Crafting and Cavorting
THE CRAFTING
Made these two beauties last week and I’m really happy with the results. I’ve had my Cameo 4 vinyl cutter for two years. During those years the only time I cut vinyl was to create stencils. I prefer the painted look to the vinyl application look…
or so I thought.
These bottles were hanging out in my craft closet for 6 months or so just waiting for an idea and the mood to hit me. Each bottle has two coats of black acrylic craft paint and the decal is made with Oracal 651 Permanent Vinyl in matte white. I love these so much and was going to gift them to my daughter-in-law but decided to keep them for myself. I have more bottles so she’ll get some with the next round.
There was a pause in cutting rolled flower patterns from the remaining 8.5 x 11 cardstock because I needed new auto blades. The older blades are fine for the vinyl for a bit longer, but paper dulls my auto blades faster. My weekend will be dedicated to getting back to cutting flowers and knocking out some wreaths. My niece-in-law said she’d add them to her craft table in November because she thinks they’ll sell because no one in our area makes anything like them. We’ll see how it goes. If the wreaths don’t sell it’s fine because I’m making ones that I can use in my own home or my girls (daughter-in-law and niec-in-law) will use.
THE CAVORTING
I’ve written about our love of Final Fantasy XIV in previous posts. I even have a couple galleries dedicated to screenshots from the game and we thought it was going to be our permanent MMOrpg .We spent weeks grinding coin in order to bid on a medium FC house when the new housing district opened and another two months crafting our butts off to decorate it. The game isn’t perfect, no game is in fact but it has everything we, as a gaming couple, wanted. The things we loved about the game outweighed the things that irked us as gamers.
And then my nephew told us he returned to Elder Scrolls Online and wouldn’t be playing FFXIV anymore and that was fine. We encourage everyone to play what they love. Here’s the thing, when FFXIV had the housing lottery debacle I wandered the internet checking out housing in other games. ESO came up a lot but I didn’t pursue it or mention it to J. The devs fixed the housing lottery mistake and we went back to our gaming life in Eorzea. When T left for ESO, I wandered back to the site. Neither J or I wanted to pay for another subscription to a game since we just dropped the coin for a 6 month sub to FFXIV.
My Nord Templar
You can play Elder Scrolls Online with no monthly subscription. Just buy the game and start adventuring in Tamriel. You can get started for $20 on Steam, which gives you the Elder Scrolls Online base game as well as the Morrowind Chapter. For $60 you get all the DLC to date. Like I said, there is no monthly subscription required to play the game BUT there is ESO Plus. For $15 a month (the price per month is discounted if you pay for 3. 6, 12 month pkgs.) you unlock perks for the game like getting DLC packs “free”, unlimited storage for crafting materials, an experience boost and more.
We went into the game with the idea that it would be the game we played when we wanted a break from FFXIV. On day 3 of playing, we subscribed. Yes, we love it so much that we haven’t logged into FFXIV in 3 weeks and I doubt we’ll return even though we’re paid up for another 5 months. That’s so incredibly hard to believe. We love FFXIV but…
Lack of housing and FFXIV’s decision to not instance it annoys us. They want neighborhoods. In all the time we’ve owned the FC house, we’ve run into other players in our district a handful of times. People don’t hang out in the district. They do things in their homes, then hang out in major cities like Limsa Lominsa.
Major story reveals are locked behind raids. We don’t raid. Raiding is something we used to do when we played World of Warcraft. ESO has Trials and Veteran dungeon content that we’re looking forward to but no story reveals/conclusions are locked behind any of them.
Bots have completely ruined two content areas of the game that we wanted to explore: Eureka and Bozjan Southern Front. The bots are so bad that folks aren’t queuing for the quest line to unlock the Bozjan Southern Front. We waited 3 hours…. THREE HOURS IN QUEUE, and never got a group. Who wants to queue up and HOPE to get a group while you try to occupy yourself with other things?
Leveling Provisioning a.k.a. Cooking.
These were things we decided would never be fixed/changed but we loved the game. It’s just one of the gaming hobbies we pursue as a couple. Then here comes ESO, a game that’s been around since 2012 and we’re like
“Nope, can’t go back to FFXIV. Just can’t do it!”
Elder Scrolls is hailed as the best MMOrpg for solo players. Yes, we game as a couple but we enjoy exploring content in our own way. ESO allows us to wander and delve on our own but still come together for dungeons and more difficult content. Housing is something else we enjoy in games. In ESO you can own as many homes as you want as long as you have the gold to pay for them. There’s no lottery, no standing in line clicking a placard and holy guacamole, there are so many different STYLES of homes!!
Never thought an older game would steal us away from FFXIV. Then again, there aren’t any kickass NEW MMOrpgs dropping these days.
So that’s where I’ve been. There’s the usual life stuff as well. Decorating for the season, crafting and a return to using my Crockpot for meals. I also started working on a portfolio site on Smugmug. More on that and the Crockpot resurgence soon. Until then,
Peace
B
