i finished my first blackwork sampler!
of course, you can't have elizabethan blackwork without an elizabeth.
conceived by anne boleyn only after the birth of two fictional princes (harold and greensleeves), we do now have a brown-haired elizabeth. (funny that her brothers are both redheads.) i am pinning a lot of hopes on her, even though it's me who has given her exponentially more siblings to fight for the crown, so i have also given her mad skillz. she drank lots of "smart milk" and got quite a bit of charisma and logic.
elizabeth has of course, two living half-sibs by henry and catherine of aragon (the fictional arthur, and the real mary), and the aforementioned two full brothers by anne boleyn. at last mention she also had an illegitimate sister by bessie blount, who at that time was again pregnant by the king, and has since delivered: twin girls, who live in the pre-queen pen and therefore have a lot of ladies to care for them.
i was mad that they were twins and that they were girls. i needed a boy. i needed a henry fitzroy. i was so mad, i gave the twins dumb names. they are "peak frean" and "mushy pea".
after seeing numerous identical single-birth siblings generated by the same pairs of parents, i was surprised to see clearly fraternal twins -- who also have very different personality traits! we are going to work hard towards a good twin and an evil twin. i don't know WHAT to do when it comes to the conception of henry fitzroy -- because henry and bessie had a big blowout fight and there's no way to get them in bed together right now.
as far as queens go, i got henry and anne boleyn into a cycle of fighting and nagging, but, so dull and unimaginitive is the game, there was no way for him to order her beheading, so he requested instead that she go fix a trash disposal that she was not mechanically equipped to handle, hoping for an electrocution.
instead, the ghosts of the immolated princes -- nine and ferdie -- were wandering the kitchen, and ferdie -- with whom anne had had such a nice relationship in life -- literally scared her to death. anne had low resources at that point -- she had not enjoyed motherhood. and being scared to death by a ghost seems to have made HER in turn a VERY scary ghost indeed.
eh. can't fight fate. so, anne boleyn is dead. and henry IS already married to jane seymour (whose wooing caused the big problems between the king and bessie blount -- you will recall that bessie was involved both with the king and with jane!) and all jane has to do is produce an edward -- a sickly little edward -- and all my obligations towards "real" legitimate offspring are fullfilled, right?
she didn't do it. i had to force-quit and make her labor again. she caught on that time.
now i have to get rid of her. just as hard to come by as "beheading", it seems, is "sickness". sims are SUPPOSED to be able to catch communicable diseases; these won't. with all the clever players creating clever shareable downloads, why isn't anyone making "smallpox"?
there have, though, been some interesting trends taking place in the kingdom.
trend one: running with scissors
this was a new download from thesims2.com -- they LOVE to run with these giant scissors, which look as though they were purchased as a "decorative" item from pottery barn! alas, running with scissors is VERY dangerous. be careful and give your sims room if you try this, or you will end up...
trend two: pleading with death
death comes, and you can plead with him. this had to happen a number of times, because the anne boleyn ghost is so nasty, she scared jane seymour to death twice in five minutes. and once when henry ran with scissors, he stabbed himself in the chest because he ran into a wall, and we had to plead for him. it's a fifty-fifty chance, but it's still a chance.
children cannot play with the scissors. such a socially responsible game. (when hetero couples stand under the wedding arch, the action they take is to "marry". when same sex couples do it, the option is called "join". take it as you will.)
my blackwork sampler is finished. finished!
i finished the last band during one of our encore viewings of reform school girls, and then zipped around the outer border in no time. pleased? yes.
of course, i'm all about perspective, so i got some when a buddy returned my scott peterson trial book -- MEDIA MAIL -- and sent this along, wadded up inside. like it was nothing.
if i could do this, it would be triple-matted and behind UV protective glass. but no, she wads it into a book and sends it MEDIA MAIL.
i love the assisi work. love it.