Native huts: Part 2 - painting

Happily, the solution I came up with of cutting the towel into circles worked pretty well. I'm not quite happy with the droop on the lowest circle, but I can bear it. I undercoated everything with some Halford's brown gloss spray paint. I think the aforementioned article in Wargames Illustrated #350 notes the irritation of trying to paint a base colour onto towel by hand! With the roofs, I went for a golden-orange range of tones for the straw, usually doing some drybrushing downward, but also sweeping around, too. For the walls I stippled on a span of dirty creams and browns, suggestive of the natural appearance of the materials. I was cognisant of how the bricks in my house are of a wide variety of colours. Having finished the four, I realised I could have saved myself a spot of bother with the roofs by using (vegan) yoghurt pots. D'oh! That said, it means the easy little things should be even easier to replicate.

As an aside, you can see upside down in that last photo I have used a cardboard tube of Glen Somethingorother. It's Aldi's attempt at a single malt, and is everything you would expect a single malt priced £11.49 to be. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. That said, although it is an abomination as a single malt, it's better than something like Jack Daniel's or Bell's when used in a cocktail, and vastly cheaper than those overpriced tipples, so I may yet buy it again provided it's going into something where I can't taste it. Don't buy it for anyone who likes single malts unless they have a bad case of the flu, and can't taste anything. ;) It is not the amber nectar in the glass on the desk in the background. I think that was some Laphroaig.

Silos and fields of wire

I popped out and got some more modelling supplies yesterday. I have been working the last couple of days on these silos. A friend kindly bestowed on my another bottle of Scotch as a Christmas/New Year's gift, and it's one that comes in a cardboard tube, so inevitably, the bottle is sitting all exposed now, and the tube is another silo! The modelling supplies mainly amounted to a 4' by 2' plywood board, so I have started basing up a few ruined buildings, and begun work on some seriously large barbed wire emplacements. I have a 12" by 3" segment near me, and you can see it's big brother in the pictures: 24" by 3". That's right, a two foot long strip of barbed wire for when you absolutely must halt that enemy infantry attack! I've taken it outside and applied a coat of black all over it, and aim to paint it up properly tomorrow. Until next time.

A shack, a tower, a moon and a planet!

Per ardua ad astra, as they say! I was a bit over-eager with the grey moon here, and didn't allow the GS to set, so it came loose. I shall have to get some more GS or similar before I can fix that problem. I have given the Plumbing Planet a basic colour scheme, and dabbed on a lot of pale grey and white to represent cloud cover. It's outside now, its varnish drying. I also based and painted a wee shack for my Wild West set-up, which I will get back to properly in the New Year. Lastly, there is now a way up part of the Silo of Scotch. I need to base it now so I can knock up a similar ladder stretching up from the ground to the first walkway. I hope you like the pics, folks.

Planets and towering silos

As I believe I said yesterday, I finished off the last of my Greenstuff, which mainly served to provide some small continents for my medium-sized planet for Star Fleet: ACTA. It's undercoated, and I shall probably paint it (or at least begin to) a bit later. I also found some more snooker balls, and realised that I ought to set them in a holder when drilling to ease the difficulty of getting a good straight line. While I was doing that I suddenly had a flash of inspiration - or of the blindingly obvious. Christmas baubles are all around, and are pretty much round, and I want round things for planetoids and so forth. Yes, it was a flash of the blindingly obvious, wasn't it?

I was checking out Frontline Gamer's site the other day, and very taken with the reviews he's been posting lately of the new Sarissa products. If I had a spot more money, I would definitely be buying a few of those pretty new things! One of the products he reviewed was a silo. As I say, I'm trying to avoid spending money on fripperies right now, but I do have things lying around all over the place. So I gathered an old container for a bottle of Scotch and decided to put it to good use. I added strips of cereal box cardboard up the side. I will rivet those later. Then I added a pair of rickety-looking walkways, halfway up and at the top of the edifice. So far I have also added a cover for the top and some supports for the walkways.

As a closing note, I said I would report on the success or otherwise of those foam asteroids, and I do so now. It's "otherwise" that I have to report. They lack the structural strength to bear all that sand well, so I have switched over to the polystyrene. I shall try to get some pics up next time. Right, be well, folks!

British citizenship tests

No, not a political post, but a comic one. The government's on the cusp of releasing - or has already released - a new test for immigrants to take. Needless to say, I took it and failed! I am not sure quite why knowing when British women gained the right to divorce their husbands is an essential requirement in this country, but that's enough sour grapes from me, eh? ;-) No, the real reason I've called you all here to the Accusing Parlour (ooh, I might consider renaming this place, if I wasn't sure that some Futurama buff must have used that as a blog-name already), is for you to take the test compiled by more amusing chaps. Needless to say, I failed the gag test, too. Oy. My knowledge of pop culture is as bad as my ability to recall the date of the first census in the UK. That last being all the more embarrassing as Mum's always researching genealogical things. I should really have absorbed it by osmosis already.

I have been keeping odd hours lately to ensure I can access Dad's PC. Hotmail and other things don't work on this wee doohickey, as I've previously lamented. So last night I dozed off for a bit, which prevented me from finishing Over the Top. Then two friends came round, and we watched Casino, which two of us quite liked. B wasn't so keen, feeling the violence excessive. I have to admit that this is not the first violent Joe Pesci Mob Movie I've seen, so I might be a little accustomed to the idea. We all agreed that these films tend toward the lengthy. Then I introduced them to a mint julep recipe I hoped to make in a few weeks' time, and it received their seal of approval. So it's definitely going to make an appearance. The internet has advised me to use spearmint, but since I can't see any of that in local supermarkets, regular mint it will have to be. It seems fine thus.

After that, I was pretty exhausted, and just dropped into bed. I don't know why, but it takes me forever to get to sleep these days, so I tossed and turned for half an hour or so. Anyway, I woke up this morning and saw an email answering some questions I'd asked, and I have since been in such a cheerful mood that I have been unable to concentrate properly on the rules! I'm not counting chickens prior to hatching, but I am remarking on the quality of the eggs! I'm going to go have a poke at painting the secret project in a minute, as I can probably make myself do something physical, even if I can't concentrate with my thinky-bits. Pictures of it later, perhaps.

Can't blog. Too hot.

I have previously mentioned my distaste for the temperatures of summer. My dislike of summer's hellish heat has yet to abate. Funnily enough, I just spent the last couple of hours feeling too sickly to do anything more than lie on my bed and read some more Gibbon. "Pete, it's cooler outside. Why didn't you go outside?" My cognitive capacity has been so reduced by the heat that I honestly didn't think of that possibility before now. Sadly, it's now late enough that a man sat outside with a book and a drink will be blind without a torch. A man with a torch will provide a, aha, beacon to all the multitudinous forms of insect life out there. I returned from the Post Office earlier and saw some hitherto unknown black insect crawling about on my windscreen. A flying ant or somesuch summer commonplace, no doubt. I don't have an animus against insects, but I do feel rather put out, both selfishly and with due kindness to wee winged thingies, when they drown themselves in my orange juice or silently secrete themselves on a page of a book. If they are lucky, I note and carefully remove them. If they are unlucky, then years later I find their pressed, dessicated corpses providing additional and unsought punctuation to my favourite authors. Or perhaps the image is that of a mediaeval manuscript, save this time illuminated with work similar to that of that plastination fellow, Gunther von Hagens.

Casting my mind back a few days, though, the situation was far merrier. For a start, I was in Wales, which is blessed with a damper climate than oppressively sunny Cheshire. Second, I was seeing several old friends from university, one of whom I haven't seen for years, as she's forever secluding herself in Saudi Arabia, where she lives and works. It was a delightful long weekend, and we managed to fit in a trip to the cinema, where we watched The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's a pleasing film, and dispatched my pre-viewing contention that the conceit did not give sufficient ammunition for the apes to overwhelm humanity. I tend to be the sort of chap who recognises actors based on their previous work, so the heroic human remains for me the second Green Goblin, or rather the son of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, that way I can lie to myself that Spiderman 3 never was. There were some amusingly well-done references to the original film, both in dialogue and imagery. I shan't bore you by an enumeration, since my heat-addled brain can't recall 'em. Oh, and because it'd be tedious. One of the central messages of the film is that there are certain things scientists should not mess with. I am finding this message a little tedious now, and wonder how deeply it's permeated our entire culture. I think I first noticed it back when I read Jurassic Park. New theme, please, people.

We also watched Your Highness, which I commend to any of you who are fans of very silly films with puerile jokes. We laughed ourselves silly. Funnily enough, it's another film with James Franco (Green Goblin Mk II, scientist dude in TROTPOTA) in it. We had a delightful excursion to the Penderyn whiskey distillery, where Peter (not to be confused with me), whose birthday it was, received a bevy of samples of their various products (whiskey in Madeira barrels, in sherry barrels and in Laphroaig barrels, gin and vodka). My estimable friends then did me the great kindness, on seeing my delighted expression on tasting the Laphroaig'd Penderyn, of buying me a bottle of that delectable spirit. I do recommend that to any whiskey-drinkers out there. While it has, of course, a delectable peaty quality to it, it is not so strong as the original Laphroaig, and so will appeal to those who find the Scotch too strong in flavour.

Right, that's three paragraphs that show my title is false. I think that's probably almost enough. I intend to put up some more things in a day or two, and to show the completed General Store, as well as my sketches for the Hotel/Saloon. If I remember, I shall try to spend all tomorrow out of doors. I hope that the heat doesn't sabotage my brain again, causing me to lose the capacity to reason. Right, until next time, dear readers, I wish you whichever brand of weather you most enjoy, and the beverage of your choice with which to enjoy it in the company of friends! Au revoir.