FIRST YOUTUBE, NEXT...THE WOOOORRRLLLDDDD

OK, so maybe that was slightly dramatic for the start of my first personal blog post, but I am very excited at the moment and by gum I just can't contain myself. My dear friends I have just hit 500 subscribers on my Youtube channel and I am happy as a pig in mud. I will do a proper long winded thank you video that you guys deserve at some point but I want it to be just right for all you wonderful people that have supported me so much, my love and hugs go out to you all.

So as those of you who have come here from my Youtube will know I have been on something of an uploading spree lately. I had to take a couple weeks break from it all for some personal reasons, and when it's all resolved itself I'm sure I'll tell you guys all about it.

So in the past couple weeks other than doctors appointments and what not I haven't really been up to much. Other than working on my blog and Youtube, helping my very pregnant sister paint her house and sorting out my desk area that main attraction was my boyfriend Richs dads wedding. It was a particularly interesting event as it was the first time that I got to meet all of his extended family! Of course I went into the day absolutely bricking it and looking around for the nearest escape route (as anyone would do when meeting the family for the first time) But even fifteen minutes into the wedding I could tell that my fears were absolutely un founded. I could not have met a nicer group of people. They were really open and welcoming to me, they were also really receptive of my band (we were the entertainment at the reception). So all in all it was an amazing day and the wedding itself was beautiful.

You guys are going to have to let me know if you like posts like this of my day to day life then I will do more of them. Anyway I won't be uploading anything in the next couple days as I am going camping with some friends of mine but I will see you wonderful creatures of the Internet when I return.

As a goodbye present I give you all a picture of my boyfriend in a suit (he was the best man)

When in doubt, Shoot the ground.

The great hair experiment pt.1

 

So I have decided to take it upon myself to test out some age old hair staples, but from a different view point. As someone who used to have hair that stretched all the way down to my butt I will be the first to admit that short hair can be something that can take some getting used to. Certain things that I used to do with my hair all the time I just haven't done in a while because I seem to have become accustomed to the limitations of short hair.

So what I have planned to do is take some staple hair techniques that most people with hair below their shoulders use on a day to say basis and see if they can be transferred over to those of us with slightly shorter cuts. 

So for the first part of The Great Hair Experiment I am going to be testing out a hair technique that used to a regular on my list of hair tips and tricks:

Putting wet hair in plaits to achieve wavy hair

Now I don't know about you guys out there but I haven't had plaits in my hair for a very long time. One thing that I have to deal with, having short hair that's thick enough to house a small family of borrowers in, is the problem that if I go to sleep with even the slightest bit of moisture in my hair I wake up looking like something out of the lion king. This is a particularly big problem for me as unless when I'm making tutorial videos I as a rule do not blow dry my hair as part of my routine to keep my hair as healthy as possible. This never used to be an issue for me as most of the time I would just plait my hair and in the morning I would wake up with lovely soft waves.

SO! I would like to test whether or not the same look can be achieved with short hair and french braids. My hair only just reaches my shoulders at the moment, so after I braid it there's barely any point in tying up two separate plaits. So instead I take the two ends and wrap them around each other in a braid bun. So here we go, I shall report back in the morning with my findings.

TA DAAAAAAAAA!

Well first off I thought I would show you how my hair held up sleeping in plaits all night. Now I don't know about you guys but I am terrible when I sleep, I toss and turn and wriggle all over the place like a mad woman so I was pretty much expecting to wake up in the morning with half of my hair just randomly hanging out all over the place. So I was rather surprised to find my hair had behaved it self so well.

             
                        

When I eventually did take the plaits out (I needed my customary morning tea first of else I would have turned into the bitch monster from hell) I was very surprised with just how well it had worked! When I went to sleep my hair wasn't very wet, but there was still some moisture in it so I wasn't expecting the curls to be as defined as they were. The hair felt lovely and soft when I let it down and the curls themselves were lovely and defined without being too ringlet like.

The pictures below show what it looked like after I gave it a bit of styling. All in all I think I can definitely call this little experiment a success!! I don't know how this technique would work for shorter hair as the curls would be pretty random, but for someone like me who has just about shoulder length hair I definitely think this is definitely something that I will be doing more often from now on.

       

(Here's a picture of the hair the next day as well, so you can see how well the curls hold)

When in doubt, shoot the ground x

My first foray into the world of hand spun yarn

Now if your like me and simply cannot even consider leaving the house without something to knit/crochet on the bus and dream about art yarns and the next project, then this is totally for you. As some one who has been an avid knitter and all around general crafter for a long time then spinning your own yarn is something that was eventually going to come up. Personally living on a students budget I cannot hope to own my own spinning wheel, so I started searching the Internet for more cost effective options. Though there are others you can use I found that the one that works best for me is the top whorl drop spindle. You can buy these ready made on Ebay for as little as seven pounds, but I wanted to try and make something that was thrifty and easily made, as most of the tutorials I found online still required specialist tools and equipment. I ended up making mine from a few things that I had lying around the house :

- A pencil with a rubber in the top

- A circular piece of cardboard

- An old fish hook ear ring

- PVA glue

- Brown packing tape

As my drop spindle is not the topic of this blog post then I shall leave this little tutorial for another day (if people so wish it) and get on with what I'm meant to be talking about.

First off you need to choose your fibre. I got mine from forestfibers on Ebay. I can definitely see myself using this seller again. They have a wonderful selection of pre drafted fibres in a variety of really stunning colours. The wonder of buying pre drafted fibres is that you don't have to go through the process of picking and carding the fibre.

Once you have your fibre you need to prepare it for spinning. Unless your going for the record for worlds chunkiest yarn your going to want to separate it into eights. Once you are ready to spin you need to create what is called a leader yarn. This is a loop of already spun yarn that is attached the the pencil part of the drop spindle and then looped through the hook at the top. Then you take your un spun fibres and loop them through the leader yarn. 

To actually spin the roving into a yarn you take the drop spindle and press it against your leg and run it from the top of your thigh down to your knee and let it spin. As the spindle spins you slowly let more and more of the roving drop so that it twists it self into a strand of yarn. Once you have spun the amount of roving that you let fall you detach it from the hook and wrap it around the body of your spindle while holding it tight so that it doesn't ravel back on itself.

Once you have spun all your roving you need to take it off your spindle. Normally there is a special tool you can use to wind it to a desired length, but since this was about spinning my own yarn while spending as little as possible i decided to stretch my feet out and wrap it around my feet. No matter what you use to wrap your yarn around you want to try and make it as long as possible and keep it stretched.

Now comes one of the most crucial steps when spinning your own yarn. To keep the twist and make sure your yarn doesn't un ravel into it's natural state you are going to need to soak your yarn. I took a small amount of basic washing up soap and added it to a sink of luke warm water. Your water needs  to be slightly warm but not too warm or else your yarn runs the risk of felting, which we don't want. Once you have soaked your wool for between 10 - 20 minutes you need to rinse your yarn to remove all the soap bubbles and left over residue from your yarn.

Once you have fully rinsed your yarn you need to dry it, however, you need to stretch and dry it at the same time to make sure that the drying sets your twist. Most people do this by hanging their yarn from something and weighting the bottom part down to fully stretch it out. For me personally I chose to use my washing horse as the distance between the metal poles happened to be just the right size. I then left the yarn there until it was dry all the way through and then I balled them up as I made two balls of equal size so that I could ply them together. To make a two ply ball of wool I just followed the directions for spinning wool but you thread both balls through the leader yarn and when you spin it on your drop spindle you spin it in the opposite direction that you did the first time, so in this case to ply it I spun it from knee to thigh instead of thigh to knee.

So as you can see I didn't produce that much wool but I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew for my first attempt at spinning. In total it took me two days from start to finish and I definitely think that this is going to be something that I will be doing in the future. Not only do you get much more creative control over the yarn that you use in your knitting and crocheting, but also I found that the biggest reward from spinning your own yarn is the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that you get from knowing that the yarn you are using was made by your own two hands. 

Happy Spinning! When in doubt, Shoot the ground x

A girls guide to LAN parties

Alllllllll righty then...

When I first started seeing my boyfriend I was introduced to a wonderful world that up until now had remained a mystery to me. I am talking of course, about the elusive LAN party. For those of you who are not aware of this wondrous event a LAN party is where a group of people get together with their computers and copious amounts of caffeine and lock themselves away for lengths at a time to play games together. Of course before I started seeing Rich I was a player of games but had never really had the nerd circle around me to be able to do stuff like this. So in all senses of the word when I attended my first one I was going into it a complete and utter noob. Now I am in no way saying that I'm now Queen of the LAN parties, but I feel that I at least have some knowledge that I can pass on to other females who may find themselves in a similar situation. So, without further a do, I give you "Claires' guide to how to survive your first LAN party".

1. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR TECH SUPPORT!

When I first attended a LAN party with my boyfriend Rich I was between laptops and had had my PC gutted by my father a couple of months earlier. I was in no way expecting to actually get to play any games as I didn't expect any of these seasoned gamers that I had never met before to assist this little pink haired noob. That, was my first mistake. When I did get to the party I found that Rich and his friends had some how managed to get together a small PC, a monitor, mouse and keyboard and had set it all up just so that I could play with them. I had never met these people before and they had put themselves out to help me. It was then that I realised that people who do this thing on a regular basis aren't looking to keep the experience to themselves. You will find that the majority of gamers out there are just happy to see people taking a genuine interest in what they devote so much time and effort to that if you just ask then if they can help you they will.

2. UNLESS ITS A REGULAR PARTY DON'T GET DRUNK!
Now don't take this the wrong way, if you want to get drunk then get drunk, but if you actually want to play some games then thats probably not a good idea. If your coming for the gaming then you don't wanna be stumbling around the place yelling "FUCKING NOOB PULLERS!!!! NEONOVISNBFNBLB.....wheres my beer?".

3. CAFFEINE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND!
If you are going into your first LAN party completely blind, I must warn you, you aren't going to bed any time soon. The last thing you want is to get all tired and start tripping out while playing Skyrim because it will fuck.you.up! Now obviously you don't want to go too far the other way because a caffeine headache while staring at a screen will kill your eyes and make you want to stab yourself in the ear, so the biggest thing is to balance your caffeine intake with things that will help refresh and revitalise you. I recommend splitting your liquid intake between energy drinks, some low caffeine content hot drink like tea or decaf coffee and always drinking water or juice in-between.

There are many other things that I could write about, but if i told you all the happenings and ways of the LAN party then that would take all the excitement and enjoyment out of discovering it yourself, like I did...plus there's a special edition extended box set of Lord Of The Rings box set calling to me.

Fly you fools. When in doubt, shoot the ground x