January Retrospective, February Prospective

Things are looking pretty good here, so I'll focus on the positives. Although all I have posted this month is teasers for forthcoming projects, behind the scenes they are proceeding apace. On the personal front, I attended a meeting for folks with Asperger's/autism at Crewe Library. It was rather interesting, and the attendees ran the gamut of ages from teenage to twice my age, covering both genders, though with a preponderance of blokes. Silberman mentions that one of the things that made Asperger decide the condition was predominantly masculine is that women in 1930s Austria were expected to sit quietly, doing things like sewing, so there was a societal predisposition toward ignoring woman who displayed such traits. It was also striking that everybody was white. This area is pretty boringly monochrome, but the absolute absence of anybody did strike me as indicative of under-diagnosis. Again, Silberman mentions difficulties for immigrants in accessing good health care in America. While I'd hope that is less the case here, it's bound to have an effect. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and will return next month.

In further personal news, my defunct book-club is carrying on outside the library, and on a Thursday night, which is good news. So after a year-long hiatus, I should be able to get back to it. I don't do a tremendous amount of socialising, and that was a fair percentage of it until I couldn't go!

On the gaming front, nothing has happened, but the terrain work is coming along pretty nicely. I have a couple of buildings, a teaser for one of which will appear tomorrow, and the large ravine project all on the go. The different scales and styles allow me to shift focus and retain interest when one wears me out or, indeed, can't be worked on. There's always drying time to consider in this hobby! With luck, February will see me posting some finished pieces and tutorials. I am now starting to gather ideas for my next round of projects, as well as dusting off (in some cases literally) unfinished old projects for another look. More on that next month. Meanwhile, thanks for reading.

Ravine Teaser

I am not just working on small projects, but also pretty big ones. I am finally getting round to using up some of the foam from my old mattress, and one of the ways I am doing that is by building a ravine. As before, I am photographing it in stages, so stand by for a tutorial in due course.

Mausoleum Teaser

Inspired by Tony Harwood's great article on making a mausoleum (pp. 47 ff.) in the October 2015 issue (#390) of Miniature Wargames with Battlegames, I have been hard at work since about October working on it. I'm nearing the final stages now, so enjoy this teaser, and expect a tutorial in due course. I have in mind to use this for Frostgrave at some point, presumably after getting round to acquiring the rules!

Resolve and whatnot

Happy New Year, folks.

I had a look at my stats the other day, and it made for interestingly predictable reading. In short, I had less time, what with work, and felt both worse and less inspired in 2015, what with the Revenge of Depression, so I produced far less on here. Then I got to wondering what I want to do about that, and I have some inchoate ideas. The following is rather, ah, thinking out loud, as it were. The question of available time is not worth thinking about; I can hardly give up work again, and if I move to another job, it's definitely going to demand more of my time, not less. So if I want to get more done, and I rather do, then I need to feel better and be more inspired.

I have some ideas about how to accomplish this. Watch this space.