It truly has been a bit of a crap day, the loss of Smudge has been tempered a bit by the knowledge that we will be getting a kitten in a couple of months.

The vet was lovely, she allowed us in the room with him when he went, she wasn’t supposed to, due to Covid restrictions, but it really did help us.

We have had him since 2005. We hand reared him and half the litter from about a week old. He was the runt if the litter and the vet warned us that he might not see out the night. Ironically he is the last survivor of the litter. When they came to us they were dirty grey wriggling things. They had been fed cows milk and kept in newspaper, so they got a bath in an ice cream tub. He is called smudge as we couldn’t get the muck off his nose, then we realised he was actually black and white.

We lost the first of his litter at six weeks and tabby at 9 years… he was called tabby as he was the tabby kitten that we weren’t keeping…🙄.

He would have been sixteen this October, my wife was heavily pregnant when we got them, she reckoned that as she couldn’t sleep then she might as well feed kittens overnight.

So here he is the daft old softy…

So this evening I managed to get somewhere with the first four bases of heavies…

Nowhere near finished, but definitely a lot less white on them than yesterday… there is a great deal of bronze on these, as one might expect. Hopefully the shield transfers will brighten the front ends up a bit.

I got a parcel today, my new motherboard has arrived…

I am a bit nervous putting it in, as the printer is still under warranty… okay to be fair we are sitting at 10 months since I had it, so the warranty is close to the end, but this is new tech too and, although I have built a pc years ago, I am just a bit twitchy that I will balls it up.

I decided not to do it this evening as I wanted something to distract me tomorrow, unfortunately my old cat, who we hand raised from two weeks is having to go to the vets, and I am thinking that it will be a one way journey for him. He is now 16 years old and his mental faculties are really starting to go, he will start shouting for us when he has lost us, problem is we are in the room with him. He will then chase me to feed him, after I have just fed him. He is starting to poop wherever he is, often a couple of feet away from the litter tray, we have so many now because he was doing it in every room. He attacked the dog yesterday for no apparent reason… as. A vet friend said, better a day to early than a day too late. I know it is for the best, but my kids are going to be devastated. I really do think we have run out of straws to clutch at.

So today in my lunch break I got a notification to say that Kickstarter needed something… so I duly went online, did what I needed to do and then noticed something….

I resisted for all of about 30 seconds! Seriously I should leave my iPad at home. The one I jumped on came with some artillery and an add on, which pretty much worked out being free.

But enough about my week willed nature, I also managed to get some paint on my Greeks…

Still a fair old bit to do, but definitely getting there… and finally I decided to open the foam clay and add some to the helmet…on the upside, there aren’t any cracks… on the downside it looks like some apprentice welder has been allowed to practice on it…

Once it has dried, I should be able to set upon it with the sander and get the bits smoothed off.

Yep I made a start on the next batch this evening… not much to say really….

Oh there are some more baggage carriers too, with their adopted mule, that I have had for about 20 years. I stole one of the minis to go with the cart, the mule filled his space on the base… here is the cart and funky nude musicians.

This evening I fully intended to get something painted, but as the famous bloke once said the best laid plans… I decided to get my mate some Imperial Arbiters (or a printable version) for his birthday, I had seen them somewhere online and came up with my first problem… firstly I couldn’t remember what they were called and secondly… I couldnt remember who made them… this led to a number of dead ends, confusion and internal grumpyness. in the end however I did manage to find the company that made something else that I had seen and then voila it all came back.

Anyway, this is what I purchased for his birthday….

I got the Matrriach and Augur as I thought I might be able to fiddle about with their hands to allow them to join the Sisters of battle… i have a feeling that the Arbiters weapons may be a bit on the large side, but we shall see. If nothing else I am sure they would fit in with the Mordheim idea!

It would seem that Monstrous Encounters are a patreon and these are some of the items that they have for sale, they do have some awesome stuff and to be honest, I did think about the Arbiters for a Necromunda force. they do have a couple Delaquesque sets – this is how I first found them. They also do Heroquest stuff, their minis do look like the originals – even down to the bases… I was very tempted! They also have a pile of Brettonian – or rather not Brettonian’s … I dont want them getting into trouble with GW.

Seriously though, I would have a look at them and see what you think…. maybe I am just being a bit of a fan boy… I will let you know how I get on.

Oh While I remember, this laptop has no working ‘p’ so I am having to paste each one in… so if you find a misspelled word tat seems to be missing a certain letter then you know why!

Tonight I decided to get the Greeks undercoated, ready to start painting tomorrow. I managed to squeeze them all onto my rotating spray doodah.

I also got an email response back about the Printer today, they wanted a video sent of it acting up so I duly did so, they came back and said I needed an new motherboard and that it was on its way to me. So I have about two weeks to go before it arrives so I had better get cracking with the 15mm stuff above.

I reworked the ear bits and cheek pieces on the helmet this evening, it is beginning to come together. I need to get my sander on it to smooth things out. The flooring foam is not as good as the more expensive high density stuff. The cheap foam is a bit on the soft side.

By small amount I mean took something off the Resin Printer! After being a total swine yesterday it did manage to successfully print the miniatures in the end…

I didn’t get much done on the old hobby side, but today has been bonkers, got my daughter riding, did the pony’s hoofs, went to a new fish place and got some new fish, redesigned my wife’s office, worst bit was removing the original desk. We bought the desk really cheaply before we built the office, so the office went up around the desk. we have replace it with something 2cm (about an inch) smaller and rotated it through 90 degrees and all of a sudden the office looks twice the size.

As per normal, I don’t have any cable to finish the job. I knew I should have bought a roll of it last time I was in town. I also need a couple of sockets too, as the ones I have re-used are a bit manky.

So I managed to get the miniatures sprayed today and as my mate came round for a barbecue then he got to take them home.

I still have the final sister of Battle and a Nid’ to do for him, but I will get some things to do for myself.

The printer has been a total bastard again today and is honestly getting worse, I have tried to do another set of miniatures but it failed to print at least twice…hopefully it will be successful… third time lucky!

I received some reinforcements from my mate for the painting

I have been messing with the helmet for my daughter this evening…

Yours truly had to try it on 😂

You will be pleased to hear that I haven’t played with any electricity today or even left the car lights on. I also managed to not drown myself in the bath… All in all I feel it was a successful day.

I managed to get the bases finished on the 40k stuff. I will get the. Varnished tomorrow morning. My mate is coming for a socially distanced barbecue tomorrow afternoon.

My printer decided to play with my mind too…

The crossbowmen had opposite legs missing and the Lion Knight had a missing leg on one and issues with an arm on the other. As you can see the mini top left has half an arm missing too… all weird!

Did however manage to cobble the bits together hence the chopped off leg on the crossbowman above. Here they are, sort of finished…

He gods, what a day…. ‘‘twas somewhat foggy this morning when I left for work…

It was patchy all the way in, but sometimes not good driving weather. On the upside, it was Chinese night at the local hall, my cleaner kindly gave me a sub as I was a bit short on the cash (children are expensive). I ordered it for 16.30 only to find that I had left my lights on all day. Luckily my cleaner Brian, who is a total star, nipped home to get his jump leads.

So we had yummy tea, after which , I decided to wire in the new plug. Plug end went in without a hitch, which was suspicious… the power end was using a snap fit junction box so I didn’t turn off the power … somehow there was a fracture in the live wire sheath that wasn’t visible. It went in fine first time, but it hadn’t held properly so I used my pliers to try and get it in further. At this point the invisible fracture met the earth and there was a bit of a flash, a bang and a horrible smell from our underwear. I have come to the conclusion that I hate these easy fit junction boxes and will now resort to the old fashioned ones that actually work allow the wires to be held firmly.

After turning the power off, I put an old style junction box in and voila everything worked fine. We now have our far infrared heater installed and it is working fine… however sadly my prints from last night need a bit of a look at…

I am not sure what is going on here, the crossbowman printed fine the other day, and yet here he has only one leg, as does the lion knight. I am trying another print this evening, it might simply be that the resin thickened as the temperature dropped (the heater in the shed eventually died). They were however both at the same end of the build plate so perhaps it is something to do with that.. sadly I would have known by now if I hadn’t tried electrocuting myself and tripped the power…On the upside I do know that the RCD works!

And finally, I got some Contrast paint onto the bases to hide the white. I will do the sand tomorrow…

And finally, this again made me laugh a bit too much!