’tis the season to Think Pink

My favorite part of “Love is in the Air” is that it gives me an excuse to wear some very silly outfits.

Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry


Pauldrons of the Wardancer, Bloodscale chestpiece & belt, Brutish pants gloves & boots, Pink Mageweave Shirt, Ironhew Cloak, Hammer of Destiny
I intended to just re-create the brown-and-pink outfit that I forgot to make for my secondary Warrior during Love is in the Air last year — but then I remembered that I had these shoulders in the bank, and I could not resist the silliness of using them to resemble the crown of sepals at the top of a strawberry…

Heartburn

Runic Plate Shoulders, Boulderfist Armor, Bloodscale Belt & Gauntlets, Legguards of the Shattered Hand, Bloodforged Sabatons, War Paint Cloak, Hammer of Destiny
What is this thing called “love”? And why does it hurt so much?
Some kind person tossed a Lovely Rose at me as I was coming out of the Warpweaver‘s shop. It was the perfect finishing touch for the outfit!

Hunting for Love

Ornate Pauldrons, Workforce Chestguard, Myrmidon’s Girdle, Pounding Leggings, Scarlet Gauntlets*, Brigade Boots, Night Elven Bow
I’d already collected the green and blue versions of this set — one of the most handsome low-level mail kits — so I figured, why not pick up the red one, too?
Try the Brigade or Merciless Gloves in place of the Scarlet Gauntlets.

Blacklight Battleguard

Katoom’s Mask, Resplendent Epaulets, Vestments of the Shifting Sands, Black Belt of Knowledge, Coven Britches, Exiled Dabbler’s Gloves, Junglestrider Sandals, Stylish Black Shirt, Swarming Sting-Staff
If I had been sensible, I would have farmed for the Staff of the Qiraji Prophets at the same time as I was farming for the robe. But I was not, and didn’t begin farming for the staff until after I obtained the robe. The Swarming-Sting Staff is a good stand-in until I get the Qiraji staff, though.

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a few thoughts before I fly…

I am delighted with the new Female Tauren model, especially her face! The new mouth and bangs are huge improvements over the old ones, and the new eyes and ears are nice, too. I look forward to seeing reports and screenshots of the new model in action when it gets implemented on the beta servers.
I am cautiously optimistic about whether I will like what the upgrade does to my girls. The new face is such an enormous improvement over the old one that I really, really want to like my characters’ new looks — though I’m sure it will take me a few weeks to get use to them!

Meanwhile, folks are beginning to predict a September release date for Warlords. Even though I haven’t planned out my syllabi yet, I’m sure that if the new expansion does release in September, it’s bound to be on the same weekend that I will have given an exam in one or another of the classes I will be teaching, and so I will be stuck doing this and this instead of actually being able to play…

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odds and ends from my trip to Europe

BTH and I flew back to Canada on Wednesday, only to find that our home internet had gone out. It took us until this afternoon to get it back online.

Among the many museums I visited while in Paris, I became particularly interested in going to the musee du quai Branly when I saw signs advertising that they had a temporary exhibition about the Plains Indians. I visited the wonderful Palais de la decouverte earlier that morning (it opens an hour before the Branly) and my camera’s memory card filled up just before I went in, so I was glad, when I finally got to the Branly, that I’d remembered to bring a sketchbook and some colored pencils.

This dress is based on a Lakota/Cherokee woman’s dress from around 1825, and the baby carrier is based on one made by the Dakota around 1840.

When I went into the museum’s permanent collection, these masks from Vanuatu, which apparently represent ogres of the local mythology, immediately reminded me of WoW’s Trolls:

The main body of the mask is a red clay, with designs painted in black. One mask stood out because it had a round face instead of an elongated one and bright blue paint instead of black. My sketches don’t adequately convey the strong dimensionality of the noses, eyebrows, and lips.

Our travels in Germany took us to Wurtzburg. Walking over the Alte Mainbrucke immediately reminded me of the bridge into Stormwind.


click on the images to visit the sites from which I borrowed them

Our last stop was in Freiberg, where we spent the weekend visiting with BTH’s parents, who have been there for the past 18 months as missionaries specifically called to serve in the Freiberg Temple. Senior couple missionaries have fewer restrictions on their activities than the young proselyting missionaries do, so on Monday (their day off), they took us to see the Terra Mineralia museum housed in one wing of the Freiberg schloss. The many huge crystal formations showcased in the collection — especially the amethysts — reminded me of the Draenei. They are also reminiscent of the areas of Outland where netherdrakes are found.

These aren’t quite the same thing as Syrco’s wonderful “What in WoW reminds you of your home?” prompt, though, so I shall have to address it properly sometime.

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an ancestral predilection for Tauren?

BTH and I are in Switzerland now. There are not words for how utterly gorgeous it is; every way you turn to look there are mountains rising up steep and high and green and rocky, or lakes shimmering the most wonderful shades of turquoise, with towns crammed into the spaces between. We are staying in a B&B in a little town north of Luzern, in central Switzerland. On our way there, we stopped at the Chateau de Chillon —

–this is the most postcard-worthy of the pictures I took there. The herds of cows everywhere actually started in south-eastern France, as we drove through the Charolais region, which is famous for its white cattle. We have seen white cows and brown cows and red cows and black cows and red-and-white cows and black-and-white cows. We have driven through many tunnels — the longest one was 9.25 km. I saw a herd of cows grazing on the greensward just above the entrance to one tunnel. The weather has been sporadically showery and sunny, giving us moments like yesterday evening when we were driving at just the right angle relative to the sun to see a double rainbow!

Presently, the angle of the road changed just enough for us to be able to see both sides of the arc of the rainbow at once! That was simply magical!
This afternoon, we visited Altdorf in the canton of Uri. Some of BTH’s ancestors lived there, as well as this guy whom you may have heard of named William Tell.

The symbol of Uri has been a bull’s head for hundreds of years. The town hall at Altdorf has a display of Uri war banners from the 14th and 15th centuries.

Modern Uri flags have the bull’s head in either black or red on the golden ground:

Perhaps this explains part of BTH’s love for Tauren (that I soon came to share)?

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merry mogs for May-ing

A few recent Transmogrification kits with which I am particularly well-pleased. Two of them use current tier items that I would not have even been able to think about using without the Mists LFR paradigm.

Shadra’s Burning Scroll

Burning Scroll Hood & Mantle (LFR), Hibernal Robe, Sorcerer’s Belt of Final Winter, Shimmering Gloves + Goldenvine Wraps, Ikeyen’s Boots, Formal White Shirt, Inscribed Serpent Staff
Dragonray’s ROYGBiV-Yellow outfit inspired Kaelinda to dive into Terrace of Endless Spring LFR. Luckily, it only took two weeks for her to win both the hat and the shoulders — and the belt. This kit would be very appropriate for a Troll!

Winged Triumph

Crown of Boastful Words, Mantle of Winged Triumph (LFR), Chestguard of Bitter Charms, Greatbelt of Living Waters, Legguards of the Apostle, Grips of the Fallen Council, Sabatons of the Humble, Cloak of Tranquil Clouds, Spellfire Longsword, Ancient Mogu Tower Shield (LFR)
This outfit is mostly comprised of pieces from another of my favorite tier sets from Mists LFR. Sadly, the sword that perfectly matches this shield, the LFR version of the Enchanted Shao-Tien Saber, is an Agility weapon and thus completely unobtainable by any spec of Paladin.

Soulspark

Cloudscorcher Cowl, Angkhal Amice, Soulcloth Vest, Wizard’s Belt, Manaspark Gloves, Cerulean Filigreed Doublet, Staff of the Redeemer
This hat looks best, I think, on white-haired Draenei and (naturally) Pandaren.
I was unexpectedly delighted by how nice this kit looked on a Goblin while running the Dark Heart of Pandaria scenario — or maybe it was just that this kit looked great in that room?

As always, swing by my Fashion page to see if any other classes have also been recently updated.

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the Underpowered Death Knight and the Perils of Childcare

(for reference: The Underpowered Death Knight and the Orphans, Matron Kaumaleia)

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racing to 90

For the past several weeks, I’ve felt like Kaprikka, Koralyra, and Kinevra have been racing each other to get to 90, and that any one of them could potentially get there first.

Though I’ve drawn them all sprinting, Kaprikka is really the only one who’s sprinting, as she started the furthest behind. The other two have really just been jogging.

Koralyra tends to move in fits and starts; unless there’s a holiday going on, when I feel like doing the Pet Battle circuit, she gets XP, and when I don’t, she doesn’t. She’s currently about three-quarters of the way from 87 to 88.

Kinevra began the expansion at 85, of course, and has been slowly and steadily plugging away at various past-expansion daily hubs. She’s gotten a trickle of XP from running Firelands with the Old Ladies, too. This week, she finally reached level 87 and made a trip to Pandaria to get her Grummlepack. Because she was fully well-rested, that expedition got her about three-quarters of the way to 88.

Kaprikka dinged 80 on April 3rd and got to 85 about a week ago, on the 19th:

She then made a quick trip to Pandaria. After getting to the point where the portal from Paw’don Glade to Stormwind was open, she rode up to Dawn’s Blossom to buy some gear to let her queue for Pandaria dungeons. She’s been diligently fishing in the Dalaran fountain while waiting out her LFD queues. Friday night this week turned out to be a fine night for fishing indeed!

Now she’ll be able to use Bipsi’s Bobbing Berg just as soon as she can buy it! Yesterday, she went back to Pandaria and dinged 87 helping Ken-Ken save Zhu’s Watch. She then went up to Kun-Lai to get her Grummlepack; unlike Kinevra, she was already out of well-rested and only got forty-some-odd percent of the way to 88. Next, she rode down to the Incursion — I was pretty creeped out by suddenly having Lorekeeper Vaeldrin using Mind Vision on my character, versus a Horde character’s encounter with Chezin Dawnchaser at the side of the road — and by the time she reached the Sentinel Basecamp, she’d also dinged 88. Now that she’s pulled into the lead, Kaprikka will most likely be the winner.

Having played through the Dawnchaser storyline first, and multiple times, Sentinel Lyalia’s opinions of the Sunwalkers pain me. Not trusting the Horde is a Sentinel’s business, but the Sunwalkers — and especially the Dawnchasers! — sure don’t seem to me like they’re “the most militant branch of the tauren armies within the horde”! Not when Kor Bloodtusk vehemently complains about their pacifism! Either Lyalia is dreadfully misinformed, or I am — is there something that Sunwalkers, specifically, do somewhere in Kalimdor that I don’t know about yet because I haven’t played through most of those zones as Alliance?

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