At last, some progress

This post is a general update on what I've been up to. 

For the last few months I've been absolutely snowed under with commissions under deadline. Thankfully, these are now completed, I'm back to regular hours of steady slog and I find myself with the time do do things that have been on my 'hobby to do list' for some time.

First up, whilst my wife was in hospital and I was looking after Alex, I managed, bit by bit, to hex out the main table surface. The drop leaf extension still needs doing, but 12 x 6 will suffice for some time to come. It was the most boring chore I've done in ages - there are 1,450 on that table! 

I have ordered a copy of GMT's War Galley from UGG in Germany (for the reasonable price of £66 including postage) with an eye to playing it on the table with miniatures. 

Now I have time to spit, I have started painting my SYW Austrians again. 

More figures by Front Rank. This time in the classic SYW marching pose. 

These are IR 23 Baden Baden and IR 29 Loudon.

I like this figure pose a lot, probably because it is so SYW, but I still prefer painting the Austrian figure marching with his musket over his shoulder because that figure takes a third less time to paint. Still, variety is the spice of life so I'll continue to ring the pose changes.

Neither of these blue faced regiments had pompoms, they had rosettes instead. So, I cut off all of the pompoms and replaced them with round disc slivers of white metal 'spear shaft'. After doing this, and after painting the figures up, I have decided it was a pointless exercise and I'll not do it again. 

I gave these units yellow Regimentsfahne standards, mainly because the yellow brightens things up. I'll do the next infantry units with white Liebfahne. The first of these will be IR43 Gaisbruck (undercoated today) with violet facings. However, first I'm going to do a unit of Austrian hussars: H 24, Esterhazy, in light blue Pelisse and Dolman with yellow braid, red britches and yellow boots.

Lastly, like all gamers, I suffer from storage difficulties. Today I moved my board games (most of them) across the room to the top of the wall cabinets. My original plan was to invert the cabinets first because they have a 'shelf' that protrudes a few inches at the bottom - actually its a 'foot' because the cabinets were designed to sit on the floor - but, sadly, the construction of the cabinet at the top is not strong enough to allow this. At some point I'll buy a shelf I can screw along the top. Until then the games can stick out a bit further than I'd ideally like.

The space this has made has finally allowed me to store my TSS tiles safely out of the way when not in use. This too is a temporary measure. I will, at some point, put up a 6' long, 2' deep shelf up above the door (you can just see the edge of the door in this shot). This will not look very attractive, but it is another storage solution and good use of idle space.

Thankfully, I still have one of the Bjursta cabinets to fill. It's being saved for my Peninsular War collection, and something to be decided (it's the one full of shoe box lids, the one I use for WIP).