It's the First Day of Winter!

The first of two vintage images of Father Christmas this cold winter's morning morning. I absolutely love these old late-Victorian and Edwardian Christmas cards.

A bitterly cold, windy, and clear morning here at Stollen Central with a couple of inches of crunchy snow on the ground outside. And so, in view of the pre-Christmas rush around here at the moment, let me wish everyone in the Northern Hemisphere a Happy Winter Solstice! Please continue to tune in to the GD of S blog during the next few days in the run up to Christmas Day, to see how the wooden trucks I'm finishing for the Young Master finally turn out. And maybe I'll actually get some soldier time in this weekend too. Assuming I don't conk out in the evenings. You know. Mr. Excitement and all that.

And here's a second old Christmas card, featuring purple robes, trimmed with white fur and a dark red, or crimson cap with a gold tassel. These old images used to seem so strange to me when I was small, given the Coca Cola image of Santa Claus that most of us in the United States have in our collective consciousness. But I prefer the old images as an adult. They are certainly more colorful, and there is just something magical about them.

Here is the gingerbread house the the Young Master and the Grand Duchess assembled two or three days ago. Paul applied much of the white, sugary icing and many of the various candies. Apparently, he was more interested in helping his mother stir and then eat huge spoonfuls of the former.

Finally, here is a photograph of our main tree (A Fraser Fir) -- especially for Jeff von Saxe-Bearstein -- in the library/parlor/front room of Stollen Central with some gifts beneath it already from the Grand Ducal In-Laws. The arrival of their Christmas parcel each year in early December is always a much anticipated event. While things are wrapped, and no clues are thus given as to what the packages might contain, it is great fun unpacking the large box and then placing everything beneath the tree several days later once decorating for the Christmas Season has taken place. Please note the Young Master and feline friend inspecting things closely at the bottom of the photograph.

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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