News Flash: I See Light at the End of the Tunnel for My Floors

 I just got a text from the contractor in charge of fixing my house that tomorrow the flooring guys are going to start on the new floors! It will be nice to walk on something other than subflooring. Once they do that, the house will be more livable. Fingers crossed!

I'm All Over the Place

My brain has been all over the place the past few days. This includes the hobby. I have been hoping from one thing to another. It is not a lack of concentration, but just wanting to or needing to do a whole bunch of things. 

I finally got some 15mm fantasy units done. This includes Queen Keona's royal hammer persons.

These are Roundway Venetian marines. Unfortunately, Roundway is no longer is in production, which is too bad. IMO, they are a slight step up in detail from Minifigs (which I rather like, BTW) and they covered some ranges better than other companies, mainly very late medieval/early Renaissance. The squids on their shields look more like scorpions. They were a pain to paint, so I'm satisfied with them. 

Queen Keona inspires her troops. Her brother,

King Ivan is behind her.

The other thing I've been working on is making a bunch of ship counters for gaming. I recently placed several orders in for 1/6000 ships, but I really want to play. They are not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not playing to impress. Besides being a very cheap alternative, I can test out any ship I want particularly with moderns. They are also useful for trying out various rule sets. The fleet I've made so far fits nicely inside a standard, letter-sized envelope.

Not stunning, but they will do the job.

First Post of the New Year: Proof of Concept

 I know its already January 9th, but Happy New Years!

I have to say that being on sabbatical has lowered my blood pressure some. There is still plenty of stress, but the idea of not teaching and even more so, not dealing with all the nonsense that is going on at my college, gives me a feeling of lightness. One of the things I've done is to start going to the local community center to work out. I am 60 year old, but I think I'm the youngest one there. The equipment is pretty good, so I plan to make working out more of a routine.

On to business....

First, in an effort to clean and organize the house, we moved some old bookshelves that we had on the first floor to the upstairs. My son got one, which is mainly for his LEGO collection. I got the other and finally consolidated all my hobby books into one bookshelf.  

New bookshelf. Almost, but not quite full.
My wife's tennis racket stringer to the right.

Why I didn't do this years ago escapes me. Before this, I had these very small metal ones that were OK, but I had long run out of room. Plus the sides were open and some of the rule books at the end facing the window were starting to yellow :(. This opens up a good deal of space in the "soldier room." The only thing now is to figure out what to do with some of the rule books that are in 3-ring binders. 

Painting of fantasy figures has slowed a bit, so I switched gears and have been working on some terrain features. Most of the terrain has been cultivated fields. I have been trying to make them so that I can use them for both 1/300 and for 1/600. One type of field that has frustrated me are corn fields. However, recently, I watched this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1cnHiqtsuMk9NwJNj8SmpA) where this guy was making tiny non-scale specific terrain mounted on hexes for his role playing games. In one video, he cut out strips of paper, folded it length-wise, feathered it using a pair of scissors, then mounted the feathered strip of paper onto a hex tile has a corn crop field. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go. 

Closeup of corn field. Sorry about the blurriness.
I got a new phone and I'm trying to figure out the camera.

I used several different techniques and types of paper for each row. The ones on the far left were made using the YouTuber's technique of folding paper in half and cutting with scissors fringes representing stalks. The later ones were very thin cardboard (breakfast cereal boxes) and I used my Xacto knife rather than scissors to make the fringes. I did not go all the way to the bottom to keep some integrity to each row. I glued each strip down with superglue gel. They were painted a dark yellow and then I gave them a wash with brown. That helped pull out the stalks more. 

Here's what it looks like flipped around with some 1/600 figures next to it:

I think this will work pretty well for both scales. Its not perfect, but it gets the point across. I would have to come up with some other technique if I wanted to make a corn field for my 15mm figures.