It's Saint Nicholas Day!

December 6th is Saint Nicholas Day, observed by much of the German-speaking world and elsewhere. Strangely, I was roused from a deep sleep during the night by some heavy footsteps and rustling in our entryway. Clearly, it was just my imagination. Or so I thought, as I drifted back to sleep a short while later. But this morning, there are a number of small chocolate treats in pairs of the Grand Duchess Sonja's and Young Master Pauls' shoes. A bit of pre-Chirstmas magic I suppose.

Here are a couple of old traditional German images of Saint Nick himself with children relating to the above visit. I like the top illustration especially, because it looks like the old Hanseatic town of Luebeck in the background with its Holstentor off to the left and the twin-spired Mariakirche just behind Nicholas.

Finally, the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog now has 16o followers. Not as many as others, but still kind of exciting. Hello and welcome to all of you. Happy Saint Nicholas Day!

Later. . .
Forgot to mention earlier that, along with the chocolate treats and a large, soft molasses cookie in her pair of shoes, the Grand Duchess also received a birch switch, carefully threaded through the bow tied on the right shoe. She chuckled, that naughty girl, when she noticed it this morning!

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…

Nice stuff Stokes - funny St Nick always manages to find Mrs Kinch wherever she is too.

2:43 PM

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Ulrich,

Everyone here at the Chencellery joins me in wishing you, the Grand Duchess and your noble princeling a most wonderful and blessed holiday season. Merry Christmas!!

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop

12:28 PM

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

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 ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

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