Sun & Snow

This weekend we had a nice mixture of warm sun, hail, sleet and snow, the snow settled overnight, but had started to melt by time I was up at 7am Sunday morning and was gone by 8am except in the shadiest parts.

On Saturday night I visited my friends Ste & Deb for a meal, I was ordered to arrive before Dr Who started, but I got distracted and only just arrived in time. So when I arrived at my friends, they sat me down immediately with none of the usual chit-chat. We then watched a good but lightweight episode of Dr Who, the cute aliens making my friends son, Lewis laugh and the Dr’s new companion Catherine Tate ended up being fine, despite doom and gloom predictions by some Dr Who fans.
We then retired from the telly for a nice meal and to catch up on news since we don’t see each other that often.

Sunday was household core catch up day, but after that I went for late afternoon meal with Andy, Heather, Chris and Louise from Ascendancy plus kids.
I met Freddy for the 1st time Chris & Louise son, who not long after sitting down started pulling faces, Louise said that’s his poo face, picked him up, sniffed his bottom and said yep I’m right. At that moment Chris decided he needed to go fetch the pushchair from the car he should have fetched earlier thus volunteering Louise to change the probably highly radioactive poo covered nappy.
Chris was is usual exuberant self, I’ve never seen him not frothing with enthusiasm for something, and with slow service at the restaurant before we knew it 4 hours had flown by and it was 8pm.
Andy on the other hand was starting his revenge for the April fools day joke I had played on him by constantly dropping comments about informing all the refs and that if I miss the next event it will only make it worse, well it worked I’m now worried, very worried :S

I'm sure its purple.

Today I had a few little jobs to finish for my character Izzanbard Devlin, so 1st thing this morning I visited Clare's Beautiful Beads and Crafts in Belper following advice from Meridian Ariel. I needed a clasp, and leather thread to hang my new marble in a claw that I had purchased at TORM. Clare's is a fascinating shop which I will visit again, the shop had everything I wanted so the marble is now mounted (see picture below)



The next thing I intended was to remake my tabard in a better fabric, I had some purple wool, so set to cutting and sewing it together, and by 3pm I was done, see the photo below which shows the old (made from corduroy) and new.

This is based on a pattern provided by Julie which I simply found in my email inbox and re-used. I only made one error while assembly on the very last hem of the front panel, somehow it ended up 2" (50mm) shorter than the other 3, so I unpicked it, luckily I had left just enough spare material and sewed it back together to match the length of the others. (It was very noticeable when I took the photograph)

The new tabard is go together with the new black robe the 2 are pictured together below, (click photo for larger image) which will provide Izzanbard a slightly higher quality look. The robe is 15thC medieval in style, with slit sleeves and was made by Jackie at Cloak'd and Dagger'd, and purchased at the Larp fair. I should have made my own, but I just didn't feel confident enough to tackle the item.

Bubble gum & coffee

This is what happens when your trying unsuccessfully to diet, your mother sends you a 900g jar of jelly beans.



Very nice jelly beans with 36 different flavors including ones such as coffee, cinnamon, candy floss, bubble gum, butterscotch and dozens of different fruits from kiwi to rather nice English blackberry, I'm not sure if I've tried them all, since identifying the colours from the chart is rather difficult.

Jasmine decided she needed some new photos while I had the camera out so here's few

Jonty wins the day but looses.

This Saturday was 3rd in a series of Ascendancy table top battles, this one saw the undead hoards face Avalon.
The battle that started out with all the advantages stacked in favour of Avalon due the players of the Ascendancy Larp game really getting behind and doing as much as they could to make sure they won.
However with 3 elements to the game, the General leading Avalon failed on 1 of them probably the most crucial to Larp world, while not to the battle itself, so Avalon won overall, I think they Larp game players may consider it a loss.
General Jonty returned in charge of Avalon, Jock took charge of the Undead or Forsaken as we call them, Sam took charge of Nightjar and making the Emperor look good while giving Jock and Jonty regular history lesson on why this or that was necessary, I was the newspaper reporter

and Andy did special effects.

It was big game using 4 tables in the Chimera shop, around 300 figures, 2/3 painted by me, and lasted about 5 hours, although I was at the shop for about 8 hours with setting up and packing away.

DaveP (the General at the previous 2 games) painted his own character figure, Dr Flay as the picture below, the paintings good but its the modelling he did to this figure which is only one inch (25mm) high which is excellent, you can't appreciate from this photograph, the original figure was a butler and had niether hat, cravat, glasses or watch from what I remember, perhaps Dave can elighten us with a quick reply.

A couple of figure of my own below which also required a bit of converting altough not to the extent of Dr Flay, Havelock needed a bit of hair, glasses and a cane thats about it.

Below Dr Flay, Havelock and Shaman Rat

Below Queen Morticia and her Necromancers

Today Sunday is brilliant day after yesterday and last weekend, a nice warm sun, the bees are buzzing around the few flowers that have come in my garden, and what with the clocks going forward, spring feels like it here at last, definitely looking favourable for camping events, although anything can happen, and rain in spring is always likely, still it would have been a good day to camp today.

So now its on to my next project which I hope will be a bit of kit for the next event, its fairly simple so I should have the time to get my sewing machine out, we will see how my time goes.

Undead (Forsaken) Army

Tonight I applied the last coat of varnish to the Undead army started 10 days ago here

I managed paint about 150 figures in the time I would normally paint 20 because they were already based, I had a bank holiday with no plans so spent it painting, and skeletons are reasonably simple to paint with no clothing, although with 7 chariots, stone throwers and several characters figure they were actually more time consuming than your average figure to paint.

A couple of photos below which don't do my efforts justice, but I'm pleased and looking forward to them being used.

Easter, it may be cold, but it is.

My sister bought me a Easter egg which was very nice of her apart from the unsuccessful diet she knows I'm on, also she seem like buying me things to do with monkeys, i.e I got a monkey shaped Easter egg.

Anyway did any of you get Easter eggs? and did the Gigantic egg DaveP bought Julie last year ever get eaten and if so did Midlands Midlife eat it on her own?

Photo of my egg (? monkey ?) below,
10 minutes after taking this photo it all magically disappeared :) while I watched the Bionic woman, apart from the box that is.

40K Mayhem

So Chimera 40K game number 3 or is 4, not sure.

Jock in his wisdom had dropped out, a choice due to family commitments between being a replacement General for DaveP in Ascendancy war game next weekend or supervising a load of kids playing 40K today, well for some reason he decided the Ascendancy game would be better.

So today's game was over booked with 9 players and various parents, most of the players had played last time, and in the intervening weeks had obviously re-read the rules and come back slightly better players. The child that did not listen last time, was now listening even if he did treat the figures his grandad had painted like worthless junk which made me wince has poured them out his expensive box designed to keep them safe. The morning game went well however the afternoon was chaos, 2 experience older players turned up and through dice roles ended up on one side while I had ended up with 4 youngsters, one a total novice, a Gabriel who can now roll dice, and 2 others. I can only imagine its what its like to be teacher, none of the kids had prepared, all 4 wanted to talk to me at once, constantly for 3 hours, can I fire, can I shoot, is it my go yet, is my go yet help.... thankfully parents were on hand to say wait your turn, and listen which helped. Anyway I survived and 5 minutes after starting at 10.30am it was 5pm and we had done, time flies when your busy.

The other good side was I was indoors, it was bitter cold in the morning, snow overnight and a mixture of sunshine, high winds and snow blizzard all day made me glad I'd not gone with DaveP to Maelstrom or with my Buckinghams Re-enactment group to Warwick Castle this weekend.

I now have the rest of the 4 day weekend to look forward to, although with no plans, I expect it to be quiet but hopefully fairly productive.