WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

Last night I achieved. I achieved hard.

That’s right, Loremaster.  It took several months of dedicated work and a lot of help from the internet. I had been rather enamored with the random dungeon finder, but as a DPS, I usually have a little wait.  I started working on Loremaster mostly as something to do while I was waiting for my turn in the queue.  Working through the lower level zones in Azeroth will really give you a sense of acomplishment, and that was when it started to look like a far less daunting task than I had originally anticipated. I also figured that if I was going to do it, I should probably get it done before Cataclysm.  There’s no telling what changes are coming down the line for that.  I already got Master of Arms and Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich since those will definitely be becoming Feats of Strength.  So, it was headfirst into Kalimdor.

Kalimdor sucked.  That’s all there is to it.  For being a Horde dominated continent, it sure is hard to reach that quest count.  I think Silithus was the biggest problem.  There were a fair number of quests that I was holding on since they required stupid amounts of work (Kill a million guys to get their outfits.  Use 5 outfits to get one crystal, use 10 crystals to get this other thing).  I knew from all the research I’d done that this was going to be the hardest part, so I got it over with first.  The rest really was a piece of cake.

I tried out a bunch of addons that were reported to at least help with the finding of missing quests.  The one that finally did it for me was the Wowhead Profiler.  This combined with their client made finding missing quests much easier.  I think that what they’ve done is that in order to get more people using their client to record drops etc, they’ve added the quest tracking functionality as an incentive.  Well, lemme tell you, it works fantastically.  Granted, WoW itself doesn’t always record that you’ve completed a quest when you have, so that information isn’t being reported to the Wowhead client.  For the most part, though, if there’s a quest on your unfinished quest list that you’ve done before, it may look familiar.  I used the list of quests mostly to located quest givers that I hadn’t yet visited.  Because the quests are in alphabetical order by quest title, it can be hard to locate the first quest in a chain that you still have to complete.

While I was working through all the zones, I also had the Seeker achievement tracking up.  It’s strange to note the differences between which quests count for Loremaster and which count for Seeker.  In the end, I wound up getting Seeker with four quests left for Loremaster.  I know other people have gotten Seeker well before that.  For a while, I was on track to get Loremaster first.  I’m not entirely sure what’s going on there, but I’d be interested to know if anyone else is noticing the same thing.

Now, however, it’s on to some rep grinding for us.  We need some rep reward mounts to fill out the stables. I also want to make sure that I hit up all the old world dungeons before the big boom.

Daniora and Thoothun hangin' in Dalaran.

Now that these have been sent off and received by their intended target, I can make a post about the projects that have been keeping me busy for a while now.

I need to preface this story with a little background information.  For those of you who don’t know, Scott Johnson is a very talented comic artist and podcaster.  His shows are always of the highest quality and unbelievably entertaining.  I’ve been listening to all of his stuff for a while now.  He plays World of Warcraft, and his main is an Orc hunter named Gerp whose favorite pet is a tiger named Henry.  This has spawned all sorts of things, like the Obey Henry movement.  I’m a huge fan of Scott’s, which is where this crazy story begins.

Just before Christmas, I was working on some gifts with fleece.  I got this crazy idea in my head that I could make a pretty good Orc hat.  Oddly enough, that’s a perfectly reasonable thought for me to have on any given day.  Then I thought of doing a tiger scarf rather in the style of the old fox stoles.  You know the kind.  The ones with the feet that dangle off the end and such.  Now, I have ideas like this all the time.  Projects that I could do tend to flit in and out of my mind while I’m working on other things.  This one was different.  This one stuck.  I found myself thinking through the construction problems and details that would need to be worked out. I imagined what it would look like finished.

I got a basic hat pattern so that I wouldn’t be working completely blind.  I chose one with a band at the bottom that would serve as the separation where his mouth would be.  I got myself some screenshots of Gerp off of the Armory (which was much easier now that it’s new-and-improved with 3D goodness) and got to work.  The braid was pretty easy, the ears were a challenge.  I got plastic doll eyes and gave him eyelids (which I thought was rather brilliant, if I do say so myself).  All in all, other than a few snags, it came together pretty smoothly.

The finished product.

He’s even got the sweet braid down the back.

Sweet braid!

Alright, hat done.  The scarf proved to be much simpler. They tell me that tiger striped fleece exists.  It does not exist at any of the area Joann’s Fabrics, so I was unable to acquire it.  Besides, it was not quite the right colors for Henry.  I cut a big long piece of fleece and sewed all the triangle strips along it.  I made the little feet to hang off the ends.  To keep the scarf from getting too bulky, I opted to do a flat head and tail with only the ears sticking up.  Sadly, my pictures of the scarf aren’t quite as good as I would have hoped, but you’ll get the idea.

The scarf in all it's glory.

His face turned out a little sweeter than I expected, but I think it’s a little bit precious.

So sweet!

On one of the episodes of The Instance (Scott’s World of Warcraft podcast), he mentioned that he wished there was a Henry plushie.  This was right after the Blizzard release of their new plush line.  Since Brian gave me a book on making fleece animals, I thought I’d try my hand at a tiger.  Now, again, I didn’t have any tiger print fleece, which is what they used in the book, so I had to improvise and add the stripes to the fabric pieces as I went along.  There are a few spots where they’re a little strange, but I think it turned out pretty well in the end.  I even printed out a custom “Obey Henry” tag.

And he's extra cuddly!

I had an absolutely fabulous time working on all these projects.  It was great to have a focused outlet for my creativity and something to fill the time.  And it was all worth it knowing that I was sending it to someone I knew would appreciate them.  Along the way, I figured out that the only possible fate for these items was for me to send them to Scott himself.  He got them today, and I’m really excited that he liked them so much.

He wears it well.

I’ve put up a flickr album with all the pictures of this stuff.  I’m excited to move on to the next big thing.