Muskets Done!

Just a quick progress photo this morning. I managed to finish not only the musket stocks yesterday, but also the white musket slings and silver bayonets/barrels along with officers’ and NCO’s pikeheads and the mounted colonel’s sword. Now, bright silver isn’t exactly accurate for all of this, but I’ve always liked the way it brings out figure parts like these. It also helps the old school toy soldier appearance. Couldn’t quite get the entire 32-figure battalion into a close up shot, so one half of the unit will have to suffice. It illustrates my progress at this stage in the game anyway.

Thunderstorms here today, so bicycling outside looks iffy, but I’ll try to get in an hour on the trainer in the adjacent rook of Zum Stollenkeller. The Grand Duchess and I were out late yesterday afternoon to plot the course of a ride we’ll lead Tuesday evening and rode about 23 miles. Believe it or not, this gets us up to just over 200 miles in the saddle for the previous seven-day period. That’s a new milestone for me, but old hat for Sonja, who rode 1200 miles across part of Siberia (on a tandem) in a week during a special cycling event in 1995.

I’ve also updated the list of active blogs once more and checked the links, so hopefully everything should go swimmingly this time. There are of course a number of other potentially interesting related blogs, but some of these have had no posts for months and seem inactive. Anyway, here you are. These are blogs that I make a habit of checking every few days of so:

* The Duchy of Alzheim: http://mavisming.blogspot.com/

* The Duchy of Mieczyslaw: http://mieczyslaw.blogspot.com/

* The Grand Duchy of Hetzenberg: http://hetzenberg.blogspot.com/

* The Kingdom of Hesse-Seewald: http://altefritz.blogspot.com/

* The Kingdom of Wittenberg: http://tidders-kingdomofwittenberg.blogspot.com/

* The Landgraviate of Hesse-Engelburg at: http://hesse-engelburg.blogspot.com/

* The Landgraviate of Hesse-Fedora: http://hessefedora.blogspot.com/

* The Landgraviate of Ober-Schweinsberg: http://ober-schweinsberg.blogspot.com/

* The Principality of Saxe-Bearstein: http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/

* David von Tippelbruder’s Uniform Templates blog: http://nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com/

The blogs below aren’t necessarily connected with the Emperor vs. Elector guys, but they are well worth a look:

* Henry Hyde’s Battlegames blog at http://battlegames.wordpress.com/

* Frivelous Fusiliers at: http://frivolousfusiliers.blogspot.com/

* Flanderkin Serjant at: http://flanderkin.blogspot.com/

* Grimsby Wargaming at: http://grimsbywargaming.blogspot.com/

* Tarleton’s Quarter at: http://www.gilesallison.blogspot.com/

* Steve’s Random Musings on Wargaming: http://steve-the-wargamer.blogspot.com/

* Phil’s War Cabinet at: http://www.warcabinet.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

* The König und Kaiser blog at: http://konigundkaiser.blogspot.com/

* The Il Desto Fante blog at: http://destofante.blogspot.com/

We have our salsa dancing class this evening, and then another band practice on Wednesday evening for yours truly. So much to do and so little time! But, I’ll make a point of getting on with Freiherr Wilhelm’s Pioneers. Next up, shirt cuffs, red facings/turnbacks, hat “pom poms”, and crossbelts/shoulder straps.