June? Am I right?

I still don’t know how June is almost over already. I’m pretty sure I went to bed last night, and it was the 4th, not the 24th. Boy, does time fly. There was a fair bit accomplished in June on my side. It ranges from trading card games, gunpla, and the fiber arts. All of it helped to break a period of writer’s block.

Audio and Reads

I’ve been catching up on YouTube channels, podcasts, and audiobooks. Currently, for audiobooks, it’s been:

Conan: City of the Dead by John C. Hocking
Death’s End by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
1922, Nightmares & Dreamscapes volume 1, and the Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
The Books of Blood, Volume 1 by Clive Barker

I love “The Yattering and Jack”. 100% would annoy the shit out of a demon if I was haunted. Also, 1922 made me viscerally uncomfortable for some reason. Which doesn’t happen often.

For Manga reads:

Naruto
Pluto (Highly recommend as a stunning retelling of “The Greatest Robot on Earth” arc from Astro Boy)
My Happy Marriage
Yu-Gi-Oh!

Blogs to keep an eye out for:

This month’s podcast catch-up is with:

I’m really looking forward to Dawn’s (of Anime Nostalgia) interview with Erica Victoria Espejo about her book The Fangirl Diaries: Finding Community in Anime Fandom of the ’90s and ’00s. Fandom history and culture have been a fascinating topic to explore, especially early fandom history. Well, early for me.

As for the Built Sideways’ episode 10 of season five: Frustrations in the Hobby… well, I feel the frustration. Hobby frustrations have been at a record high for me this year.

Why are grown adults fighting over cardboard? Like, imagine being a grown ass adult and fighting someone in line over Pokémon cards. Seriously. Fighting in a Costco parking lot. Scalpers… what the fuck? It’s sad. I love Pokémon and Magic, but I recognize that these are games for kids and teens. Not something that should be purchased, then resold for a 50+ increase slapped on it.

It’s why I haven’t tried to get a Labubu keychain. I want one. Just not that bad.

Gunpla, however, has been a “me” frustration issue. Every time I go to paint, I get indecisive about color choices. I also have to strip some spots on the 1:1 scale haro because I wasn’t happy with how some of it was turning out.

Give me the Fiber

I’ve had some fun times getting back into the fiber arts the last few months! Some of these pics are from May, simply because I didn’t have any photos of them from June.

This is a long-term cross-stitch project. Inspired by the tunnel screensaver.

The knitting machine, with the orange and blue yarn, is to help produce scarves and hats to donate for the winter. Djungelskog is modeling several blankets.

I think the hardest projects I’ve been working on might be a tie between spinning yarn and working on quilts. Each is done by hand. I hand-stitch my quilt pieces together, and the yarn is done on a Neolithic-inspired drop spindle. My hands yell at me constantly if I don’t stretch them before and after, as both of these projects require a fair bit of hand movement.

(The wool for the yarn is Merino.)

Cardboard

On top of how I normally sort my TCG cards, I’ve been going through scanning my collection with Delver Lens and uploading sets online to Moxfield. It’s not difficult to do, but time-consuming.