Another actor to play Sir Toby

Hi again! Now it is back to basics. Still working on my little expedition-story. Changed plans and saved a lot of money. Discovered that I have a lot of stuff at home that I can use and have very fun fun. And I have also hired yet another actor to play Sir Toby.

The Expedition - Two new photos

Hi again. This will probably take much longer than I thought. This year started bad. After New Year the missus had to go through surgery and remove her gall bladder. In and out of the hospital during four days (luckily they let her sleep at home. When your in a wheelchair everything is much easier at home) and on the evening of the fifth they did their work on her. And then our dog started limping on his left front leg. The veterinary checked him and said the elbow, which surprised us, since he felt strained around the shoulder. But she said elbow and demanded to open there and have a look. The elbow was fine and our dog was feeling terrible after the surgery. Probably she managed to pinch him so he reacted on the elbow. Very good vet. :-/ She said then that since the elbow was fine it was probably a nerve-root tumour, but the symptoms were wrong. What can we do? we asked. Let him go, was her answer. But she let us get him go through X-ray. No tumour what so ever. Well, the symptoms were wrong. :-/ Two other vets checked him and without us saying anything they said it is probably some muscular problems around the shoulder. So next step is another vet, specialized on muscular problems with dogs, seeing him on Tuesday, the 18th. So where is all this ranting go? Well, all of this costs money and to finish my little expedition I need to buy a little more stuff. But that will have to wait awhile longer. In the meantime I give you a family-photo of the von Schneider-family and a photo from when the expedition is welcomed in Syrinx.

The expedition

Hi again. New month, new year and new post! Happy new year! I start the new year with a little something I call The Expedition. It is not finished yet since I haven't made all the bases I need yet. But I'll show some of the photos here (the colour ones) and some (sepia-like) at Benno's. I play a little with the names on the explorers. First we have Sir Alfred Toby (Sir Toby is one of the absent friends in the old TV-sketch Dinner For One, which is aired in Sweden every New Years Eve), then Mr Benjamin Butterbur (Mr Butterbur is usually called Barliman and lives in Bree in Tolkien's Lord of the Ring), Mr James Winterbottom and Mr William Pommeroy (both from Dinner For One), Dr Napoleon B. Brown (there is an old bluessong called Dr Brown and one blues singer called Nappie Brown, but it was Buster Brown that sang the song with saxophone player J.T. Brown), Admiral Adalbert von Schneider (a little mix. Adalbert is a ghost in one of Johan's and Peewit's adventures and Admiral von Schneider is (again) from Dinner For One). The admiral have two dogs, Nuff and Spud (Nuff is also called Alan Lancaster, bassplayer with Status Quo and Spud is the drummer John Coghlan). Very nerdy, yes I know, but I like it. :-D Some of those pics have been shown here already.

Wyoming, 21st of December 1866

After a very long absence I return with a little dio I worked on during my vacation. I have for a long time thought about making a little scene depicting the Fetterman fight, but there have never been any native americans for a Winter fight. Almost noone for Summer fights either! :-/ I solved this the simple way by only showing the soldiers and calling it "The Unseen Foe".

As in real life some of the men fought in ACW before.

More pics on the unlucky:

Finished! Well, almost ...

Finished the cavalry at last! Now it's just small parts to do, remove bases, paint hoves (?), boots, etc, etc. And the base of course. :-D

Pics:

And the Texans on the base! It looks small, but I want it crowded! :-D

Still in Texas

Right now the barbecue-smoke is heavy over Sweden. Everyone is at the barbecue (yup, me too) so if you can smell some barbecue when you read this you know why. What I have at the barbecue? Pork, chicken, beef, mushrooms, onions, vegetables, etc, etc. But I still managed to get some painting done. Almost finished my Texans! Why I didn't paint the shoes/boots on the casualties is anyone's guess, I have no idea except that I didn't think of it. The rest still got their bases because I want to see how it all looks with the cavalry (and maybe some Mexican infantry). I know Davy shouldn't be there, but I couldn't resist.

Got some more paint on the Mexicans and their horses and found a Texas casualty I had forgotten.

The local toystore have closed and I bought two houses that I don't know what to do with right now. I don't like that they are ruined, but that's how it is. Airfix so they are a bit on the small side. First their café with some figures for scale, one Airfix Prussian, one IMEX Texan and one Strelets Boer (+ two Airfix WWI casualties).

And then their country-house (I think it was called). With same figures (almost).

Well, that's it for now.

Wimoweh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V9v94cPXak

:-D

And Sir Toby is mentioned here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_t3F5QkAYk

:-D

Wimoweh (Last update?)

Soon finished with my little African dio! I hope!

A little update on Wimoweh

Finished the figures! A lot of work left on the base! And it is slow and boring work too!

Could add some rocks, maybe ... Know I will have to paint them. I was lucky it was stones and not something else that I found in the snow. :-D Sorry for the awful pics. Taken in the hobbyroom with very bad light.

Wash and go!

First! Welcome Emmet (Winttrix)! And welcome to th rest too if I have forgotten it. Here absolutely anything can happen.

Almost finished the figures for my little African dio. :-D Just a wash and they are ready to go. The base is another matter. It will probably take a couple of weeks more. Can't add that many tufts of grass at the same time because my hands get too shaky. :-( Old age is not only fun! :-(

Also finished my hobbit, but I don't have any idea what I can use him for. The feet maybe looks strange, but that is because the sculpturer (?) gave him shoes. Nobody ever has heard of hobbits in shoes! So I painted them with skin colour! :-D Scale? Huge, but small. :-D Don't fit with anything I've seen elsewhere. Too big for Games Workshop and Mithril, too small for 1/35 and 1/32 and absolutely much too big for 1/72. Maybe I can use him as a giant instead. :-D

That was that. Now a well deserved glass of paint. :-D No, not a pint of paint!

A mysterious box!!! What can it be????

Oh no! More figures! How am I ever going to find time to paint them all?

Another bad pic on some progress

Painted a little more on my Wimoweh-dio. I skip the antelope, the lions probably will eat it before I finish anyway! Also made some progress on my huge hobbit.

Some bad pics and some other stuff

Monday morning I woke up with a pressure on the chest, I had trouble breathing, I had trouble moving. I had a 40 kg boxer snoring happily on my chest. Managed to slide out of the bed and push him more to the middle. Usually he sleeps above my pillow, but not this time.

Took some pics yesterday. Really bad pics. Better to hold the hand on something when you take pics! Haven't done much. Only primed a little with my Humbrol Lavender. Why that one? The hobbystore got rid of all their Humbrol Acrylics and I got them for free unseen. So I ended up with 7 cans of Lavender and a lot of other colours too, even some I can use, but not so many. :-(

First a Hobbit! From a boardgame called Bilbo. Don't know the scale but a bit bigger than 1/72.

And then two bathers (nudity warning!). (NOT FINISHED!) Why two skin-tones? Well, I thought that parts that the sun don't reach should be a little bit whiter than the parts the sun don't reach. So I used elf flesh for the hidden parts and dwarf flesh for the rest. No good! :-(    Probably redo them.

A very little update

Put some more tufts of grass on the base and put most of the figures on needles for painting. Yeah, I know, one of them already look painted, but he's not going to be a US Cavalry trooper any more so I will repaint his jacket and trousers at least. Maybe the hat too. Still think I'm going to call this Wimoweh, even though none of the lions are asleep. :-D

Big game hunters

These two figures I planned to use with that antelope. No Airfix-antelope anymore, at least not in my plans. Ordered some Preiser-animals instead. Here the hunters are with a dead cheese-doodle.

Last stand!

Finished my wild west diorama at last. Figures used are Waterloo1815, Imex, Airfix, Italeri, ESCI.

And Valter is NOT in scale. At least not on this pic.

A little (well, not so little) update.

At first I was going to call this "Horses for courses II", but this title is better. Saturday I painted a little more on my Indian horses. Waterloo1815 are really a great joy to paint and I felt very happy with what i had done. I thought I could see a finished dio somewhere in the future and really was happy. Here is a pic taken Saturday morning.

And I thought next step would be blankets and then paint a little more next weekend. Saturday night a neighbour had a party (we wasn't there, we are just neighbours). Valter slept all night, the missus managed to fall asleep when the party ended at four Sunday morning. I didn't get any sleep at all so I finished my horses. Next step is to remove the bases and do some more work on the riders.

A bit more crowded

Worked a little more on my dio. When it's finished it will look something like this. The officer is NOT shooting the fleeing Airfix-trooper.

Still waiting for my indians. When I add them it will be even more crowded. :-D