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A Quiz on a Windy Winter Evening

So quick quiz…

Where is this the flag of:

And what is the relationship to this one…

5 points for the first question and 20 points for the second part …. no cheating.

My Shetland tale this evening revolves around the rather remarkable story of a School masters son who lived just over the hill from me.

Have you ever played the game, I would like to live there whilst driving around (a favourite game of my good lady and I) John Clunies-Ross took it one step further… in 1813 he was a mate aboard the whaler ‘Baroness Longueville’ . On a lay over in Timor he was offered the job of captain of the brig ‘Olivia’, which he took. In 1825 He was travelling with a cargo of pepper from Borneo when he stopped on the white sands of a deserted island to reballast his vessel as well as rebalance the cargo. He thought it would be a nice place to set up home and build a trade empire. Two years later he returned and set about building his empire. He arrived on the Cocos Islands, around 11pm on February 15 1827, with his wife, five children and servants. So the game is up, the flag is Cocos Islands.

And this is where it is (in case you didn’t know)

The island, did indeed become a trading post. Huts were originally constructed, wells were dug, coconut trees and gardens were planted with fertiliser coming from burnt palm leaves. John and his wife both died on the same day on May 24 1854.

A new house was built, it was quite a nice pad, a long way from the original thatched huts…

Various British ships arrived over the years, including the ‘Beagle’ complete with a certain Charles Darwin. Who mentioned the ex slaves who were working for the family. He stated that…”found the natives in a state of freedom”. But a following sentence was missed out… but in most other points they are considered as slaves”.

However, Captain Harding of the HMS Pelorus Mentioned in a letter to Clunie-Ross that after questioning the Malays about their treatment…”Not a shadow of complaint or misrule by you could be established or maintained.”

Clunie-Ross promised to provide the ex slaves an agreed wage and to provide houses and gardens and had to promise that they were allowed transport off the island should they want it.

The family were the self styled rulers of the islands. The representative of the Straits Settlements reported the following in 1885 “members of the Clunies-Ross family are to-day in every sense of the word proprietors of the islands, for Mr George Clunies-Ross makes his own laws and interprets them, polices his little domain, provides his own coinage […] controls the entire trade and acts as “the universal provider” to satisfy the wants of the community”

In 1886 Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies-Ross family.

The family sold the island to Australia in 1978 for the sum of £2.5 million.

Hopefully this has been a bit of an interesting read.

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2019 Round-up…

This is a rewrite of the post I did last night. Somehow it disappeared. If truth be told, it might have been a case of user error as I was tired and hurrying to get it finished before midnight! Update, having just nearly done it again, it is not a good idea to hit discard draft instead of update draft.

On the non hobby front, I ended up with two new jobs. The first was in the back end of May being a temporary Deputy Head Teacher (vice Principal) of one of our two High Schools. This was a secondment until I started on as the Head Teacher of one of our small Primary schools. In June and July this had a massive knock on effect on both my painting and blogging. In June I managed only six posts and about ten in July, partly for being knackered and secondly we went on our hols to Orkney. Since the start of August I have blogged every day for 148 days straight.

To be honest in the vast majority of those days I have managed to paint something, sometimes whole units and other times I might have managed to paint a bit of braid on a couple of miniatures. I have also tried to show a bit of where I live as well as giving the odd interesting story from Shetland.

So anyway, what have I painted this year?

Probably not as much as I would have liked, but yeah, life and work sometimes gets in the way. To be fair, I reckon that the use of this paint has speeded up my rate of getting things painted.

These are a case in point…

All done in a Harry Potter film. From white undercoat to Finished in one sitting isn’t too shabby, to be fair they weren’t the most complicated of miniatures to finish .

So onto the quasi list….

4 DBA/DBM\HOTT Armies

I really noticed the difference in painting these. Way back into last January I made a start on the 10mm Wood Elf Army. This was done in two parts, the first part was painted in regular GW/AP paint and took forever, there were a few posts on how slow they were. And I quote “nearly lost the will to live but pushed through the barriers of whatever was stopping me getting on with them.” The second part (See below) was done with Contrast paint and it really, really speeded things up. These were done in about 4 hours over a weekend.

I also painted up:

A Conquistador Force

An Aztec Army

A Scalian Army

I also painted up various other random 10 and 15mm minis I had lying around.

again, Contrast paint made all the difference.

I painted a whole load of infantry for Starship Troopers as well as the odd Bug

j

A lot of September was printing and painting tanks and making/printing terrain

for the Games Day

Later on again in terms of 28mm, I managed to get both forces from Beastgrave painted…

Some troops and nasties for Aliens

I also painted more troops for Flintloque

And finally onto some Harry Potter minis and some GW minis too

This is not an exhaustive list, I have painted various other bits and pieces of 3D printed stuff too as well as other miniatures.

The 3D Printer has been busy this year, it has gone through three rolls of filament.

Well done if you have managed to make it to the end of this post

So rather than say what I am planning for next year, I will leave that for another post tomorrow.

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Christmas Haul

So Mr Beardy was good to me this year I must have been somewhere on his good list. I was luck to get £60 in cash as well as a couple of books. Two of my kids and I went thirds on a VR system for the console. My wife asked if I had checked to see if it was all there, I hadn’t but told her it would be fine…evidently it wasn’t! It had none of the cables including the power cable and then none of the download codes for any of the games. Luckily the kids were fine about it. I however was a whining brat!

The other thing we as a family got was a new game…

I haven’t really had a chance to read the rules yet but it has some really nice miniatures…

Mounted warriors flying on birds as well as foot warriors…

The foot mice are all unipose, the rats basically are too apart from one of them. These are really soft plastic a bit like Reaper Bones. I don’t think I will bother painting them as I don’t know how they will stand up to being used.

Other things I am going to have to help with are this lot….

As well as help finishing off the miniatures from the Harry Potter game already started (I am instructed to paint Harry and Ron) and then help with these three…

All in all, a lot of painting is going to take place, I might get to paint something of mine too!

I can’t really complain too loudly as I helped Santa choose them for the kids.

Still trying to decide how and on what to spend my pennies on… part of my thinks Kill Team or possibly Necromunda. On the fantasy side more stuff for Beastgrave or possibly start saving it up for a resin printer 😂😂😂

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20p Paintbrush

So, if you remember a month ago I got a pile of brushes from Wish and said I would give them a go.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/25/crusher-and-a-parcel-from-wish/

So since then I have painted the following…

Since this picture was taken the base edges have been painted black.

To be fair, in the above photo it was mainly Hermione and bits and pieces on the Death Eaters.

Six horses have been done, along with the riders

Not to forget all of the fine details and handles on the advent calendar.

So it isn’t only a couple of figures and this is where we got to with the brush…

Not sure why it has a bend, but it is still useable, and to be honest a lot of my brushes end up like this. On the up side it does make going into tight spaces easier as I don’t have the brush handle blocking the view.

I reckon that my 20p was worth it.

So as it is Christmas Eve and I have all the presents to wrap so I might not get another post in before tomorrow.

I therefore want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and I hope Mr Beardy has you on his nice list..

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Hussars…Getting There

Today has been super busy, lots of running about and very little Christmas related.

But tonight before butchering various beasties on Hunter ‘Call of the Wild’ I managed to get some painting done.

Still a fair old bit of work to do, but the majority of painting on the riders is done (really just hands, weapons and cockade to do). Bridles, saddles and hooves etc for the horses. I think I am going to add some Greenstuff to the saddle to help bed the riders in properly.

Tomorrow is going to involve loads more running about so hopefully I will get the chance to get some more done on these. It would be good to get them all done by Christmas Day.

Regarding this, in case some of you reading this are disappearing for a while. I just wanted to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.

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Nothing, Nowt and Sod All

So much for an early finish, get stuff painted…yeah that never happened, but to be honest I am not actually complaining. My wife and I went out with our friends for a meal, in an actual restaurant. We worked it out, that it was the fifth time in 14 years that we had been out together without any of the children. Two of those times were because the friends we went out with tonight did the baby sitting!

It wasn’t a completely unproductive evening as I managed to download a file from Thingiverse then slice and print it off.

I am rather pleased with it….

It started out as an full sized anatomical skull, which I shrunk in Cura. It took 4 hours plus to print. It is for my brother in law who wanted a skull to draw. He wants it so that he can see where the light and shade falls. I didn’t fancy printing a full sized version as it was going to take two days to print (well to be fair …one day 23 hours and a fair few minutes).

The filament colour doesn’t actually look too bad off the spool. Further to this, it allows things to be photographed without having to undercoat them.

The first thing I printed in this colour was another couple of lizards, all of which went down really well with my class and my colleague’s girls.

Tomorrow I hope to paint something… wish me luck!

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Hussars.. looking Colourful

Tonight I decided to test out my colour combo….ooh it is hard being a fashionista…

The red dolman and black shako. I think I will leave it all black as opposed to putting a coloured top on it.

the blue pelise with the black fur.

I am going to go for white lacing, but am still undecided on the turn backs and sash. I was thinking yellow for the sash, just to add another bright colour 😂

Really tired tonight so keeping this short and sweet.

However as I mentioned yesterday, I had entered the painting competition and duly voted and there was some great miniatures on there. Stretching from a relative beginner up to a contract painter and that got me thinking, who should I vote for.

Someone who is new on the road or someone making some money out of it. I actually found it quite awkward. In the end I went for what jumped out at me the most. Fair play to the lad for putting some of his first models in, but in a way I kind really felt for him as in all honesty he may not get many votes. I don’t want his confidence knocked

It was an open competition in that it was six different categories that anyone could enter, it might have been easier if there were categories, newbies, intermediate and then professional. But I suppose it becomes tricky with beginner etc, what exactly does that mean.

Not sure what this rambling end to the post means, I think I am just tired.

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Home Alone, Aliens and Cake

Today myself and the small (my two youngest) went to Mareel to watch Home Alone on the big screen, they loved it. The actual high point for me was when a small child legged it onto the stage and ran backwards and forwards avoiding the angry parent 😂

After that we went to the club and the people that said they wanted to play Aliens failed to show so my youngest and I had a game. He ran the squad of Marines and I played the Xenomorphs. He managed to rescue all five scientists and escape the ship before the reactor went critical. He also managed to take out 15 of my nasties without losing a single man.

So onto home and as it is my school Christmas play tomorrow I needed to bake.

Flapjacks and Rocky Roads should show willing. I also remembered a raffle prize and flowers for the two people who helped me and the kids with it.

Today was photo competition day at the Sunday club, I wasn’t going to bother as in all honesty I paint for me, but a few people persuaded me to enter stuff. One set of Sci fi and a sci fi single…

One set of fantasy and a single

I entered to show willing. Not sure what the voting is like and when, but I will keep you posted.

Won’t have much time to do anything tomorrow as ai probably won’t be in until gone 10pm. But I might throw some paint on Harry or Ron to help my daughter out.

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Ostarian Hussars…Slapping the Paint About

Tonight I got a bit done on these…

I got them sprayed white and then made a start on the horses.

I decided that they would all be bays, as there are a lot of bay horses out there, I thought why not.

As you can see, not a huge amount done, but a start is a start.

My eldest daughter turned 14 today and as she likes gaming (she gets miffed when we don’t go to the wargames club) and Harry Potter, We got her this for her birthday present…

The miniatures are rather spiffy…

However I think Hermione looks a bit possessed in this pose! You get, Harry, Ron and Hermione as well as four Death Eaters and a big spider and three spider swarms, not to mention lots of cards, spells, potions, objective cards and all sorts of tokens too.

She did want everything painted by the club time this Sunday, I know I can be fast, but there is a limit. The Death Eaters will be ideal for her to paint with Contrast paints… tomorrow I spray them all white and then we can make a start.

Voice is still shot, which was a bit awkward teaching today and answering the phone was an absolute hoot!