20 Days of Blogging – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it

Okay, it turned out that doing this in order doesn’t work for me so today I’m doing number 15 – My Desktop background. (from Saga’s 20 days of Blogging).

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Day 04 – Your best WoW memory
Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game
Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you
Day 09 – Your first blog post
Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites
Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws
Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time
Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire
Day 14 – This upsets you
Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it
Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)
Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)
Day 18 – Your favourite outfit
Day 19 – In your bags/bank
Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

This is my current desktop background, a picture of Dorrie the little witch and her cat sitting reading in a library. When I was small, I loved these books by Patricia Coombs both for the stories and the pictures.

Before that, I’ve had a mix of things. Some WoW screenshots like this one:

and proper photographs like these two:

Basically I pick images I like either from my own photo collection or from the random images on the internet I have access to.

20 days of Blogging: Introduce yourself

A while ago now, I started Saga’s 20 days of blogging challenge but then I promptly got distracted and forgot all about. That is until now, when lots of other bloggers have started completing it and I realised that I’d abandoned it part way through.

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Day 04 – Your best WoW memory
Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game
Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you 
Day 09 – Your first blog post
Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites
Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws
Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time
Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire
Day 14 – This upsets you
Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it
Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)
Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)
Day 18 – Your favourite outfit
Day 19 – In your bags/bank
Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

Now it probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I didn’t start at the beginning before, but this time around I thought I’d be good and begin where stories are supposed to begin, at the start.

Hi, I’m Erinys, otherwise known as Sprout, Scarlet, Pip Squeak and a whole bunch of other names depending on whom you speak to. I work in Housing which is both fascinating and frustrating and spend far too much time commuting to work.

I like spicy food, crisp autumn days where the faint scent of apples lingers on the breeze and walks on the beach. Oh and I’m rather fond of a certain Chibi maker.

Other than having green hair, if I was a chibi I might look a bit like this and yes, once upon a time in my misspent youth I had shoes like that.

Oh and when I’m not commuting, working or playing WoW, I rather like taking photographs of things.

The Sublime and the Beautiful: IntPiPoMo

Since it’s still the 30th of November I thought I’d get a little closer to the 50 pictures.

Who knows I might even “borrow” another time zone to post my last 9.

IntPiPoMo: It’s a jungle out there

Today I though I’d share some of our photographs with you rather than posting screenshots. So here are some of the real life versions of my favourite Hunter pets (and a shoal of shiny fish).

Día de los Muertos and the Feast of All Souls: IntPiPoMo 2012

The rules for IntPiPoMo can be found here at Revive & Rejuvenate.

This time of year has to be my favourite, despite being born in the heat of midsummer, I’ve always been a child of the autumn and winter. Preferring cold crisp nights and the smell of apples drifting in on the mist to long hot days. Choosing  Bonfight night with it’s leaping flames casting dancing shadows on the grass and that soft transition period as All Hallows Eve slides silently into the Day of the Dead and then to the Feast of all Souls to the boldness and brashness of the summer holidays. Thus it will come as no surprise to you  that to kick of IntPiPoMo in 2012, I will be starting with images which reflect my love of this time of the year.

I had the privilege to spend la Día de los Muertos in Mexico a few years ago and one of the most beautiful memories I carried back was that of watching the trucks full of marigolds otherwise known as the flower of the dead being brought into the cities in preparation for the Day of the Dead celebrations. I found myself falling in love with the idea that their petals can create a bridge between worlds bringing the dead back for a few scant hours, breadcrumbs for the souls to follow.

We should too, like Webster see the skull (and the rest of the bones) beneath the skin.

Here we see the WoW version, the decorated sugar skulls and the vase full of marigolds whose petals allow us to pierce the veil and give us a fleeting glimpse of what lies beyond the shadows .

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: The Rules of Me

R is for Rules amongst many other things.

I almost passed on last week’s shared topic, suggested by Matty, partly because I felt there are some potential grey areas in my rule set but after giving the matter some careful consideration I realised if you bend, you tend not to break.

So without further ado,

The Rules of Me: What are your personal rules you wish others would know about you?

1. Whether it’s professionally or personally, I expect honesty from others and in the spirit of my Grandmothers I give what I get in return. One of these days the people I deal with in a professional capacity are going to catch on to this and my life will become so much simpler.

2. As far as PvP is concerned I hate the other faction with a passion usually reserved for inconsiderate drivers (yes, you….. the idiots who hog the “overtaking” lane for 20 miles doing 30 in a 70 because you can’t handle changing lane and you plan on turning right at some nebulous point in the future) and soggy Brussels sprouts. I will put my faction first and if that means healing that jerk who is constantly mouthing off on the realm forums and that everyone hates rather than let some annoying spit spamming male Goblin Hunter (you know who you are….) kill him, well sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

3. The phrase “Lose fast” turns me into a monster determined to ensure that we do the opposite. Losing five nil, no problem I’ll go and tag a couple of nodes behind their back to prolong the agony. 2 flag caps down and being graveyard camped, utter that phrase and I’ll be hiding on their roof with their flag or killing their flag carrier who is unescorted because the rest of his team are sitting on the corpses of the “lose fast” brigade. I might be on the aggressive side of competitive but I don’t understand the mentality of people who participate in games which keep score without trying to win.

4. I’m fiercely loyal to those I consider friends and of course to my family as annoying as they are. In fact the vast majority of times I’ve lost my temper in-game have been because of insults or blame wrongly apportioned to those I care about (blame rightly apportioned is a completely different story :p).

5. I’m a thousand times harder on myself than anyone else could ever be. Thus attempting to be mean to me is basically wasting your time. My inner demons have already gleefully yelled it in my head whilst leaping up and down on what’s left of my self respect.

The Darkmoon Dolly

My fascination for the Darkmoon Faire is well known and documented. Even though I don’t particularly need anything from it’s stalls any more, I still venture there every month to wander around soaking up the creepiness. One of my favourite items has to be these dolls and if Blizzard ever added one as a mini pet which levitated around after you my happiness would be complete. As I’m not convinced that will ever happen, I thought I’d have a go at making a version of my own.

One quick doodle later, I was ready to go.

I was a little concerned as to how I would manage to make her bonnet look three dimensional but so far so good.

She then had a brief stint as a hand puppet. Oh the indignity!

Before finally finding her hat:

There is a spring lurking underneath her but it’s rather hard to make out in the picture. Should I make her a sister at some point there are a few things I would do differently, mostly to do with her face shape but all in all I’m rather happy with the way she’s turned out. I’m going to call her Olimpia as a reference to one of those horrible tales which helped frame my childhood. There is definitely something of the uncanny about this particular doll.

Next on the creative list is to finally get around to making a cushion sized version of this:

So whenever a Druid annoys me, I can jump up and down a cuddly representation of one.

On the subject of crafting things, you should also check out Veroicone’s WoW charms. I particularly love the boomkins.

The Sinner in Me: A Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

The shared topic this week was suggested by Noahdeer of Be MoP.

We all know of the Seven deadly sins (Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Gluttony) and we all succumb to aspects of them at one time or another, but is there one particular sin that affects you more than the others when you play World of Warcraft? 
Are you a bit too prideful about your armor set? or Do you look upon someone with envy when they have a piece of armor that you don’t have yet? 

My downfall has to be Pride (and not just because I happen to love this picture):

Pride by Erte from his series on the Seven Deadly Sins

If you’ve never seen his work before, it’s definitely worth a look.

In both pleasure and business I have a driving need to be good at whatever I do. Partly perhaps because in WoW, I tend to play healers and in the real world, mistakes at work could have horrific consequences for those I’m supposed to be helping. It’s not that I think I’m better than everyone else but more that I’ve built my own mental barriers around not making mistakes and around being a fast learner. I find it hard to cope with failure or with not hitting my own admittedly high standards. After all, what’s the point of doing something if you can’t be proud of whatever you achieve at the end.

On the other hand, Sprout’s greatest sin has to be Wrath… usually brought on by people who spam “Lol let’s lose fast” or turn up to pvp in the equivalent of a lovely red dress and then whine about the healing. It makes her see red very fast and everyone who has ever played on a pvp server knows that red=dead. It’s just a shame you can’t always apply that to your team mates. This ties back in with Pride, because I (through Sprout) get angry that my team aren’t even attempting to play properly and are effectively making me look bad. I know that’s a slightly screwed way of looking at things but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break, especially when they help get you promoted.

“I will be worthy of it!”

This is personal and has very little do to with WoW so feel free not to read.

My Grandmama was admitted to hospital last night, jaundiced and with some sort of infection. To say I’m scared is an understatement, despite the chaos and constant upheaval that was my childhood, my Grandmama was always there to anchor me. I tend to forget that she’s ninety now and frail, skin like crumbled paper and bones so light, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine her flying, floating through the sky, cackling with glee. Instead when I look at her, I see the woman she was when I was growing up. She taught me that the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fires, that regardless of what life throws at you, you pick yourself up and keep going. I know that the inevitable will come, that there is no turning back time and that one day, probably quite soon, I’m going to have stand up and give her eulogy. Mixing the fun, the picnics with ginger beer and sliding down banisters on cross channel ferries eyed disapprovingly by passer-bys with her struggle with blindness and deafness, with the fact that she has buried two husbands, a brother, a sister and a son.

I’ve always hated change, partly I think because my parents dragged me from pillar to post across Europe as a little girl and partly too because it makes me think of death. Of funerals and holes dug in stony ground, of that sickly scent of lilies and rotting wet leaves (it always rains at funerals). As soon as I made some friends, got settled into school, we were off again so I’d have to begin the cycle all over again. This was the pattern, inter-spaced with hours spent in churchyards watching as what was once a loved one was locked in a box and buried beneath the earth. ”Home”, which meant first my Great-Grandmother’s and then my Grandmama’s was the only constant I knew, everything else was boxes, suitcases and learning to live somewhere new all over again. As an adult I like my life to be ordered and controlled, I like to know my schedule in advance and I hate surprises. Then last night I found out about my Grandmama before I logged properly into WoW post patch and somehow it felt like my world was rocking on it’s axis. I thought that I’d hate the game, the shared achievements, the simplified talents and the new travel form. As it turns out, I was wrong about most of it (sorry, not a stag fan) and now, whilst I’m waiting for the phone to ring, I’m comforting myself with my Great Grandmother’s words uttered before she died, rolling her coins for the ferryman over and over in my hand. I’m seeking comfort in something the rational side of my brain knows to be a lie but somehow, the ways of my childhood give me strength.

Earlier tonight, I found myself running through the Greatmother quest line in Mulgore.

Perhaps not the best choice in the circumstances but somehow I just ended up there and I know that both my Great Grandmother and my Grandmama would approve. Whether we like it or not, the world keeps turning and when that day comes, my final gift to the woman who helped me find my feet in this rocky world will be to honour her memory.

There lies a nameless strength in this –
I will be worthy of it.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

I am what I am!

For her July Challenge, Ambermist over at Tastes like Battle Chicken wants to know something about us, the people behind the characters.

Now when I envisioned this post originally, it was going to be rather brief. I’m not great at talking about me, my Priests on the other hand, I can go on about forever and you should hear me on various literary periods I’m passionate about (oh, wait…you already have), but me… well that’s an area where I’m not 100 percent comfortable. I’ve tried in the past with a couple of blog posts and they were perhaps the hardest things I’ve ever written.

1# I like hats which is slightly strange because the vast majority of my characters never ever show helms.

Perhaps if I had awesome green Gnomish hair I’d like hats less outside Azeroth. Although you can’t tell in this picture, my  hair is a rather boring shade of very dark brown.

2# I find throwing things away a trifle hard. One day I might need those shocking orange buttons, my stress doll in the shape of a dairy cow or my giant cat mug with the chip in the rim, it might be unlikely but you never can tell.

3# Out of all the bits and bobs I’ve collected over the years there are a few things that I could never part with. These include Foxie, a rather battered toy fox who was presented to me when I was less than an hour old and my Grandfather’s books. I also have two coins, their patina is faded and you can barely make out their markings any more. To an outside observer they are worthless, just two more little objects to gather dust but to me they are irreplaceable. This is their story:

My great grandam–She was a witch.