As I said in yesterday’s post, we have been visited by large pods of orca. This is someone my wife knows who had a close encounter…
Photo by Karen Hall
The boat is in the foreground of the picture.
So far this year we have had dolphins – pod of about 40 of them. Orca, humpback, Minke and also a Sperm whale.
We set the camera trap up near the stream and got some great rare birds. We caught a male teal as well as some grey wagtails. Not to forget the regular snipe, oyster catchers and mallards, including a pile of ducklings. We haven’t managed to catch the otter, but one of the Oyster catchers spend ages preening itself in front of the camera so we got loads of footage of him having a right good clean.
Still the tufts to add, but definitely getting there.
I did have a bit of an accidental purchase of another army this evening. I was on Irregular’s website and was after some bits and bobs and somehow managed to hit purchase on a Khmer army.
The other news is that the printer has arrived. I am leaving it in it’s box until a) my Birthday on Tuesday and b) I actually have somewhere to put it where the fumes aren’t going to kill me!
The other thing that came today are bucket loads more resin stuff for the kids and I to mess with. This time UV resin and well as a light and colourants and hundreds of moulds.
Oh and one last thing… we have had special visitors around Shetland over the last couple of weeks…
Not my Photo, but Richard Ashbee’s
Facebook has a Shetland Orca sighting if anyone is interested 😉
Tonight whilst watching Frozen II I managed to get these based up.
I was dead chuffed that they were finished… it was as I had glued the last one down that I realised that I had forgotten the Sashimono… I swore…lots. Tomorrow I hope to get the bases flocked and also the sashimono finished.
I might order some monks for Irregular, they are 5 to a strip so are on a smaller frontage but I don’t think it would matter that much. I also might order one of the banner troops from the Sons of Set. This would make a good background filler for the seated Daimyo. The big Nobori banners they are holding would work well I would imagine.
Tonight was tedious in the extreme. Painting teeny tiny faces and weapons white on 6mm miniatures.
Tomorrow I will need to get them all painted too. I am thinking the Ashigaru helmets will be a different colour just to break up the blue a bit. Yumi will be red, teppo brown and the naginata light brown and silver. The sashimono will be black with white. The helmets will also not blend in with the black too.
I now have three more days at work, not that I am counting 😂
I must admit that I am a little bit excited about the resin printer. I am also going to be working with the children with resin too. They want to make things out of it, so I might as well start them young 😉 (with all safety measures in place of course).
So those of you who have read my blog regularly will know I love my Ender 3 Printer. Yes it has Wobblies every so often and I have to take it apart and put it back together again once in a while. But I have now had it 18 months and it is still pretty much as it came (apart from a new bed plate and also an aluminium extruded.
Yesterday I took a next step on my journey and pressed ‘purchase’ on a resin printer. Will I be getting rid of the Ender? Hell No. it would be like getting rid of your old dog because you got a new puppy!
So I am now preparing for another learning curve. The interesting thing about the resin printer is that height determines the time of the build. So printing one thing takes the same amount of time as ten, if they are all on the plate together. The down side with resin is the fumes, so I will have
to think of where to put the printer. Probably my toy shed. It was originally set up for me to do things in, so it will probably work in there… just a long way to walk…
So after much backwards and forwards between brands I eventually went for the Proton Zero, cheapest of the ones I was looking at.
Tonight I even painted some things…
I decided that all of my Ashigaru would be employed by the same daimyo therefore they would be all wearing the same coloured armour. The samurai would all be wearing their own clan armour so they can be more colourful. The one thing I like about the Banzai rules is that the edges to the bases are different colours to help with weapon and troop type identification.
Woah, I have just reached a milestone I never, ever, ever thought I would reach. WordPress has just informed me that I have just done my one thousandth post.
Although I decided early on that I was going to blog regularly, I never thought that this would ever happen. The one important thing is that I wouldn’t have managed it without you fine people reading it and commenting. Before this blog, the longest I ever managed was two weeks with one post a week. On that blog I had the grand total of Zero followers.
I therefore want to say a big thank you to everyone who has come and commented or liked or even just popped in to wonder what this weird blog was all about. The other thing my stats told me was that I have written at least one post every day for the last 325 days.
I will probably need a lie down once I hit the 365th day 😂 The following photos were the first on the blog. One even has the blog name on it 😂.
So after yesterday’s warping weirdness, I set upon them with my good lady’s hairdryer. I blasted them on nuclear heat for a while then held them flat on a cold ceramic tile, then into the freezer for a couple of minutes to remove any residual heat.
I think it may have worked, only time will tell.
Now for the random Shetland fact… did you know more flights are cancelled in the summer months than the winter months… the reason being….
Yep, it’s the fog/low cloud (not the Goose, I know we have ninja pyromaniac starlings, but less so with the Geese… to my knowledge no goose has ever nested under a bonnet). We can often be clear, but if Orkney has it then they won’t fly as it is the emergency runway.
The hidden dangers in Shetland are real, I still don’t know how I avoided the fate of at least one other person every year… yes we have a secret lurker, just waiting for the unwary… we are talking about the dreaded …
Starling
Yep, here he is, like a little bright ninja saboteur! He causes more fires in cars than any other thing I can think of…
Little blighter had shoved this lot under my bonnet…
Luckily I had left my lights on yesterday and couldn’t drive the car this morning. I only found it when I went to jump start it this afternoon.
So be warned people, starlings are everywhere waiting for their chance to strike.
So last night, I needed to go out and lock the hens up to keep them safe from ferrets or otters. So I toddled off outside and decided to take quick video at midnight.
The Ipad struggled a bit with the light levels, but it definitely gives you an impression of what it is like up here. Midnight and we had blackbirds doing their evening chorus.
Today was a bit of a productive day, I have pretty much finished all of my mates birthday present. The Buddha and Tori gate have been neglected, so I gave them a bit of vegetation. I am not sure whether I like the bits on the statue, but it may grow on me. The last bit to do is the wagon with the rice bales on it..
I also managed to make a start on a 6mm Lizardmen Army, I decided to give these a go as I wanted to have some practice before I went for 6mm Samurai. I was thinking of doing a 6mm Sengoku participation game in the October games day (that is if it goes ahead).
Yeah the colours are a bit GW, but I couldn’t think of what other colour to do them. I will do a bit more tomorrow evening on these.
Bogenwald 