if you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle

(copied from Bsky. Click pics to embiggen.)

So I wasn't a finalist this year in the FFXIV Fan Fest art contest, but I'm still proud of what I made. Here's the story of how I came to knit Alphinaud. colin-ryan #ffxiv #knitting


[Image Description: A close-up on the face of a knitted doll of Alphinaud from Final Fantasy XIV. He's got blue eyes, pointy ears, and a mess of white hair.]

Last May, my depression flared up. Lots of little things were going wrong, and I lost confidence in myself. I needed to do SOMETHING to regain my confidence, so I decided to knit Alphi.

Knitting is my safe space. It's the one area of my life where I am fearless and unafraid to try new things. Because it's just yarn, folks - if you make a mistake, you rip out and redo it. The yarn doesn't mind! (well, most of the time).

So I knew I'd be knitting SOMETHING, and settled on Alphinaud because I adore his character. He keeps moving forward, even when things go wrong or are especially hard. He doesn't give up. I could use a bit of his courage, and hoped knitting him would help.

Knitting his body was the easy part. The pattern is my own design that I've knit at least 10 times before, so it was just a matter of doing it again and making slight changes as Alphinaud is on the slimmer side. It took 22.5 hours over the course of 20 days.


[Image Description: A knitted doll of Alphinaud from FFXIV. He's NAKED! SCANDALOUS! He's got blue eyes and pointed ears. His white hair cap has been knitted and sewn on, but the strands of hair haven't been placed yet in this picture.]

The clothes would be trickier, as I'd be designing them from scratch based on his in-game Sage outfit.

I started with a boot. I wasn't sure how to do the flaps at first. I tried doing foldover flaps but could not wrap my head around the logistics needed for the fold. I scrapped that and then tried flaps separately. That worked better!

I was testing different yarns, though, and the yarn I had tried was too gauzy held singly. So I scrapped that attempt and tried again with the yarn held double. It worked better, but made a tight boot that could stand up on its own. Oops!

Eventually, I gave up on the boot and started on his white tunic. I tried knitting the split hem first, but it was NOT going well.

So I put the tunic aside and knit his pants. This wasn't too bad, because I'd previously made pants for other dolls so it was just a matter of a few alterations to be true to his in-game pants.

This brought me to end of July 2025. Life improved. I had regained my confidence and gotten busy with stuff, so Alphinaud went to the wayside for a time.

Then in late January, the Fan Fest Art Contest was announced! Now, I actually did consider making some other things for it, but some quick calculations told me I didn't have the time. So back to Alphi I went.

His white tunic was first. I goofed on my first attempt by not making an opening at back that would allow it to pass over his head. So I ripped and redid it.

I knit the tunic top down, ending with a point made by decreases on both front and back. It was then time to make the "tails" of the tunic.

Here I made a collosal error: I went off memory, and did not double check the reference picture. I thought there were three tails on both front and back. I dutifully knit them. WRONG!

So I had to rip out all that work and redo the tails. This took a lot of contemplation and experiment to get them right!

I started the tails bottom up. Doing the silver stripes was easy. The problem was that the angle of the tails' bottoms did not match the angle of the tunic bottoms. I would need to determine how to account for that angle.

The answer, after much trial and error: SHORT ROWS! I knit the bottom of the tails first, then did short rows to turn a corner and square off the top, then did decreases along the top to match the angle of the tunic. WHEW!

I finally finished the white tunic on February 26, and went on to the boots, which I reknit in heavier weight yarn. That worked better!

I did not finish the boots until March 2nd. Time was running out - the deadline was the 6th. Would I finish in time? I still needed to do his coat, gloves, and place/style his hair, at the very least.

I started his coat next. Thankfully, I've made doll coats before, so had some idea of how to do it, so I didn't waste much time figuring things out.

Even so, I did not finish the coat until 6:17pm CST on the 6th. EEP! Just a few hours left to deadline!

I took a break for dinner, then went back to it. I started placing hair, spending 40 minutes on it and stopping at 8pm.

I had previously done the first glove when taking a break from the coat, but needed to knit the second. That took 1 hour 13 minutes, finishing at 9:14pm CST.

Finally, I finished the hair. It took me another 1 hour 16 minutes. I finished at 10:30pm CST - 3.5 hours before the midnight PST deadline.

I'd done all the knitting I could. I had planned on doing smaller details as well, but there just wasn't time. Still, I felt he was recognizably Sage Alphinaud. Time for photos!

Unfortunately, photos took some cursing and extra time. To get decent photos in the horizontal layout required took me another hour and a half.

I submitted my official entry just after midnight CST - about two hours before the deadline. Here's those pics. They are not great, so I am not surprised I did not make finalist.


[Image Description: My official Fan Fest entry photos, showing a knitted doll of Alphinaud in his Sage outfit. There's three pics, a larger one on the left showcasing his front, with two smaller pics on the right showing him from the side and back. He's got white hair in a braid, pointed ears, and is wearing a white tunic, blue coat, black pants and white boots and gloves. A charm on a silver necklace completes the outfit.]

Am I disappointed? Of course. But still: proud of myself. I perserved and worked hard and got it done to my satisfaction. Here's some close-up glamor shots taken today!


[Image Description: A knitted doll of Alphinaud from FInal Fantasy XIV. He's got a mess of white hair, pointed ears, and blue eyes. He's wearing a white tunic with tails. The tails have silver stripes at an angle. He's also wearing a blue coat, black pants, white boots and white gloves that are open on the back of the hand.]


[Image Description: A close of up a knitted doll of Alphinaud, showing off his glove. It is white with an opening on the back of the hand. The doll's "hand" is a simple gathered tube without a thumb, so the glove is pretty simple too.]


[Image Description: Close up photo of a knitted doll of Alphinaud. You can see the bottom of his black pants in the photo, but the subject of the photo is his white boots. They go halfway up his leg, and have two flaps about a quarter of the way down.]


[Image Description: A close up of the tunic for my knitted Alphinaud. It's white, featuring a garter stitch panel on front with two pointed tails. The tails have silver stripes set at an angle.]


[Image Description: A knitted doll of Alphinaud, from the back. He's got a mop of white hair on the top, with a neat braid falling down his back. He's wearing a blue coat and white gloves. You can just see the tails of his white tunic peeking out from underneath the coat.]

Alisaie supervised during this process as I had previously knit her--five years ago, so my gauge changed. This meant Alphinaud turned out smaller as I had tightened up some over the years.


[Image Description: A knitted doll of Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV, sitting in a gaming chair. She is supervising the knitting of her brother. So far, just his head is knit to just under where his nose would be. His blue eyes have already been placed. The knitting is on four small double-pointed needles arranged in a square.]

Here's the twins together - and yes, Alisaie is LIVID at being the bigger, more "rugged" twin. bethanwalker colin-ryan


[Image Description: Knitted dolls of Alphinaud (left) and Alisaie (right) from Final Fantasy XIV. Alphinaud is in his Sage outfit from Endwalker and is wearing a blue coat, white tunic, black pants and white books and gloves. Alisaie is in her Shadowbringers outfit and is wearing a short red dress, thigh-high knitted boots, and a beige bolero trimmed in white fur. They were knitted five years apart so my gauge changed in that time, and Alphinaud turned out smaller than his sister. Yes, Alisaie is LIVID at being the more "rugged" twin.]

I hope you enjoyed reading this journey. I had a blast working on this (and also headaches at time) and would do it again in a heartbeat. I WILL make more dolls in the future. Deciding who will be the fun part!

Congratulations to the Fan Art finalists! You are all amazingly talented. And to all the players and fans: keep forging ahead. It's worth it.

wavesagainstrocks has a post inquiring on how you do fandom, specifically, do you flit from fandom to fandom or do you stick with one at a time?

I left a thoughtful answer because I found the question interesting! They'd like to hear others thoughts, so if you have some, why not go leave a comment?