Last night I was dreaming about getting some new leaf insects, however the insect in my dream was completely fictional. Now I think a combination of my lack of sleep last night, handling my Phyllium giganteum before bed and the fact that I was shopping for carnivorous plants yesterday is to blame for this one.

Although I can’t remember if this insect used it’s Cape sundew-like tail to catch other insects, it looks damn cool. I also like the leafy antennae I gave it. I would actually love to have one of these as a pet, but obviously I can’t. But since it was on my mind, I drew it instead. I hope you like my scribbles!

Ink and copic marker. Click to enlarge.

Sorry for the poor image quality, I haven’t got a scanner at the moment.

The biggest plus side I’ve found to keeping these plants is that they tackle the fruit fly problems I get from keeping African Land Snails. The fermenting fruit isn’t usually an issue, but can attract these harmless, but annoying flies in the spring/summer. These plants are pretty AND practical!

I have two flytraps, Dionaea muscipula, growing at the moment. One is an adult I picked up recently and the other (far left) is one that is regrowing after a period of winter dormancy. I’m hoping to get some prettier pots for these soon but all the ones I’ve seen in the local garden centers are boring. Any suggestions of where to find interesting pots is appreciated!

Here is my recently acquired pitcher plant, Nepenthes alata, which is growing really fast at the moment. I’m hoping to get a cute hanging pot for it to sit in so the traps won’t rest on my windowsill.

The terrible phrasing on this label amused me. “Try to keep the plant in a moisty environment”. So, they can write the latin name of the plant on the label but they don’t think people will understand what humid means?

My collection is really small at the moment but I’m hoping to get a few more soon. There are two plants at the top of my wish list; the rather beautiful pitcher plant Heliamphora chimantensis, and Drosera capensis, commonly known as the Cape sundew.

Pinterest is a fantastic place to find crafting ideas, delicious recipes and fashion tips – This recipe for chili-chocolate macaroons is a particular highlight. (I’m slightly obsessed with chilli chocolate at the moment.) My main gripe with Pinterest is similar to my gripe with Tumblr – there is too much fakery! Becca from Shiny Shiny put this much better than I can in her opinion piece, ‘Is Pinterest just a beautiful but sad fantasy land?’, where she talks about the way people manicure the image of themselves obsessively online. There is also a brilliant piece on the Tumblr angle you can read on Bitchbuzz.

I often worry that more and more of my time is spent being sucked into social networks. Yet here I am, joining yet another massive website, wasting time sharing things that I haven’t created. I like to think that a lot of the things I am pinning are inspiring me to make my own items to share, it’s certainly part of the reason I started work on my knitted beetle patchwork! Maybe Pinterest will grow on me. It’s still a relatively new social network, and it has huge potential. But hey, I’ve still got Tumblr, Twitter and deviantART to fill that gap if I get bored. Any of you lot on Pinterest? What do you think of it?

Oh yes, I also joined a forum! Another way to waste time. I haven’t participated in forums since I moved from Community Management to PR just over two years ago! I’ve been taking a while to get back into it, but since the forum is about insects, I’m really enjoying it. The forum I’ve joined is BugNation.co.uk for anyone interested in insect-related topics. The only real downside of joining is that I’m now looking to get 2-3 more varieties of Leaf Bug (Phylliidae) to add to my personal zoo. Not that you can blame me, look how cute they are! This is one of my female Phyllium giganteum having a drink.

Now with my powers combined, I am Captain Pla… able to start a larger project I’ve wanted to do for some time: a knitted patchwork. I’m planing for it to feature many of my favourite insects and so I started with a dung beetle, or a Scarab for those that prefer a more flowery name.

I’m also working through a book my brother gave me for christmas that is full of some rather brilliant dinosaur patterns. Here’s the body of a Diplodocus I’ve started, I’ll post up pictures of the finished piece in a few days.

Other than becoming a crazy knitting lady, I’ve been planning the tattoo half-sleeve for my right arm, as well as helping Chris work with the wonderfully talented, Alice, on his first tattoo. It’ll be something Shadow of the Colossus related so watch out for future tattoo updates.

Gaming-wise I’ve been a bit distracted by all the crafting but I’ve almost hit 1000G on Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 and I managed to get my mitts on a copy of Atlus’ rather surreal puzzle game, Catherine. I’m hoping to get stuck into this week, especially after all the drama surrounding it and the general love/hate opinions of people reviewing it.

I’ll finish off this post with a picture of one of my Giant East African Snails (Achatina fulica) which came out of hibernation this weekend. Cute!

Choosing just 5 games was actually a lot harder than I expected. Child of Eden, Outland and Lego: Pirates of the Caribbean are a couple of the games I really enjoyed but they didn’t quite make the cut. But without further ado, here is my favourite games of 2011:

#5 Batman: Arkham City

Nananananan BATMAN! I was a big fan of Arkham Asylum and eagerly awaited this release. Arkham Asylum is one of the best Xbox 360 titles I have ever played so Arkham City had a lot to live up to. That didn’t stop it being one of my top 5 games of the year though. Far from it! Any game that lets you punch a shark in the face is good in my books.

It’s a really well made, theatrical and fun game. One of my favourite aspects was that The Batman universe was as rich as it’s predecessor and featured many more characters from the comic book series including Hugo Strange and the Penguin. I just wished they’d added a way to skip the boring Cat Woman sections and halved the number of Riddler trophies.

#4 From Dust

This was a game I worked on so maybe I could be a tad bias, but I still think it’s awesome! From Dust is the latest creation from Other World creator Eric Chahi. It’s a god game on the Xbox Live Arcade in which you control the land to help a tribe people set up villages on each set of islands. It can be incredibly difficult and frustrating at times, but the sense of achievement you feel upon completing a level is worth it – especially once you reach some of the later levels. The story itself isn’t very long, but the difficulty curve will make you take your time. Also, there is a collection short challenges to complete once you have beaten the story, which although each is small, can really kick your ass.

Also the tribes people look a bit like they have Doritos for faces.

#3 Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

This was a surprise entry for me. I’ll be honest and say that handheld gaming didn’t really appeal to me much last year. Yes, even with the launch of the 3DS. Handhelds were always my way to deal wiht public transport, and lately, I’ve not been using it. It’s sadly simple, but it’s true. Commuting was my handheld gaming time, but I digress…

I was very interested in Ghost Trick after seeing the trailers and previews/reviews earlier in 2011, (and my colleague, @MrMonkeyHat, highly recommending it) but didn’t pick this one up until the week after Christmas. It was one of those titles that started off a bit strange then left you utterly hooked. I finished it within just a few days, even though a few of the puzzles were particularly difficult. it’s a wonderfully quirky little game and something that deserved much more attention than it was given last year. I don’t want to give too much away about this one, so if you want to know more, I’d suggest picking up a copy!

#2 Portal 2

The story contained as much black humour as the first game and even though I’m definitely not a fan of Stephen “plays the same character in everything” Merchant, the addition of Wheatly didn’t make me want to frisby the game disk out the window. The addition of the gels really added another level to the puzzles and were great fun – go on, I know you spent at least 10 minutes covering that room in white goo. (Oooh matron!)

I was dubious of the co-op element of Portal 2. The story I knew would be excellent if the story-telling in the first game was anything to go by, but the co-op seemed unnecessary. Well, that was how I felt until I actually played it! As always, my co-op partner and fellow mischief-maker @fantaman joined me, as we went about testing GLaDOS’ warez and generally griefing each other. I don’t think I was prepared for how fun the co-op game play was in Portal 2, now it is by far one of my favourite multiplayer games.

#1 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As a huge fan of the Fallout series and someone who really could not get on with the past Elder Scrolls games, I was wary of Skyrim at first. Everything I saw of the game before launch made me salivate, but was I ready for another Elder Scrolls disappointment? Evidently I wasn’t as it’s my favourite game of 2011! Perhaps it’s not the prettiest, most intelligent or unique game that released last year, but it is definitely something special. It tickled that Fallout fangirl inside me, dressed her up in cardboard armour and gave her a wooden sword, and told her to go play Dungeons and Dragons. OK, I’m not sure where I was going with that, but I adore Skyrim. It took me in and ruined my life for a few months and is the gift that keeps giving. No seriously, why wont it stop giving me missions!? I’m on a break from it at the moment as I really should get on top of my Pile of Shame before Mass Effect 3 comes out.

So there you have it, my top 5 games from last year. What’s your top 5 games? Post them in the comments below.