Minipost – My Next Sewing Project

Because you can’t have too many Gnolls! (especially cute ones with button eyes).

 

On a slightly related note, wouldn’t these chaps make wonderful balloon mini pets to float around after us.

Dark Dreaming of the Moon

The Darkmoon Faire has rolled into town once again, bringing with it a whole host of new and shiny things to tempt the eye.

Up first we have the Carousel with it’s experience and reputation buff (sorely needed in the Age of Dailies). All you have to do is buy a ticket and ride it for a while, just like the Maypole buff from the Fire Festival the duration ticks up the longer you spend spinning around. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately riding it backwards doesn’t seem to effect your age unlike Bradbury’s.

What I also like about this is that Blizzard seem to have drawn heavily on the design which featured in their Student Design Contest, even down to the watching eye on top.

Borrowed from MMO Champion

Sadly the balloons haven’t made it into the finished product though, perhaps if we’re really lucky they’ll turn up as mini pets some time in the future.

As seen from a distance

The new Pet Battle Master was an okay fight, easier than a certain gentleman in the Argent Tournament grounds for example. I took his team on with a Beast (Spider), a Flying creature (my Cenarion Hatchling) and a Humanoid (my Hopling). My reward bag yielded no Eye but then this week I have been fairly lucky with other pet drops (the Vanilla raid ones and the tailoring ones) so fingers crossed I’ll get one this week as it’s the pet I’m most excited about.

Buoyed up by this success, I went and purchased my Darkmoon Hatchling, which when inspected closely has a very prehistoric look. Sprout will definitely be careful when feeding, I suspect it’s pet biscuits thrown from quite some distance.

Finally I hit the wilderness looking for the two tamable pets. Finding a Darkmoon Glowfly was easy, the woods seemed filled with them, albeit with a massive level range.

The first one I tamed was level 11 and the first one Mr Harpy accosted was level 1. Sadly it seems that the other pet I actually want, the Crow still hasn’t been fixed. Here’s hoping Blizzard get it done before the end of the week.

All in all, the new additions to the Darkmoon Faire get a massive thumbs up from me and no doubt I’ll be spending even more time here than before.

The Darkmoon Faire: IntPiPoMo

The Darkmoon Faire is Sprout’s spiritual home from home. For one week of the month, she can escape from the hustle and bustle of her day to day life and escape to the Faire. To play games and eat deep fried candybars washed down with iced berry slush. To wander on the beach and saunter through the deep dark woods.

The carousel wheeled, a great back-drifting lunar dream, the horses thrusting, the music in-grasped after, while Mr Cooger, as simple as shadows, as simple as light, as simple as time got younger. And younger. And younger.

(Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury).

Not surprisingly I’m really looking forward to the forthcoming additions to the Faire with the next patch. New pets and of course the carousel implied by the datamined objects on MMO Champion.

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.

Sprout the Uncanny: A Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

The shared topic this week is:

If Blizzard added your main as an NPC in WoW, where would they be located and what would be their function? Give us a shot illustrating the fact.

Suggested by Cymre.

I actually found this surprisingly hard. The more I thought about the various possibilities, Sprout just didn’t seem to fit in.

Priest Trainer perhaps?

Well she’s not exactly the most patient Gnome out there. I can definitely imagine her yelling at any poor unfortunates who couldn’t master the correct use of a spell. Not to mention the fact that she swears like … well a tank, very good at taunting is Sprout, /chicken! I also feel that as a Gnome, she doesn’t belong in the Cathedral and she doesn’t like Ironforge (too claustrophobic) so as a Priest Trainer finding a home for her would be tricky. That’s before we even start delving into exactly what sort of deity she worships (I suspect it’s a dark and angry God!).

Tailoring Trainer then?

Given that she’s more into sticking pins into people than pinning patterns I don’t see this as a suitable career path. On top of that, the only recipe she’s interested in teaching is the embersilk net one so she’d be a very specialist sort of trainer.

Quest giver? You can’t go wrong with a quest giver can you?

Whilst she’d quite like the idea of sending people off on weird and wonderful trips to half way around the known world, Blizzard seem determined to stop that and sending someone off to kill something 10 yards away isn’t Sprout’s cup of tea. Also she’s not too taken with the concept of rewards, oh, it’s fine when she’s the adventurer but as the quest giver… people would be lucky to get 3 copper and a broken I-win button. In fact I suspect her go to reward would be a flea in their ear.

So what does that leave?

The Darkmoon Faire Island is Sprout’s home from home. She loves floating around it’s dark and creepy woods and beaches so it would be the perfect place for her to set up shop. She’d offer a range of balloons, red, orange, purple, green as well as some more “exotic” ones, a gnome effigy balloon, a tauren head balloon and perhaps a special cluster of balloons just like Vin and Jaga float away on after their respective quests. Every so often, she’d giggle and whisper random faire goers things like “They all Float!” and “You’ll float too!”. When the Faire wasn’t available, she would appear all over the Azeroth, half an hour here, half an hour there, offering her balloons and scaring low levels with her creepy whispers before disappearing in a cloud of dust, balloons and all.

Something Wicked This Way Comes…

As possibly the only person who plays WoW but doesn’t have a seapony, I’ve been doing a lot of fishing this past week.

Now I’m the first to admit my fishing tolerance is low. In fact I’d rather be doing pretty much anything, including washing the dishes than fishing but I want a seahorse in a bubble so I’m trying to push through the boredom barrier.

So, there I was returning from fishing up a couple of crates when I had a proper look at my screen.

Is it just me or is there something rather creepy about that picture? Her eyes are slightly glazed and she’s being towed through the air by an evil fairground balloon. In fact she looks like a zombie gnome.

After writing my post on my Faire transmogrification, I re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes and on looking at this screenshot I found Bradbury’s line repeating itself in my head.

“But why a wax crone flung out in a night balloon to search?”

I suppose my gnome is lighter than Bradbury’s Dust Witch, she doesn’t need a basket just the balloon to drift over head spying on the comings and goings below.

What is Silas Darkmoon really up to and more importantly where is my seapony?

Transmogrification Tuesday – Running away with the Faire

I remember the day I fell in love with Ray Bradbury as if it were yesterday. I was eight years old, sitting in my old school gym wishing the minute hand on the clock would move just that little bit faster. The last day before the holidays was always a bit of free for all, no classes were taught and we just sat around watching movies. Until that particularly moment, I always thought it was a waste of time. If they weren’t going to teach us anything, why couldn’t we have an extra day off. I have a vague memory of the first film we watched being about a child who drowned in well (cheerful material for a bunch of 8 to 10 years) but I don’t know it’s name or anything else about it. The second, however, well that was “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, the adaptation of Bradbury’s book of the same name.

By the time the credits rolled, I was hooked and ever so slightly terrified. The next day was the start of our Easter Holidays and my family went to Goslar in the Harz mountains for a week. We were staying in this beautiful little guest house but there was one snag, a massive crack ran across the ceiling in my bedroom. I’m not sure I slept all week for fear that an army of spiders would come marching out of said crack and eat me alive. My parents had to keep bribing me with icecream, a wooden carved witch (which I still have) and books without spiders, as they dragged me through museums, art galleries and historic buildings.

So when the Darkmoon Faire got it’s revamp, I was nervously excited. All those childhood memories came flooding back and I could still see that ceiling crack, vivid black against the peeling white paint. I knew I wanted a Darkmoon Balloon as a mini-pet to serve as a constant reminder of my childhood fears and my love of Bradbury.

Then to go with my balloon, I decided to create a matching outfit.

I’m not 100 percent happy with the helm but I wanted something that wouldn’t hide her green hair.

• Helm: Hallowed Crown. Alternatively Dragonskin Cowl would work if you don’t mind hiding your hair.
• Shoulders: Savage Gladiator’s Mooncloth Mantle. If you’re not a Priest, then the Shadoweave Shoulders are the best option in my opinion.
• Chest: Robe of the Thousand Needles (quest reward).
• Hands: Sylvanaar Gloves (these are Alliance only). Another option would be the Barbaric Cloth Gloves which are a dark purple colour.
• Belt: Imbued Disciple’s Sash
• Boots: Kayser’s Boots of Precision.
• Main Hand: Sageclaw/Mindfang
• Off Hand: Aboriginal Rod. If you’re a stave user, I’d go for one of these options, Spire of Defiance, Staff of the Four Golden Coins or Terokk’s Shadowstaff.

Not using any yellow was a deliberate choice, although I did consider using the Watcher’s Cap (green witchy hat with a yellow band) as a way of adding a subtle yellow streak. In the end though, I think sticking with just purple and green works better.

Looking back, I find it telling that a film which I think involved ghosts and a dead girl in a well had no effect on me whatsoever whilst Something Wicked This Way Comes haunted my dreams for many a night. Since then, I’ve read everything of Bradbury’s I’ve ever managed to lay my hands on.