One of the benefits for me of working in education is my working pattern. I have to do a few days in the school holidays as part of my contract but effectively, I get all of the school holidays off. It’s invaluable to me for managing my health that I’ve got a break every 5-8 weeks. It means I can catch up on anything I’ve been too ill to do, support my family with doing more and just rest my brain and my body in general! Having the holidays as time off means I don’t get to accrue any ‘normal’ holiday leave and it means going away is expensive. But for me (and the family) it works for the minute so I can’t see it changing any time soon.

As I’m making the most of my time off this post is going to be short and sweet. But I don’t want to waste my days and accountability is a good thing. So I’m going to try and pack in as much as I can without my body objecting too much (says the queen of not pacing herself!). I’m not going to list the mundane stuff, chores, long dog walks etc… but here’s what I want to achieve as ‘CraftyRogueGamer’ over the upcoming week.

Gaming

  • Complete Immortals Fenyx Rising (PS5) – Platinum. I’ve been putting some decent time into this and it’s definitely achieveable.
  • Start/complete something I can switch off to and don’t need audio – e.g. Minesweeper or Jigsaws (PS4/5). There’s a method behind my madness and just doing puzzles. I want to be able to concentrate on listening to other things (see below).

Crafting

  • Configure StitchPal and load future projects. I’ve stumbled across a nifty app I want to try that tracks your progress on cross stitch projects. You can add how much you’ve stitched that day, pictures, notes and it looks really good. I literally only discovered it in the early hours of the morning yesterday so I’ve downloaded it and that’s pretty much it.
  • Complete Demodog pattern. That should really read start it, but I think given the size and the stitch count I could give it a good go. For more about the pattern and my progress there’s last weeks blog post and also my Instagram where I post project updates: @craftyroguegamer
  • Order materials for Gamer stitchalong. I posted more about the stitchalong in last week post and there’s more on Instagram. The list of thread colours that I need was published today so I need to do a stash check, make a list and get some more floss ordered. I know I don’t have anywhere near the amount of colours so I might need some more storage too…

CraftyRogueGamer

  • Put together a logo. I really want to make a go of CraftyRogueGamer as a ‘brand’ and I’d rather be prepared for future projects and plans with a logo. I put something together and had a designer mock it up (graphic design is not a forte of mine) but I still wasn’t quite happy with it. Now I’ve got the basis of something though I can work design software enough to manipulate and tweak it, so I’m going to give it a bash.
  • Investigate YouTube/Flosstube potential. While I love writing and blogging, I have a niggle about making video content. I think it’s something I’d like to investigate and maybe start vlogging or doing ‘how to’ videos or something to that effect. In the stitching world, YouTube content is called ‘FlossTube’ and I’ve seen a few videos but not enough to know if it’s something I’d want to do, or have enough to talk about! So while I’m playing my ‘switch off’ non-audio puzzle game I’m going to delve into the world of FlossTube and see where it takes me.

I want to do so much more than the above, but I have the benefit of hindsight and I know I’ll just end up with a broken body as I’ve ‘done too much’ (depressingly this can happen even if I achieve very little!) or miserable because I’ve not managed to tick anything off the list. So that’s where I’ll leave it and anything extra is a bonus.

Feel free to keep up with my progress – I’ll be updating my PSN Profile (georgi_b) and my Instagram – craftyroguegamer