Month: Apr 2025

Here Comes Santa Claus…

/ Carrion Crow / 4 Comments

Having thrown off my funk, the whole bank holiday weekend to myself and no one to tell me to clear away my shit, out came the paints.

Now, it may appear that there hasn’t been a massive amount of progress, but nearly every figure has had some attention and I may not have just been painting…

Doc Kringle and his Sky Boys;

Big Nick and crew;

St. Nicholas and companions;

Jolnír and his Nisse;

The main thing I’ve done is give everyone a wash of whatever GW call their dark flesh colour. It’s a sort of dark pink-y colour, which works well as a wash on top of the standard flesh paint I use, and saves faffing about with multiple highlights or layers. Other than that, I’ve just picked out some odd details here and there, , so there was less white basecoat showing.

I also progressed these three;

Krampus (who was a uniform grey when we last saw him), the Hogfather (flesh wash and beard re-whitened) and a bloody huge turkey, because… well, why not?

Whether the Hogfather will actually make an appearance in the game, I’m not sure, but both Krampus and the turkey will, probably act as random hindrances to each faction completing their deliveries.

Talking of deliveries, I also built this;

A suitably rustic sleigh for ol’ porkmas himself, lovingly crafted from a bunch of twigs from my garden and that old staple of hobbying, the McDonalds coffee stirrer. I mean, if they didn’t want you to take them, they wouldn’t leave a whole pot of them out, now would they?

I also created the beams for the Sleight traces, cook’s matches with the fire end cut off, two tiny holes drilled and cut down dressmakers pins for the bolts.

Then I splashed a bit of paint about, so currently the whole thing looks like this;

The sleigh is not yet attached to the base, as this should make painting the boars easier. I also need to make a suitably lumpy sack of gifts to add to the sleigh.

Unfortunately, although I did attend Salute last weekend, I didn’t manage to get the scenic items I wanted for this project whilst there, as the company had only brought a limited range of their wares.

Which was a bit annoying.

I may have to scratch build what I need for this, so watch this space.

Until next time…

Blue Wednesday

/ Carrion Crow / 4 Comments

In previous posts, I have mentioned that I am in the process of moving and mentioned that I have at my disposal more free time, usually stating this is due to Reasons.

Now, one would think this would naturally lead to more frequent posts, but this was sadly not the case and I thought it was time to explain.

Last March, my wife of almost thirty years informed me that she no longer loved me and no longer wanted to be with me. I initially thought this was due to her recent diagnosis with peri-menopause and resolved to be more supportive and a better husband, as obviously this was all down to me.

There was a slight improvement and I thought things were getting better, but in July, she decided that it was over between us. However, as a huge family cruise had been booked, paid for by my father-in-law, on which there would be 21 of us, but not my daughter, my wife asked me to pretend that everything was “okay” until we were in a position to tell all three of our children face-to-face.

So, I had to go on a cruise around the Norwegian fjords with her extended family (some of whom already were aware of our situation), whilst pretending that everything was “fine” to everyone else.

Which was not exactly the relaxing break I had been looking forward to.

We returned and at the beginning of September, we managed to get the kids together to tell them, although in order to “protect” the children, I was asked to present this as a mutual decision, which I agreed to.

If the word “mug” springs to mind, just you wait…

We were still cohabiting, as our house allowed for us to have separate rooms. She was off out with work colleagues, friends and spending time with her family, whilst I  did geeky stuff. After Christmas, she put the house on the market and I was suddenly in the position where I needed to find a new place to live.

Fast forward to 8th April 2025, so ten months after I wasinformed of the initial decision.

I get a call at work from my wife, asking if she could meet me, as she needed to talk to me. She’d previously texted me the previous night, stating that she was going to be staying at her parents that week. As they were away on holiday, I assumed she was house-sitting. She never calls me at work, so naturally I was concerned, so agreed to met her.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she started, “and you’re not going to like it…”

I assumed that the house sale had fallen through or something like that, but no.

She then proceeded to tell me that she had been seeing someone for the last SIX months – so, since October of last year. When I queried why she had waited until now to tell me, she advised me that she had to, as his wife had just found out, and that’s why she was at her parents, as naturally he’d been kicked out of his house. And her parents had known “for a while” too what was going on…

I haven’t been dealing with this very well, hence lack of content on here, which given the situation I find myself in, is pretty understandable.

As the verbal NDA imposed on me has been well and truly breached by the other party, I think it only fair that I explain. I have tried to be as objective as possible, but only someone outside of this would be able to judge that.

I promise that the next post will be more in keeping with the content you expect to see on here.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this (if you got this far) and know that whilst I’m not “fine,” I am getting there.

I just might need Samwise Gamgee to carry me that last stretch…

Jez