So I a achieved nothing this evening… had to pick my daughter up from Youth Theatre and then had to try and untangle the work from today so that I could plan for tomorrow.

So with one thing and another the best I managed was the spray this chap for my daughter who wanted to paint a big dinosaur to match in with mine. Once again it has some really nice detailing on it. This is not an expensive Scheich one, but a cheap Chinese one with a date stamp of 1991. It does have some mould lines, which I forgot to remove. She may have words with me!

A thought has just struck me… were there albino dinosaurs? Or is albinism a relatively new thing? We will never know, but it is an interesting thought nonetheless.

The other bit of excitement from today was that my son was sent home from school with a very high temperature and a cough. So a lot of phoning to doctors etc. He is looking a lot better tonight. We think it is just a cold/cough. The other amazing thing is that the next two fire festivals have been cancelled. The South Mainland One is second only to Lerwick so for that to be cancelled and not just postponed is quite a big thing. So well done to them for following advice from the NHS. Two people who were on a birthday bus that visited most of the hostelry’s on Shetland have tested positive for the virus… whoops!

So today I went into the bottom of the big shed looking for something. When I moved a box of some 6mm stuff it sloshed… not the normal sound one would associate with 6mm miniatures in cardboard boxes.

All in all it looks like I am going to have to rescue some miniatures shortly… I really don’t know how I am going to store these now. I have had the rosin boxes for around 30 years 😂.

It’s getting on a bit now so I think I will get this lot sorted and paint something tomorrow evening.

An update…. they are all out of the besogged boxes and sitting there attempting to dry.

I found some more after the above was taken. The dwarves have joined them on the drying plank. These are pretty much all fantasy apart from the pile on the right. I now know where my WW1 Turks ended up! I never did finish them. I reckon I should sometime as I must have had these 30 years or so. From having a quick look I think they are all Irregular Miniatures.

I evidently had two phases of painting when I did 6mm…

The above was evidently when I took my time. The other option was when I just threw some paint on and called them done! As I have a few unpainted Fantasy armies , I am now wondering how Contrast would work???

So after stressing about how a plastic lizard would get on a toy dinosaur I came up with a cunning idea…

This gives me a good excuse to buy a box or two of Skinks to carry all of these around. 😂

I just want to start off by saying a big thank you to everyone for the kind words after our pretty rubbish day yesterday. I eventually managed to get him into my trailer today and got him taken away for burial. I really do have some amazing neighbours, those that helped yesterday and those today who loaned me a spare tyre for the trailer as well as a block and tackle. We shall not talk about the one that is the arsehole 🥴

Today proved a bit expensive as my trailer tyres were pretty shot and one had a slow puncture so after sorting out the pony I went to get new tyres. Unfortunately these had to come with wheels attached, but in reality I was going to order some new wheels anyway. Two wheels and a trailer board came to just under £200…ouch. I was going to try and get them on tomorrow, but it looks like the rain, sleet and general crappy ness are set in until Tuesday.

On the upside, I did manage to get a bit of painting done. I added the white and then went over it in yellow as well as painting a pile of snakes that came with the boxed set.

It now looks like there is a contrast between the red and the orange, which is what I wanted. Hopefully I can get these a bit further forward tomorrow.

Thanks once again.

I didn’t get anything painted today as unfortunately we have had a really, really crap day.

The kids and my good lady had been to the cinema and had come back. They went to put a rug on one of the ponies and found him stood in the stream as the tried to get him out he started to struggle and collapsed. My daughters had to hold his head out of the water while my wife ran to phone for help. Unfortunately I was in work interviewing for a vacant post. I only found out a couple of hours later.

Luckily a neighbour came to help and they got him out. We don’t actually have any blankets in the house any more as the kids ran to get everything thing could find to try and get him warm

Sadly he didn’t make it, as you can imagine everyone is a little distraught. The kids were absolute stars and did everything they could to help.

Tomorrow I will remove his remains and get him buried, not a thing I am looking forward to. We have had him over twenty years and all of the kids have started riding on him.

So here he is in happier times with my middle daughter aged about four.

As many of you know, I do like my 3D Printer. It is a useful weapon in my arsenal…or more likely a gadget I like playing with. However it is only to be used by me, the kids don’t get to play with it.

My middle daughter loves her arty/crafty bits and bobs so I thought I would get something that we could all use.

We have been having a play with it this evening. I thought the 3D Printer was tricky, this is a nightmare!

Like with the printer this will take a bit of getting used to, but I am sure in the end we will be making some awesome things.

The kids are off school tomorrow, but sadly I am not. I do have a long weekend coming up so will try to get a fair bit of painting done over the next few days.

So tonight I am sitting looking at the different versions of the bases. I have to come up with some form of decision about what my bases are going to look like. The dog very kindly removed herself from her bed, which meant that I can have a proper look at them in a better light.

The options are shown above. The Geek Gaming ones are nice and will be useful for making terrain etc but I really don’t think they will work for the lizard bases. That basically leaves the Serious Play ones.

I had a closer look at the mixed ones and I think it is going to go down to either one of them.

I am edging towards the darker one of the two on the left of the picture.

The real question now is do I mix up a big batch by throwing all of the green into the darker colour or do I do smaller batches??? Luckily I have three bags of the green so I can certainly add a lot. As I said I do like it so could probably use it for other things.

I am going to build the rest of the cold ones tonight and get them sprayed tomorrow morning. That will probably be the limit of my hobby work as I am learning to play bowls tomorrow afternoon (I have some indoor bowls equipment in the school and thought I might as well set up a club) and straight after that I have to head up to the North of the island for a leaving party for a friend, (colleague and manager too over the years). She is deserting me to take up a headship south and I really will miss her.

I have three of the cold ones built, so I reckon I will manage another five this evening. Wish me luck as I am absolutely buggered this evening.

No painting tonight, but I did have a productive evening nonetheless.

My order came from Geek Gaming today so I had a mooch at it. I ordered the woodland range as I am wanting stuff for my lizards.

They do look good, but seemed a little dark. My daughter and I decided to test them out on 2p’s

We had a fair few to try out, some were from Geek gaming and others were ones I had had for ages.

We had forest paths, forest floor and rugged fields from Geek gaming and unfortunately the other ones didn’t have names on them but they were from Serious Play.

This above is an overview of them… The following top two rows are from right to left

Rugged fields, forest floor then forest paths. The bottom three were us mixing them up a bit.

The first two on the left below are the Serious play ones. We then did a bit more mixing by adding some light green into the mix you can see the effect above.

We decided that the serious play mix was the best and we would do a bit of a bigger test. We haven’t decided on which to go for, but the green certainly added a bit more colour to the mix.

So today I went to work (sorry John) just made it through the day and got back to find shiny things.

I took the photos but really couldn’t be arsed to actually have a proper look.

I backed this on Kickstarter a good while ago and totally forgot about it. So it was like a surprise present to myself 👍

Each player plays a goblin who has to go out into the Miremarsh to to get gold and compete to complete the various missions. The top minis are the various goblins and some nasty denizens of the swamp. Bottom is more nasties. To the right are some locations where you can buy upgrades (hence the need for gold) and finally on the left is the fen Lord .

The miniatures are lovely. I could have got various other bits and pieces but as with most things didn’t have the cash when needed.

So that is everyone in here feeling cack now. My Eldest came home from school today too.

Unclean, Unclean!

As mentioned yesterday, the first fire festival of the year takes place today in the original capital of Shetland.

I always go to the Scalloway one as it is my friend’s birthday round about it and we stand at their house and watch the procession go by… Tonight we duly parked up and set off walking to my mates, only takes five minutes but it was rather windy and rainy. We got to his about six thirty and waited for the firework to tell us they were ready to start at 19.00. We heard the bang, got our coats on and went outside expecting to see the torches being lit… not a one in sight. Due to the high winds and rain they re routed it. So there are no pics of burning torches and a galley being torched or anything else like that. However I thought I would send a pic of the sea in the wind the other day.

I blagged if off Facebook…

This was taken on the tombolo at St. Ninian’s. The people are stood on the sand in the photo below.

Hardly a wonder that we hadn’t had a ferry for a good few days. (It left three hours early today, to avoid the worst of the wind).

Today, however there was some nice news, The delivery driver turned up around half four with my new base plates for the printer. It was just a simple task of removing t(e old one and then replacing it with the new. it came off eventually!

On the upside the new one looks rather smart…

For some reason the bed would not level for ages, but I got there in the end. I am seriously beginning to think that the metal base plate has a dip in the middle as I can get the edges dialled in spot on, but the middle is always just a little too high.

Anyway I needed a test print, so as these were stored on the usb card I gave them another go.

I compared the original prints (top) to the new one (below)…

As can be seen, the bottom ones are a lot better (apart from the top of the first one). I will resolve these and give them some more top and bottom layers to help with the missing layers, either that or give them a bit higher infil. I think this was pretty low.

The wind outside is howling, the rain is hammering on the roof and windows but this was this morning as I parked at work…

Red sky in the morning… shepherd’s warning….

Hopefully I will paint something tomorrow.