A Letter from Christmas Week 2025. . .

 

Waiting under the tree on Christmas Morning.  The Grand Duchess is wonderfully understanding of my predilections -- Toy soldiers, coffee, cats, and cross-country skiing,

Well, here were are in the midst of Christmas Week 2025, always wonderfully calm, for the most part, following several weeks of hustle and bustle.  However others might observe the festivities (or not. . .  We're a broad church here in the Grand Duchy after all), I hope visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might be enjoying a few hobby or outdoor activities along with family, friends, and additional tasty seasonal food or treats of one kind or another during the final week of 2024.  

That said, it is equally understandable if people have had their fill of holiday meals.  We picked up Japanese takeout for a much needed change of pace yesterday evening for example!  Three evenings of roasted goose, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, and other fixings meant a well-earned pause was necessary.

Today, Saturday the 28th, will see me shortly sit down to the painting table for the first time since the night of the 26th, to dry-brush [charcoal] gray onto the mains and tails of those 16 Saxon cuirassier horses.  If that goes well [It went reasonably well, softening many of the highlights in just the right way!], I will next see to various smaller details and touch-ups in an attempt to get these ready for the usual acrylic glossing during the next several days.

Christmas 2.0 arrived with the mail an hour or so ago when I opened a familiar small white box to find an order of Minden Austrian hussars courtesy of Der Alte Fritz in neighboring Hesse-Seewald along with a cheery, brief hand-written note from the man himself.  I took advantage of his recent Advent promotion back during the first half of the month to fill out an order of similar figures made during December 2023.  The aim is to create a large regiment of roughly 36+ [Austrian] hussars.

I know, I know.  I can hear the collective drawing of breath and the chorus of "Stokes!  Do you remember what happened when last you painted [Prussian] hussars [uniformed more or less as those of Lauzun's Legion] back in 2011-2012?  Have you lost the little that is left of your mind??!!"

Quite possibly.  

But this time, I have dug around the Kronoskaf website to find an Austrian regiment -- the Karlstaedter Grenz Hussars -- with a relatively simple uniform.  All red with yellow/gold lace and braid.  Eye-catching, certainly, but not the usual tedious mishmash of color more typical for many hussar units of the 18th and 19th centuries. That relative simplicity should -- He said. -- enable me to enjoy a relatively less painful process to get 'em done.  

That, and I will undertake only one squadron at a time rather than spend several months attempting to get the entire regiment painted in one go as has been the case in the past.  Thinking ahead to the next 12 to 24+ months you understand.  Although I might consider base-coating the entire regiment at once, or some such conceit.  Sometimes, the precise way forward does not materialize until one sits down to to the painting table, you'll no doubt agee. 

 

A version of the uniform worn by the Karlstaedter Grenz Hussars borrowed from the Kronoskaf website.

 

In the meantime, the plan for 2025, if we can apply so grand a term, is to wrap up the current bunch of Saxons, move on to a 15-strong company of Croats that have been in the painting queue for more than a decade, and then return to the second slightly-less-than-half of the Eureka Saxon cuirassiers.  When I finally get to the hussars mentioned above, during Summer 2025. I will alternate between squadron-sized batches of 14 figures and horses as explained already and company-sized batches (19 foot figures) of one or another Reichsarmee infantry regiment, ping-ponging back and forth between the two until each of the smaller sub-units for both regiments are finished, glossed, and based after a fashion.

Now, for many years, the Grand Duchess has kidded me about "fixing it all" when we go camping, and I prepare us a hearty meal on the trail, or when I make something special in the kitchen at home, or when I don my chef's hat in a rental place when we head to Northern Michigan for skiing getaways, or summer vacations.  I prefer to think of this particular tendency in the following terms: Go big, or go home.  Of course, that means that the various large units comprising the Grand Duchy of Stollen collection in its current state have taken some little while to take shape since painting began in earnest way back in summer 2006.  

In my defense, all I can offer is that a more measured, zen-like approach to the hobby, while at times frustrating, brings its own set of rewards. In truth, however, there are times when I struggle to figure out what precisely those might be!  But this is what I tell myself to keep things moving forward even if at a glacial pace the last several years.  Viewed in that light, this latest planned juggling of several related smaller projects will not progress rapidly, but it's all about the journey, right?  Hopeful optimism springs eternal.  

In the much nearer term, and depending on what tomorrow (Sunday) brings, I might very well set up a small table to try out those simple skirmish rules given to me by the Young Master for my most recent 29th birthday back in November.  But for now, it's back up to the kitchen for a refill of coffee and then back down here to Zum Stollenkeller to tackle the aforementioned dry-brushing.  Huzzah!

-- Stokes  

 

P.S.

The title of today's post is an affectionate nod to the late Alistair Cooke, whose weekly Letter from America was enjoyed by the younger me for many years via BBC World Service on the shortwaves.  I typically heard the 15-minute program late Sunday mornings on or around 17895kHz until advanced age and poor health led Mr. Cooke to step away from it during the early 2000s.  If you have not listened to his observations about US life, culture, and politics between 1946-2004, I urge you to give a few of these programs a listen.  You might very well come away a fan even 20+ years on.