (because I suck at pinning), so that stuff is turning out to be a vital to have on hand.

The back of the quilt was more complicated than it needed to be/should have been. For some reason I thought "Wow, this is waaaay too nerdy looking! It needs a stealth mode where you can flip it over and it doesn't look so... silly." So I did some minor slap-dash squares in a variety of fabrics. The rushed sewing job (and non-cotton fabric types) meant that it didn't lay perfectly flat, which became most noticeable when the quilting chased down all those wrinkles and pinned them in place. Oh well. This will be yet another flaw lost in the sea of detailed-stuff-going-on. On the up side, the station stitching clearly shows through the back of the quilt which I find to be quite fetching. Makes the effort of hand stitching such details more worth it.

And now, don't make fun of me, I'll confess I've started a sample square as a proof-of-concept for next quilt*... Poor Adam was a bit sad to see the 4T one leave- it's one of the few I've made that was large enough to cover him. So we talked a bit and kicked around a very Adam-specific idea that I'm pretty excited about. And again it's overly complex, very specific, will take forever, and will probably require hand quilting... I'm so excited!!

* I have not forgotten that I've plans for another 4T quilt for another individual! But that one actually requires the game to end before I can start on it so this one is... like... an exceptionally complicated palate cleanser...

You can check out more photos over at the Flickr album.

4th Terminus Quilt aka Decision Fatigue

While snapshots of quilt progress have littered my Tumblr and it pops up frequently in conversations about what I'm doing, I apparently failed to blog about it here. Given that I finally started the quilting part this last week, I figure now's a good time to do so.

The project has been percolating in my brain for a while, not sure exactly how long. There were many motivators/reasons behind it:

• I was on the prowl for a new quilt project. I apparently need a very personal, focused reason to work on one (the Scrabble Board quilt and Pythagorean Theorem quilt remain unfinished- not abandoned but decidedly low low low priority)
• Nate said the game was going to end this year and I thought it was worth commemorating
• I've known about Spoonflower since 2008 and have just been waiting for the perfect project to come along so that I could try them out
• I love generating artwork for the games I play
• I've long desired to have more practice/reason to embroider phrases. My font is kinda' ugly, but whatever. Still learning, practice makes perfect.

Looking back over posts and emails, the timeline looks approximately like this:

• Late 2014, I get it into my head to do a 4T quilt featuring the transit map and the character silhouettes I've drawn
• Jan 21st 2015, pestered Nate till we got a revised/blessed/final take on the transit map. Posted to Tumblr.
• Early February 2015, pulled both Suko & Nate into the project for feedback/input. Good decision.
• Late March 2015, started designing first pair of custom prints. Posted to Tumblr
• Mid April 2015, designed final pair of prints.
• Late April 2015, decided to undertake the task of embroidering every chapter title for boarder. Posted to Tumblr.
• May 3rd 2015, first test yard of fabric arrives. So strange to see digital content brought into reality. Posted to Tumblr.
• May 28th 2015, bulk fabric order arrives! So much pretty, all of my choosing! Posted to Tumblr.
• May 31st 2015, cut and sewed the blocks together. Then settled into the long slog of embroidering all the chapter titles. Posted to Tumblr.
• July 29th, 2015, buckled down and did pile of work, most notably sewing down the transit line. Posted to Tumblr.
• August 21st 2015, finished back, slapped some batting between the piece, and started quilting! Verified that, yes, my stupid bulky quilting frame is actually exceptionally awesome/useful. Posted to Tumblr.

It has been a fun and educational process. It also has been extremely exhausting. Every fucking step along the way has been a decision point. Which fabric color to pair with each chapter title? Which color tones to use for the prints so they are visible but not too attention-grabbing? Which shade of red? Which shade of purple? How wide to make the lines? Which characters will stand next to each other? Which chapter titles will surround them?

This number of decisions and their continuous nature (as opposed to all being resolved at the start) differs greatly from my (admittedly little) quilting experience so far. Now that I'm onto the quilting bit, it feels as if a weight has been lifted. There are very few decisions left. Before me now is just the clear, uncomplicated work of stitching along lines that I have already decided upon. I remain happy, but am glad to have finally clear the worst of it.

The take aways from the project so far:

• Let it go. Just decide on something. Something is better than nothing.
• Spoonflower is great! Higher contrast produces better results.
• Wash away fabric pens were kinda' a let down. Wound up using mostly white charcoal art pencil to outline most my text
• Rotary cutters FTW. We already knew that. Never hurts to repeat great advice though. I finally upgraded to a super-large cutting mat. I feel like a grownup.
• Always buy more solid colored fabric than they think you'll need. It never hurts to have too much and it hurts A LOT to not have enough.
• I don't like the long-stitch/split stitch font I chose for my chapter titles. Next time I want a smaller back stitch for my text. (something to keep in mind for the Pythagorean Theorem quilt)
• I invested in those plasic perfect circles for my station dot applique. No regrets. They didn't turn out perfect, but that's my fault I think. Next time I need a smaller running stitch when basting around the edge, for the gather.
• Adam is a good sport for letting me litter so many craft supplies about the house for this, for so long. The drying rack has been in the TV room for several months now with the chapter titles and fabric prints draped over it.
• Learning how to make repeating patterns in Photoshop makes me happy.

It's just... really, really exciting to have an idea in my head spool out so damn slowly and yet stay as I envisioned it. It's just a collage quilt, but it's a project I'm proud of. Few endeavors strain and stretch my creativity in so many different ways, it's a feeling I highly value.

Things Things Things in June

The month has slipped by and I'd kick myself if I didn't post *something* to record the passage of time.

First half of the month

The youngest Stecker got married. Who knows, she may be the only one of us to do so.

That's Dr. Bride, to you!
It was nice to have the family rallied up in Washington. The turnout wasn't as good as our cousin's wedding, alas, but that's what you get when marrying on short notice and later in life. We were in Wenatchee, WA (currently on fire) and endured some serious heat wave-ness. I also endured some wine tasting, for the sake of the bride. We also endured each other. In our advanced years we managed to get through a multi-day event without fighting. How adult of us. Mother spent a lot of effort wrangling a photo booth for the event, making it clear to me where I get my craftiness from. Other than the blistering heat, the venue was lovely. We got to stay the night before and after there on site in a ridiculous room. (For some reason, while I was not in attendance, it was decided that Adam and I would get the Bridal Suite)

Second half of the month

Another 4th Terminus session finally happened again. And it was breathtaking. Like... I couldn't breath. Because I was laughing so hard. So so so good. But how can I not delight in a session dedicated entirely to my character?

Adam and I went back up for Mt Tam Pancakes, which alas remains a car-based hike. For the first time we tackled the Beach to Inn and Back Again loop, hitting up a new portion of the trail this time. Highly recommend it- too bad it's nameless. We literal came out of the trees, left the (main) trail, and stomped straight up to the peek. An intense ascent- would not have been possible if I hadn't gifted Adam some hiking sticks that morning. Everything was made better by the rolling high fog of the morning. Pancakes were tasty as ever. Adam always regrets not bringing real syrup but personally I was raised on the artificial stuff and it brings back fond memories. After a 5 mile hike, who cares about the quality of sugar you're putting atop your pancakes? Another 5 miles later and we were back at the beach.




And now June is (almost) over. I am certain July will be even better, but more on that later...

Winning and Gaming

Life goes on, like it does. Things continue to be reasonably well. I am sad that I failed to post something in March. We visited Hawaii, it was nice, hopefully photos will make their way online at some point.

I've had some minor successes here and there recently that please me. While camping at the start of the month I was Mistress of the Campfire and managed to start several fires (in the fire pit) with one match each. This makes me proud. In the last seven months I've managed to lose 10 pounds and am only about 3 away from my randomly-chosen target. In that same time frame I've gone off the pill, and despite initial fear/uncertainty stayed off of it. While I struggle with Feelings, less reliable biology, more Feelings, and whatnot I think being free of it has improved a lot of things in life. When I ask Adam if he's noticed any change his immediate response is "You want to draw all the time."

At work I've been more assertive and involved in more external facing stuff. On a recent call the folks on the other side of the line said something along the lines of my introduction being the best they've ever heard and they were happy/excited to work with me. I continue to "Make an Impression" on people. It helps that I finally feel like the non-engineers I'm working with respect me. While my hatred and loathing of Python blossoms by the day, I've been able to carve out work for myself in Java and it's a delight.

On the art side I've had several crafting successes that makes me extremely pleased with myself. The feeling of having an idea, executing on it, and having it not suck is incredibly delightful- and sadly still quite rare. My sketching is still sporadic- I've fallen off the "morning sketch" routine and ache to return to it- but at least I'm sketching sometimes. Tonight at Dr. Sketchy's I finally won again (2nd place) which always makes me happier than it should.

On the other hand, there's been some gaming. Definitely no winning there. Have been mostly having fun, but so not winning. Except for one game of Pandemic, which was won... but when I think back on it, I'm pretty sure we were cheating...

Extended 4th Terminus session was fun- there was a map and even some dice rolls! But sadly there was also NPC deaths and damage, despite all efforts. And the party is split. And who knows when we'll ever game together again. The end is nigh.

Played my first LARP character this weekend. Burying oneself in costuming does in fact help with nerves! Does not magically help you win however. Upon hearing my character's description, Adam asked if I was worried about being typecast, to which my response was simply :P

Game of Thrones is a horrible game. It may not displace Caylus as Worst Game (since Caylus has fundamentally broken gameplay in my opinion) but it displaces Power Grid for certain as Most Unpleasant To Play. Will I ever get to play Puerto Rico again? At least Adam and I played a couple hands of Race for the Galaxy and while he (as always) won the 2 of 3 set, I put up a solid fight each round.

Life goes on, like it does.

Keeping busy

Been doing a lot of things these days. November feels like it breezed right past and we're about to trip over the middle of December any day now. Crazy, that...

Been keeping busy lately. More production, less consumption. A couple things in brief about consumption.

• Birdman was great. You should go see it
• True Detective rocked my world. You should watch it.
• Interstellar is lame. You should avoid it.
• Inherent Vice is great. You should go see it when it comes out, but don't expect to understand/catch half the dialog
• Big Hero 6 is incredibly predictable but very lovely and hilarious. I laughted out loud multiple times in the theater. Also seeing animated Japan!SF was fun.
• I think American Horror story this season is good... I bought a season pass but just can't seem to find the time to watch the last...4? episodes. I'll get to 'em... eventually.
• I'm stalled out in the middle of In The Woods and it's blocking me from starting anything new/better. >:-/

In terms of production, I've been drawing a lot. Haven't tackled many backgrounds, like I'd hoped to, but I'm working on some composition/layout stuff and "coloring" in monochrome. My True Detective fan art has been fun and gotten me the most "Likes" of anything I've posted on Tumblr. Been coding a bit in my spare time, which feels nice. I think it's because of all the rain we've been getting here this winter. So easy to stay inside and draw or code when it's so shitty out.

A nice union of drawing and coding not too long ago was a Blogger page with my 4th Terminus character lineup on it. Turns out there's too many dudes to nicely put in one static image... and I've handfuls of more characters that I should sketch! Going for just a basic silhouette and minimal character features is super easy and very fun! Check out my 4th Terminus page in general incase you'd like to know more about that game I keep talking about. And here's a picture of my character around the start of last session. Good times!

Am really looking forward to the long winter break. Adam and I are psyched to be just saying around town doing nothing, no joke.