Life goes on, and occasionally the blog as well! For the first time in a long while I felt like typing something here, so here goes. Nothing dramatic as usual, busy with life things and all that. What follows is a description of my latest trip!
Salute 2024
I went, I helped BunnyBadger games put on participation games (and painted up a zombiefied Joe Biden and a glittery Taylor Swift for the Trumpocalypse game), I enjoyed the atmosphere, walked with Emmi around the show, met friends…the usual! My Salute purchases have been dwindling year after year, this year I got a bunch of brushes for both myself and Emmi for her craft hobbies. Ironically, some years after my long “only pirates for me thanks” miniaturing period has come to a close (for now at least), the theme of Salute was pirates. Oh well!
In addition to the brushes, I picked up some lovely, characterful futuristic law enforcers from Die Hard Miniatures. I put these together and cleaned them up last night, and I remembered how much work there is working with metal compared to resin casts and prints.
In addition to the miniatures, I bought the Sci-fi Backdrops picture book by Jon Hodgson, published by Handiwork Games. I was silly enough not to get in on the Kickstarter, but conveniently got this through Bad Squiddo. I had to quickly try it out, and I can safely say this is one of the must fun miniature-related things I have bought in years! As you probably know from reading this book, I game very little, but I do enjoy the storytelling aspect of miniaturing, so this is perfect stuff for me. I lined up a few scifi models for demonstration purposes.
The Pennine Way
If you’re a long-time reader of the blog, you might remember that five years ago Emmi and I did about a hundred miles of the Pennine Way national trail in the UK as our honeymoon. The trip was excellent and left us hungry for more, so we decided to do the whole thing of 268 miles. What followed was three weeks of beautiful views, bog (and more and more bog), quaint villages, friendly people, tiny lambs, and an amazing feeling of freedom in the walking bubble. While it was a physically strenuous trip, I guess getting to the blog after a long, long break is evidence that it was a welcome recharge of energy, creative included. I have about a million photos, but I’ll just share some choice ones below. If this feels tempting, I’m happy to provide advice!
It genuinely feels nice to be writing the blog after such a long break! Who knows, this might become a thing again. Anyway, I’m still alive and well and playing with my toy soldiers! How is everyone else doing?