My Orgrimmar Baby Toque of Awesome

I have put myself in time out until I finish knitting all of my Christmas gifts. The list feels huge, and running my usual dailies and heroic badge farming runs leaves me too little time to knit in the evenings. You can follow along if you so desire on my craft blog, though I’m not posting a lot of things until after gifts have been gifted so as not to spoil the surprise to the recipients who may or may not read it. However, one knitted gift I finished and shipped off last week is WoW-related and therefore fitting to mention here, and that’s my Orgrimmar Baby Toque of Awesome.

Clever stats, hey?

Some in-game friends were expecting their first child and I wanted to knit them a little something. I whipped up a striped baby hat in Orgrimmar colors (orange and red) and added an epic WoW item tag to cleverly share the stats of wearing the hat in your head slot. Sorry about the poop crit rating, you guys. At least there’s a boost to cuteness along with it. Congratulations and all the best!

I’m looking forward to a little break at the holidays to get some more WoW time in, but for now I’m limiting myself a bit so that I have half a chance to get all of my knitting complete in time for Christmas. Stay tuned!  Happy holidays :)

Or Pilgrim’s Bounty… or Thanksgiving… no matter what you call it in Azeroth or beyond, hope you enjoy a thankful day with friends and family!

Amoothyst and her Plump Turkey

There are some who do not believe in the legendary Night Elf Mohawks.

I pity the fools.

Legendary Night Elf Mohawks have come to Azeroth.

For whatever reason (I dunno, just go with it) Mr. T… erm, I mean, Night Elf Mohawks are stationed outside of every starter city starting today, November 16, for an undetermined amount of time. What goodies do the Night Elf Mohawks have for you? Grenades! And not just any grenade… a Mohawk Grenade.  They have 5 charges and their blast gives its targets a Night Elf Mohawk mask. Read all about it on the official site and get out there and start pitying the fools already!

My only complaint in this seemingly weird “event” is the disappointment of clicking on the Night Elf Mohawks and hoping to hear some sweet Mr. T voiceover.  Instead you get the generic random night elf greeting. At least the chat text box said “Well met, Mohawk Sister.”

I know I’ve written about this before. Inspired by the abundance of downtime in World of Warcraft three years ago I wrote Toque’s WoW Fitness Program, which was recognized on the official site. Now my question is what else do others do? Lately I’ve been trying to get some knitting done (not WoW related… yet! Stay tuned) and I also discovered that there are some great in-game addons to help you pass the time while flying, while dead, etc.

This weekend I was doing some badge farming heroic runs on Amoo and Culling of Stratholme was the daily. No sooner had I added myself to LFG I received a whisper and invite. However, with issues like members who got disconnected or had to go and finding a tank, it took 45 minutes for the group to get organized. Instead of pulling out my hair because my guildmates had already run it and I was stuck with the PuG, I pulled out my knitting. With CoS being the daily, I know I would’ve found another group fairly quickly, but just when I think I’m at the end of my rope waiting on group members, they get their act together. But then 5 minutes later someone else had to go and then it would all fall apart again. And I’d wait a few minutes… nearly leave again, and then we’d find a replacement. Rinse repeat. I almost gave up on CoS this weekend but knitting while I waited helped.

I don’t know why in-game addon games never really occured to me; this weekend a guildmate of mine mentioned the Bejeweled addon and it nearly blew my mind. Genius!  Playing Bejeweled invokes memories of working in the Student Loan office at Indiana University Bloomington years ago. It was how we passed the time. While I’d prefer a Frozen Bubble type addon game to pass the time instead, I do enjoy having Bejeweled at my fingertips. The settings make it really convenient: it pops up instantly when I take a flight path or when I die, and I like trying to beat the clock before I land. These days with epic flying mounts, taking a flight path isn’t always the most efficient route, but sometimes the idea of a little Bejeweled is inticing enough for me to make the choice.

So what do YOU do during downtime? Is there a certain addon you recommend? Is there something like my knitting that you keep near your computer to help make the wait on the rest of the raid interesting? Let’s hear it!

P.S. I realize that when I updated to the latest version of Wordpress a week or two ago some of the text got garbled; it seems the copyright symbols or other alt code symbols didn’t make the jump. I’m trying to get in there and correct those as I can :) Thanks for letting me know!

… but it did. It sucked me back in.

and P.S. – thanks for making my day, Ranbodan :)