Super Secret Project Revealed: Knitted World of Warcraft Figureprint

Everyone, meet Thayolin, my level 80 Horde Paladin on the Durotan server of World of Warcraft. Why, you ask, did I knit a rendition of her? Well there's a bit of a story there.


The backstory:

My husband and I have been playing World of Warcraft together for about 3-4 years now. Recently I got an iPhone and started listening to podcasts on my way to and from work to entertain myself. My favorite is The Instance, a podcast by Scott (@ExtraLife) and Randy (@RandyDeluxe), that gives WoW players the news, rumors, and general discussion of all things World of Warcraft on a weekly basis with heavily douse of hilarity. In their most recent episode (#164) they announced a contest they are running to give away a free FigurePrint of a character from Figureprints.com Now, the concept getting a free FigurePrint is damn near irresistible to me.

Brian and I each have on of these and they are very cool. They are a 3-D rendering of your character wearing their armor and weapons and run you about $150 a piece. Brian got me one of Thayolin for Valentines Day this past year. I was so excited!

But I digress. To enter the contest I had one week to make my own figureprint out of anything I chose: whatever I wanted! Hmmm, what do I do for fun all the time? KNIT! And what do I have a metric ton of just sitting around our apartment? YARN! So, given this wonderful idea, I decided to give knitting up a Thayolin doll a go. I mean why not? how hard could it be?

The process:

Ok, it was pretty darn hard!!!! The podcast came out on Oct. 1 and the due date for submitting a photo of your figureprint was Oct. 7. That is not much time. Especially since I'm not a fast knitter, I have never made anything like this before AND I'm making up the pattern as I go along. So, 20+ hours later Thayolin's knitted persona was born. Below are some pictures of the process of making her. I have some notes on the pattern, but I generally just improvised it, so if you are interested in making one for yourself, I could give some tips, but that's about it.

Ahhh, the early stages... It's always fun to see a disembodied knitted head sitting on your desk.



Working down to the hip area. I even tried to make a basic skeletal system so I could bend her at the waist and legs. She bends a little but not too much, so I obviously have to work on this more next time.


For awhile she just looked like a voodoo doll because of all the needles sticking out everywhere. A certain member of my family who shall remain nameless was a bit concerned of what others might think if they saw me working on her at this point. Hehe...


A little bit of intarsia for the Wyrmrest Accord tabard. Not too bad for exactly zero planning beforehand.


Getting close, just the gauntlets, shoulders and helm (shudder) to go!


Here's a closeup of her helm. That is the piece that took the longest to make because I had to embroider the detail on it in order to make look even remotely ok. I probably put 3-4 good hours into this alone. But I am very proud of it. It even kind of looks like the original :P


So, wish me luck on the contest. My friend Amy also made a figureprint and hers is awesome. You can see it on her blog here. I know I have some good competition. Hopefully we will find out soon. My fingers are crossed and I'll post the results once I find out.