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She's leavin' on a jet plane. . .


Well, I put the Grand Duchess on the shuttle bus up to Chicago-O'Hare this morning for the start of her journey to Berlin, where she will be doing some work in a few archives for the next few weeks. Yours truly will join her on June 9th-10th for the remainder of her stay (until July 2nd). We've got an apartment in a nice section of town all ready to go, plus a side trip to Luebeck to mark our third anniversary (Where does the time go?) before returning to Berlin.

All of which gets me thinking. Of course, there is the obligatory trip to Berliner Zinnfiguren, but I also want to visit a military museum or two while in Berlin. Can any of you who have been to the city suggest a good one, please? Of course, my interests lie with the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the former. I am also very interested in old coinage, so any museum featuring coins from pre-1871 eras would be fascinating to see as well.


But back to the soldiers! I've been looking at my Grand Duchy of Stollen project painting/collecting progress chart and trying to decide on what figures I might purchase since Berliner Zinnfiguren is apparently the German outlet for Holger Eriksson, Suren, and Tradition figures. About all I NEED to finish the project are a couple of two-gun batteries to round out Stollen's artillery arm. However, since they are rather tall even for 30mm figures, I fear that the Willie and Tradition miniatures might not work well alongside my Revell, MiniFig, Spencer Smith, and RSM figures. That leaves Holger Eriksson.

That choice is not without its own slight problems though. The HE artillery crew look fantastic from the photos I have seen online, but the uniforms are more appropriate for the early part of the 18th century rather than the mid-1700s, lacking turnbacks and lapels. I would really like these uniform features given the painting schemes I have in mind.


Of course, I could place an order with Spencer Smith in the UK for some SSM figures and have them sent to our Berlin address. But the last time I did that (Summer 2007), many figures arrived damaged beyond repair due to poor packaging --
almost a third of a 30-figure order if memory serves me correctly. They were just dumped loose into a tiny box with almost no packing material! Needless to say, the British and German postal systems were not kind to this little package. Anyway, the figures were replaced quickly and at no charge when I e-mailed Peter Johnston about the problem, but I'd prefer to avoid a similar situation this time around.

Spencer Smiths notwithstanding, one thing I will treat myself to is a regiment of 30 Holger Eriksson cavalry in tricorns. Blame it on Phil Olley and his lovely regiments of these same figures, featured over at his delightful War Cabinet website!
Otherwise, I have more than enough RSM95 and Huzzah infantry (Prussian musketeers) and RSM cavalry (Prussian dragoons and hussars) to finish the two Sittangbad-sized forces that I set out to paint and collect in mid-2006.

Which brings us to the final item for today. I would like to post an updated version of my MS Word "Painting Progress" chart here, to illustrate where the Grand Duchy of Stollen project stands right now. Since last fall though, Blogger will no longer let me paste in my chart. Or rather, it allows me to paste in the chart, but it will not publish the post containing the chart, indicating that there is some kind of problem with the HTML code.

Now, I used to copy and paste in MS Word text and tables into this blog all the time, that is until these problems began suddenly last October. So, might one of you Grand Duchy of Stollen visitors be able to suggest a possible solution that a non-techy like me could manage easily? It would be so much faster than having to type in my chart manually, to say nothing of each new post. Thank you in advance for your help.

Geeze, I miss the Grand Duchess already, and she's only been gone since midday!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…
If I recall correctly, Der Alte Fritz has published a number of tables in his blog . . . and I think that Steve-the-Wargamer has too.

Also, I'm sorry that I've been a bit "out of it" (kidney stones). Where do we stand in our Sawmill battle? And do you need me to send you more dice rolls yet?


-- Jeff
DC said…
Stokes,
I think you'll find the Tradition 25mm figures a very good match for your Revel figures - and they are gorgeous. The pictures on the Tradition website do them no justice whatsoever.
zieten said…
Hi Stokes,
one quick solution to your MS Word chart problem might be: do a print-out of the chart, take a photo of it and post the photo. Not being a blogger myself, I cannot offer a more sohisticated answer.

By the way, you certainly already know of the excellent 30mm artillery and wagon miniatures the Zinnfiguren Kabinett here in Berlin has on offer. I my self wasn't aware of them until reading Jim Purky's wonderfull blog. The size of your army might warrant pontoon wagons or maybe a field forge?

Do you know this museum:
www.brandenburg-preussen-museum.de
It is located in Wustrau, birthplace and residence of General Zieten, just outside Berlin.

cheers
Olaf
old-tidders said…
Wow, how nice a visit Berliner Zinnfiguren - I like to look at their website then make an obviously (?) in my terms justifiable purchase.

-- Allan
old-tidders said…
I had a quick play posting a table. Don't know why blogger won't let you copy from MS word directly.

However:
1)in MS word, do save as Web page file
2)then do View->Html Source
3)Copy the HTML table code the bit between begin and end table tags (thats the ones table and /table)
4)In blogger edit post, use Edit HTML tab and paste into that, go back to Compose and your table is in the post, maybe need to scroll down to find it.

Any use ??

-- Allan
Stokes - the method I've started to use is no. 2 in the following - the simplest way though is no. 3 (which Zieten also mentions)....

http://www.mt-soft.com.ar/2008/12/06/how-to-create-tables-in-blogger/

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