The little antique jar.

With the recent move, I've found myself reorganizing a lot of my belongings. This was the first time I had such a big move and I don't think I was really prepared for it. I have moved some of my belongings here and there when I went to college and went away for a few months but I could always come back to the rest of my things at my parents' house.

To be fair, I still have a lot of stuff at my parents' house that I need to go through when I go back to visit so I didn't actually move all of my belongings in this trip. Just most of them.

As I'm going through things and trying to find a place for them all, I'm surprised at some of the unique items I have re-found that I keep in my shop. Some of them I'm going to sell and some I'm just going to keep because of the family history.

This jar and it's contents are one of those items I have to keep because of the family history in it. I also think it is the neatest thing and I refuse to part with it.

As my Mother and I were going through things in the house before I moved out, I remember coming across the container for the first time. I thought it was quite interesting. The design on the cover is rather cracked but still rather pretty.

These were all but one of the items inside. I believe these items were made by my Great-Grandmother as there are many other items in my family that were crocheted by her and I believe that neither my Grandmother nor my Mother have ever been interested in crocheting.
The note attached says:

"If a scarf my dear, you tote,

Simply pin me inside your coat,

Slip the scarf right through

the ring,

Am I not the handiest thing?"

This was the last item that was in there. If you have never seen one of these before (which I had never witnessed before that day), this is an ivory baby teething ring. I was able to find another one online, which had a ring with two bells attached to it so I am going to assume that is how it was originally suppose to look. The item tied on the right side of this teething ring is a note attached by my Grandmother (I'm going to assume as she was a great fan of labeling everything) documenting that this was used by her and by my Mother and Uncle. Considering that my grandmother was born in the early 1900's, I'm going to assume that this is over a hundred years old. 

Do I think I'm going to use it when I have children? Probably not. 

I do enjoy thinking about my Great Grandmother bustling around her house in her long skirts and hair pinned all upon her head as she bent down to give this to my Grandmother in her crib. For that reason (among many others), I just could never give these things away. Although, perhaps someday they will be featured in the backdrop of other items and bring some history and a little flavor to the picture at hand.

Greetings from another place.

I apologize for not updating these past few weeks. Last month mostly consisted of me getting the house ready for a move, packing a few belongings, having the movers come and take most of our things, sleeping on an air mattress for a few days and then driving 6+ hours to a hotel where we stayed for about a week as we tried to find a new home.

All is well now and we've moved in and basically unpacked most of our belongings. My new shop is still a little bit of a disaster as there are many things that I need to reorganize.

The good thing is that I've found some really neat things that I'll probably post here.

So I'll probably be back next week with cooler things in my post.

The first rule of the shop is... nothing to do with Fight Club

I thought I would do a little post on my shop and just some of the simple rules I have set up. Most places of work usually have a lot of rules and regulations that you need to follow and obey. Since I run my own business, I really only have a few rules. I don't have to worry about other employees and having a human resource department. I don't have to worry about paying overtime and all that jazz.

At the moment, my shop is a little small and so when I had company over that was trying to crowd themselves into my little room, I had to shoo them out while I was working on a project or else it would have just gotten to be too much in a small space. Not that I am opposed to company in my shop space, I just couldn't work with a lot of people crowding around me.

My actual rules are quite simple:

1. You do not eat or drink in the shop. Bottled water is the only item allowed in that can be consumed.

2. Blood, sweat & tears make good items.

That's really it. It's just me, the radio, my machinery and lots of fabric. Maybe someday if I take on more employees there will be more rules but that's all there is to it. I clean up when it's necessary and I take care of my machinery. That's really all that can be said.

Archaeology - Northrend

It seems as though I am still on a archaeology kick since my last post. I took a little break to /love some critters (for the achievements, of course) and do a little fishing but I am going to assume this interest is going to continue until I move onto to solving the rest of the continents or just become filled with irritation at common finds and flying everywhere via flight points.

Since I last posted, I went to work on finding Northrend artifacts. I was hoping as I started out that it would be like Outlands and I would only come across two different types of dig sites. Sadly, this is not the case. I have found Night Elf and Troll out here, as well as Nerubian and Vykrul. I wouldn't have been so bothered about it if there was only one or two sites for each but I acquired so many that I had to start solving them. It wouldn't have been too much of a problem if I didn't find a Night Elf rare.

I have to admit that I was a little superstitious when it came to Archaeology. I only wanted to solve one artifact once I got that rare - the rare itself. If I had to solve one of the others, then I'd have to solve it but I definitely didn't want to. Getting a Night Elf rare in Northrend put me in the situation when I found my superstition was invalid.

At two points, I did have two rares in my book. The Wisp Amulet and the Blessing of the Old God and then later the Nifflevar Bearded Axe and the still unfinished Wisp Amulet, as of course I could never get Night Elf dig sites once I picked up that rare. As I took flights all across Northrend trying to get Night Elf sites, my Vykrul and Nerubian start stacking up, so solving those two rares were rather a breeze.

The first Northrend rare I found was the Vrykul Drinking Horn and my last was Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron. I also solved the Voodoo Figurine while I was out there as it just did not want to give me the Puzzle Box for quite some time. Of course, just as I had trouble finding Night Elf dig sites in Northrend when I had the Amulet, I had trouble getting Troll dig sites when I had the Voodoo Figurine. Once I did manage to get the Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron, of course, I had difficulty finding Nerubian dig sites for it. I have a new hypothesis that once you get a rare, dig sites for that one can be so difficult to find. I am dreading how long it's going to take for my Tol'vir pieces to be complete.

On a slightly related note, while hunting down dig sites, I managed to get two rares for my Frostbitten Achievement (Zul'drak Sentinel and Syreian the Bonecarver). I also came across, to my surprise, the Time Lost Proto Drake, which I managed to get for my main and took a little time out to camp Skoll for my husband while I was working on other things.

I never thought I would get this!

After (finally) solving the Puzzle Box, which now whispers sweet, sweet, creepy things to me, I solved all the extra Troll & Night Elf pieces I had and ended up getting another rare Night Elf to solve. As Northrend archeology took me much longer that Outlands, I am debating taking a break from it before I move onto solving the rest of the artifacts.

I have reset my hearth to Eastern Kingdoms now just in case I do decide to continue doing Archeology. If not, I will at least be close to popping over to the Service Entrance of Stratholme for my daily run. 

Here's my Excel listings I made for my Northrend finds. I'll include Night Elf and Troll finds in one of my other posts.

Blessing of the Old God

Nerubian

Name	Fragments	Type	Discovery Dates	Notes
Blessing of the Old God	140	Rare		Toy
Ewer of Jormungar Blood	45	Common
Gruesome Heart Box	45	Common
Infested Ruby Ring	45	Common
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron	140	Rare		Toy
Scepter of Nezar'Azret	45	Common		Part of the Seven Scepters Achievement
Six-Clawed Cornice	45	Common
Spidery Sundial	45	Common
Vizier's Scrawled Streamer	45	Common

Vrykul Drinking Horn

Vrykul

Name	Fragments	Type	Discovery Dates	Notes
Fanged Cloak Pin	45	Common
Flint Striker	45	Common
Intricate Treasure Chest Key	45	Common
Nifflevar Bearded Axe	130	Rare		Agility Axe
Scramseax	45	Common
Thorned Necklace	45	Common
Vrykul Drinking Horn	100	Rare		Toy

Dig sites I came across:

Night Elf

Crystalsong Forest
	Violet Stand/ Crystalsong Forest
	Ruins of Shandaral
Borean Tundra
	Riplash Ruins
Dragonblight
	Glittering Strand
	Moonrest Gardens

Nerubian

Borean Tundra
	Temple City of En'kilah
	Borean Tundra/ Sands of Nasam
	Talramas
Icecrown
	Scourgeholme
	Scourgeholme/ The Pit of Fiends
Zul'Drak
	Kolramas
Dragonblight
	Icemist Village/ Stars' Rest

Troll 

Zul'Drak
	Alter of Quetz'lun
	Alter of Sseratus
	Zim'Rhuk
	Zol'Heb
Grizzly Hills
	Drakil'jin Ruins

Vrykul 

The Storm Peaks
	Brunnhildar Village
Howling Fjord
	Baleheim
	Nifflevar
	Wyrmskull Village
	Skorn
	Shield Hill
	Gjalerbron
	Halgrind
Grizzly Hills
	Voldrune
Icecrown
	Ymirheim
	Njorndar Village
	Jotunheim

The three most important things in sewing.

I know I haven't updated with the creative side of things lately. I've found that I have a lot of gaming things that I can talk about easily and my Monday posts are more difficult to start. To date, I have thirteen draft posts for Thursdays and only three drafts for Mondays. I think my problem is that I just don't know where to begin.

The wedding itself was a little overwhelming at times, even though it was suppose to be just a small one. None of our family lives in the same state as us so sometimes it was rather difficult as we basically handled all of it.

And I, as I am sure I mentioned before, made my own wedding dress. I know not everyone can claim that and for a while there, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to claim that myself. I was working on it right up until the day of the wedding. It was a little nerve-wracking but to be honest, I was working on costumes for shows right up until minutes before it was needed on stage on opening night. It's pretty much was the same type of stress except that this was for MY WEDDING so the stress level was rather heightened. I will probably not wear this dress again and it will not have to stay out on stage in bright lights but honestly, I think this is the most important item I have ever made.


The dress is not perfect. It is far from it. I know the flaws, I know where it was rushed together and I know I'm going to save it forever. I was mainly afraid it was going to fall apart on me the day of the wedding when I was standing up there giving my vows but it didn't. I knew it wouldn't with all the securing I had done with it but I was still paranoid. It was like I was showing everyone there an example of what I went to college for. If it fell apart, I knew I was going to feel that it was a reflection on my degree. Not to mention that I was so nervous about what my then fiancee was going to think of it. How could I not think that? I had my doubts over if I liked it or not. I had times where I needed to reassess it and it just wasn't doing it for me. How could I not wonder what my fiancee would think or what anyone else would think of it for that matter.

Honestly, I had never made anything that I had stressed over this much but it was made of the three components that I learned about in college that I knew would make it great: Blood. Sweat. Tears. This wasn't textbook stuff that you learned from class. This was in the shop, hands on and working with people who knew more than that textbook had to offer. From them I learned that if an item had those three components, it would turn out great.

Blood.
To be honest, this one is the most noticeable. Inside of the bodice where I was stitching it up by hand, there is a slight mark from my left pointer finger when I had jabbed myself with the needle. Being in such a rush, I did not notice or feel that I was bleeding until I noticed the mark on the lining. When I'm in a rush to stitch, I usually end up putting a lot of effort behind whatever I am doing. I don't know what I think this is going to make it go faster. It's like I go into a superhero mode where my special abilities are strength and speed. Strength is usually not necessary when working with light fabrics but speed is good, as long as it isn't sloppy. If this would have been earlier in the process, I may have only pricked myself, instead of ripping up a line of skin in my finger. It's completely healed now but I'm sure that won't be the last time I get myself with a sewing needle.

Sweat.
Okay, I'm not going to lie. I like the house to be warm. Sometimes, it was just too warm and I would find myself stripped down to a tank top and sweatpants and churning this thing out. And did I mention I was working on this dress all the way up to the day of the wedding too? Talk about sweat putting on the finishing touches. Having family come in for the wedding was great. It was just rather difficult having to balance time between seeing them, working on the dress, working on finishing touches for the wedding and having a moment to do all the daily activities. Also, the room where I kept my dress has no door so I had to hide the dress from my then fiancee whenever he would be around. That was rather tricky.

Tears.
Yes, I cried over this dress. Quite literally to be exact. I remember being frustrated about something in regards to the wedding and seeing tears dropping onto the lining that I was working on. I honestly tried not to work on this dress when I was upset about wedding things because I wanted to be able to look at this dress and have good memories of it. Sometimes, I just couldn't help it though as time was getting short and I was stressed about almost everything wedding related.

I have great memories of this dress regardless of all the frustration that I might have had with it in the past. I love it so much. It's mine. There is nothing else like it out there. I ironed, cut, serged and sewed every piece of it. It's not perfect but I still love it anyway. I've had it sitting on the dress form since I got back from the honeymoon. I'm going to hate to have to take it down in the next few weeks when we start to move but I'm going to keep it safe and maybe I can pull it out and show it to my own children someday.

Archaeology - Outlands Style

Let me just start this post by saying I hated Archeology. Hated, the key word there. I really thought it was going to be something else when it first came out and I felt a bit disappointed when I went out and did it for the first time.

"Your find is over here!"
"Actually I've changed my mind. It's over here."
"...Maybe it's over here?"
"Yeah, you're getting closer."
"Not close enough."
"Still not close enough."
"Nope."
"Not yet."
"Nope."
"Okay. Here you go."

And that's just to find one. As I write this, I have just maxed out my Archeology a few days ago and it's been almost a year and a half since Cata launched. I don't know if I can say I still hate Archeology but I think it's just more of a frustrated feeling than a hate. I want rares, just like everyone else and solving artifact after artifact and getting nothing new, can be rather annoying.

I think I may have worked out a system to make it easier on myself. I've started tracking my dig sites in Excel with the items listed for each race and tracking when I found them. Sadly, there's some I haven't found and others I've found at least three times already.

I know it's spelled Archaeology in game but I go back and forth with the spelling of it.

Keeping track of all this, I've decided to concentrate on certain continents to knock out my finds quicker. I've just finished working on Outlands and am debating on what continent to tackle next. I may take a break to concentrate on some other achievements first as Archeology can quickly get tiring to me. It's really perfect when I'm looking to take a nap as all the flying starts to make me sleepy after a while. It's a bit like reading my Theatre History book in college but I digress, this is about Outlands Archaeology finds.

The first rare I came across in Outlands was the Headdress of the First Shaman, an Orc Rare if you didn't know already. It is rather lovely, although I have no idea what to do with it as my Hunter and Shaman already have their heirloom helms. I suppose that I can stop farming the Big Bad Wolf's Head now since this seems to be much better looking on my hunter for transmog possibilities.

Once I sat down and started concentrating on them, I basically knocked out all of my Outlands Archaeology over a three day weekend. Earlier, I had only found four of the twenty finds and it took me thirty finds exactly to get all the Orc and Draenei artifacts available. My last artifact find was the Draenei rare Arrival of the Naaru and I was pleased when I finally saw that appear after solving common after common find. Overall, it didn't really take that long since Outlands isn't that large itself, so I'm slightly dreading how long it's going to take me to dig everything up in Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend.

For those of you who are still working on your Draenei and Orc finds, here's a little set up I made in Excel.

 Draenei

Name	Fragments	Type	Discovery Dates	Notes
Anklet with Golden Bells	45	Common
Arrival of the Naaru	124	Rare		Toy
Baroque Sword Scabbard	46	Common
Carved Harp of Exotic Wood	45	Common
Dignified Portrait	45	Common
Fine Crystal Candelabra	44	Common
The Last Relic of Argus	130	Rare		Teleporter
Plated Elekk Goad	45	Common
Scepter of the Nathrezim	46	Common		Part of Seven Scepters Achievement
Strange Silver Paperweight	46	Common

Orc

Name	Fragments	Type	Discovery Dates	Notes
Fiendish Whip	45	Common
Fierce Wolf Figurine	45	Common
Gray Candle Stub	45	Common		Part of The Harder They Fall Achievement
Headdress of the First Shaman	130	Rare
Maul of Stone Guard Mur'og	45	Common		Part of The Harder They Fall Achievement
Rusted Steak Knife	45	Common		Part of The Harder They Fall Achievement
Scepter of Nekros Skullcrusher	45	Common		Part of Seven Scepters Achievement
Skull Drinking Cup	45	Common
Tile of Glazed Clay	45	Common
Tiny Bronze Scorpion	45	Common		Part of The Harder They Fall Achievement

I love working with Excel. I've charted out so many projects I'm working on in WoW, usually to track my progress towards a goal of rep or achievements. My husband also uses it mainly to track their wins/loses and probability in LFR. Perhaps I can get them to do an article in the future on their charts and numbers that they have come up since they are more mathematically inclined than myself.

For now, these are two pages in my Archaeology Excel book that I can mark as completed. Feel free to use this setup if you like or tweak it to your own liking. Personally, I liked to track the discovery dates as the Archaeology book in WoW only tells your first find date and how many times you've found that item. I like to have the knowledge that "Yes, I just solved this find two months ago and now I have it again and have just solved it twice today. Wee, what a thrill."

For those of you also interested, these are the dig sites in Outlands that I came across:

Draenei

Netherstorm
	Arklon Ruins
	Ruins of Enkaat
	Ruins of Farahlon
Shadowmoon Valley
	Coilskar Point
	Eclipse Point
	Illdari Point
	Ruins of Baa'ri
Terokkar Forest
	Auchindoun/ Ring Of Observance
	The Bone Wastes
	Tuurem
Zangermarsh
	Twin Spire Ruins

Orc 

Hellfire Peninsula
	Gor'gaz Outpost
	Hellfire Basin
	Hellfire Citadel/The Path of Glory
	Zeth'Gor
Nagrand
	Ancestral Grounds
	Burning Blade Ruins
	Laughing Skull Ruins
	Sunspring Post
Shadowmoon Valley
	Warden's Cage
Terokkar Forest
	Bleeding Hollow Ruins
	Bonechewer Ruins
	Grangol'var Village

I want to say that my least favorite find was Auchindoun/Ring of Observance because of the mounting/dismounting that had to be done flying in and out of the ring. It was rather frustrating after a while. My favorites were Laughing Skull & Burning Blade Ruins as I am also farming Mag'har & Consortium rep so I was able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Overall, it wasn't a terrible an experience as I thought it might be so I may in fact just knock out the rest of my archeology finds over the next few weeks. Of course, once Mists becomes available, I'll probably put this profession on the back-burner again for some time.

The Not-So-Crafty Old Crafty

Such a pretty bird.

Usually in my adventures through Azeroth, I try for two things - Lord Aurius Rivendare and the Heroic: Sethekk Halls mounts. I'm taking a (slightly) frustrated break from these two. I'm still under 100 kills for each of these and I know I'll be working at them forever. I would probably do better with finding them in a Call-to-Arms bag with the drop rate.

I am not usually lucky in getting mounts to drop and when they do and I'm with other people, I never get them. This is also the case for me getting the last piece I need in my raiding set. There's usually that one thing that holds you back from getting what you need to complete it and for me, that's my shoulders. It took me until after the Hour of Twilight dungeons released to finally get an upgrade to better shoulders from the ZA/ZG runs. I already hated the place and the fact that it wouldn't give me a much better item made me dislike it anymore.

Rivendare, give me your mount, you jerk!

Fast forward to months after the HoT heroics have been released and I'm still in my ZA/ZG shoulders that I got months ago. Raiding hasn't even been kind to me in that regard. So now I start hitting up the Archbishop every day instead of running randoms and I finally get my shoulders to drop not long after that and my iLvl finally raises enough and I hit Cataclysmically Epic. Finally! I'm rather pleased with that and go on to knock out some lower achievements that day to work on Loremaster and some Lich King achievements that I missed.

At the end of the day, I decide to set myself down and do a little bit of fishing in Orgrimmar just for the heck of it. Okay, I did have a reason. Usually my bags are almost always full to the brim with random items. I'll admit that I'm a bit of a hoarder in WoW and sometime I'll post about some of the things I have picked up along the way. So here I was with about eight or nine empty slots and a free moment so I plop myself down and decide to fish enough to fill up my bags. With my bags almost full, I manage to fish up this.

I got my shoulders to finally drop and I fished up an achievement in one day. Thinking it may just be my lucky day, I try for my dailies but no Raven Lord or Deathcharger. Apparently, this luck isn't something I could push.

Off-hand-ing Old Crafty!

I am still rather pleased I got this off-hand fancy fish. Although, I was rather disappointed to find out that I couldn't go out and slap someone with it. As with most things, I'll just keep this in my bags/bank as a souvenir for something silly later on.

And if you try mounting with a weapon and a fish, it looks like you're getting it sliced for cooking!

See you next week!