Geek will out

It honestly started out as a normal snowman. One big ball for the bottom, check. One smaller ball for the top, check. Pat snow into the join between them. (That was when Spud decided to help; he really got into slapping snow on, breaking lumps off, and generally abusing the snowman. Perhaps he had an inkling of what was to come.)

Pat, pat. Pat, pat. I was wearing gloves, not mittens, so the finger-marks were imprinted in the snow. They looked... tentacular.

A unibrow, two stubby wings and some facial tentacles later, Sno-thulu loomed in our yard. For a few seconds at a time, anyhow, which was as long as it took Professor Spud of Arkham University to investigate and destroy critical parts of the idol. Dad's clearly been seeing his occult education begins early.

Tafl!

Not quite done with the board yet, actually...

This is the only surviving illustration/reference to alea evangelii, the documentable Anglo-Saxon tafl variant. And this is a pegged board for brandub, the Irish version.

The Anglo-Saxon one doesn't show much in the way of decoration, but then it's an illustration accompanying a (rather strained, I'm told) allegory in the text. The Irish board shows panels of interlace and keyed patterns around the playing area. Because hey, why not make it a pretty embroidered chamois?

But playing pieces are next. The pieces found in burials are varied, and the usual assumption is that if you were buried with it, it must have been pretty important and/or valuable. So while it's awesome to know that glass, amber, etc., have been found, I'd bet that light and dark rocks were used, too - just like you can replace a lost game piece with a penny today.

Not that I especially want to use rocks. But I thought it over, and I don't want to go crazy on game pieces. I'm not actually all that into board games. I have a new baby. Priorities!

Glass hemispheres have been found; those glass flower-arranging thingamabobs aren't really like them, but they're not so far off. Unfortunately, they look like those glass flower-arranging thingamabobs.

I read on one of those websites that many of the gaming pieces were conical, with king pieces being larger cylinders. My first instinct is to go to a Michael's and see if I can't find some wooden doodads in the appropriate shapes. I'll stain one set red and leave one pale.