The Grand Duchy of Stollen

The first picture shows roughly one half of the final company of the regiment and its officer. They look pretty good after three evenings' of work if I do say so myself. There have been grumblings overheard in the rest of the unit that the fourth company is taking an awfully long time to be uniformed and equipped, so the quartermaster was "asked" by Colonel von Flickenhoffer to get a move on! Believe it or not, I am actually back to doing something here that relates to figure painting/collecting/wargaming! Managed to get in a little over ninety minutes yesterday evening and got all of the breeches completed before (re-) watching *The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert with the Grand Duchess. So, here are a few photographs for your viewing pleasure that show where we stand with the final 20 figures of the 80-figure Von Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers . Here's a close-up of three men, er, figures, in the fourth company. I've been painting a bit more ...

No photos yet, but I've been hard at work the last few evenings, applying white to those final twenty or so fusiliers that comprise the fourth company of the 80-figure 7th (Von Flickenhoffer's) Fusiliers . A few 90 minute sessions have worked wonders, and the figures are beginning to look like something other than a bunch of little guys in dirty tan, 18th century-style jumpsuits. Tonight, it's on to the breeches and then the coats. Mid-blue cuffs will follow tomorrow night, and then it's back to the browns -- hair and musket stocks. Now, if this darn swimmer's ear would simply clear itself up! You know there ought to be a law when you spend all morning at the doctor's office and he finally tells you to buy the same over-the-counter peroxide-based treatment that you were using in the first place. Grumble, grumble, grumble. . .

I've actually managed to make some final corrections to the latest article/chapter in the last couple of days. In addition, I began assembling a bunch of disparate sections into a cohesive manuscript for the developing book on wargaming this afternoon. Hurrah!!! It would appear that I haven't been as much of a slug the last few weeks as I was beginning to suspect! ;-) So, barring any unforeseen surprises, the book will consist of twelve sections, an endpiece, an appendix, and a select bibliography. . . plus at least a few illustrations in the form of photographs. Now, I'm not quite ready to bug publishers just yet. There is still a short way to go until the basic manuscript is completed. I have several sections to finish and tune up, plus a few more to actually start, but there is at least some light at the end of the tunnel. Suffice to say, that it was a blast to assemble everything, and take in how much I've managed to finish up to this point. It's a...

Here is some of the box art from the new Prussian Grenadier figure set by Zvezda. What took them so long? The much anticipated mid-18th century Prussian grenadiers by Zvezda seem to be on sale in some areas. Wonderland Models of Great Britain has them, and here is the link: http://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/zvezda-172-prussian-grenadiers-frederick-ii/ No details on the contents of each package, or a breakdown of the available poses, but the price seems awfully good at about 5.60 GBP per set. So, if you're waiting for these -- and I know many are -- get thee to the Wonderland website and order a few boxes.

The Indras. . . rough and tumble, killer rock and roll, rockabilly, and R&B from the 1950s and early 1960s. From left to right: Paul, Kenny, Steve, and Stokes. It's been kind of quiet here in Stollen Central lately without a great deal to report. Finally managed to get the painting/radio table cleared off and organized late last week, but have not yet managed to sit down and accomplish any painting since our return from Germany earlier this month. A few baby related things and some planning with the Grand Duchess -- including a bizarre prenatal/partner yoga session yesterday evening -- but not really anything that has sucked up huge blocks of time. Nope, just taking things easy, walking in the evening with Sonja, chatting on the front porch, grilling occasionally, reading in the evenings, and , of course, trying to keep up with the mowing. We don't have a huge front and back yard, but they are big enough. And with all of the rain we've had this summer, the gra...

First, thanks to everyone for all of your good wishes about the coming baby. Sonja and I are even more excited, if such a thing were possible, following the big check-up the other day. And of course the two sets of future grandparents can hardly sit still from the sound of things. But let's talk soldiers now since that's the main point behind the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog. Some of you might recall my plans this past spring to order a few HE and Garrison miniatures and have them sent to our temporary Berlin address where we stayed during the month of June. Well, here they are in all of their shiny, unpainted glory. The photograph above features two Holger Erisksson guns manned by Garrison Prussian artillery crew. For a mounted officer, I ordered two Prussian dragoon officers, which fill that particular gap in the Garrison range pretty well. A small compromise that works nicely. Rob Young at Garrison pointed out in our communications back and forth that he did not like t...

Normally, vacation photographs only have significance to those who were part of the holiday. Indeed, I am sensitive to the fact that most of us don't want to endure looking at scads of vacation pictures taken by others. Why, it's almost as painful as watching badly edited (or even unedited) video of someone's wedding reception, my own included! Along these lines, I have a particular memory from 1979 or '80, when my Great Uncle Charlie, a surgeon, who was usually very interesting company, brought over literally HUNDREDS of slides from a trip he and my Great Aunt Lillian took to Iceland and Spitsbergen in 1979. Needless to say, by the twentieth photo taken through a dirty porthole of the jetliner flying them into Reykjavik, insomnia was no longer a problem for anyone in the room. About the only thing that saved the situation from being completely dull was when Uncle Charlie accidentally dropped two slide carousels onto the floor upside down, spilling more than 200 c...

The Swedish Chef and a friend from The Muppet Show. . . My particular culinary idol . Happy Friday everyone! Not a whole lot to report here at the moment. Picked up the Grand Duchess yesterday evening from the shuttle bus that shuttled her from Chicago-O'Hare, mowed the grass today, and puttered around the house a bit. Here in the United States, we are gearing up for the long 4th of July weekend that marks our "succession" from British rule in 1776. However, I harbor no grudges. I mean, the nation that gave the world The Beatles, Micheal Caine, Sean Connery, Donald Featherstone, and Charles Grant can't be all bad, right? ;-) The weekend is also seen as the traditional half-way point of summer, which has always struck me as a bit odd since summer more or less begins on June 21st each year. Strange. The poor Grand Duchess hurt her back weeding the vegetable garden earlier this afternoon, so she's having a rest at the moment before I fix us dinner. We...

Well, after about nineteen hours in transit, I'm back home in Zum Stollenkeller and exhausted. The Air France cabin crews are truly amazing and how they remain so pleasant is anyone's guess, but air travel sure ain't glamorous these days. I don't think I have ever been as glad to get back on the ground and walk off that big ol' jet airliner as I was this afternoon when we landed at Chicago-O'Hare. So, after deleting more than 800 spam e-mails, sorting through three weeks of snail mail, and giving some love and attention to the Grand Ducal feline, I will have a shower, make some coffee, and head off to bed to watch Cliff Richard in Expresso Bongo from 1960 (I think). Yes, the rock&roll B-movie marathon continues! "We're all going on a summer holiday. No more worries for a week or two. . ." Sorry, but extreme fatuigue makes one a little strange you know. But tomorrow, the Grand Duchess returns, and all will be right with the world once m...

The Grand Duke will play! Sonja is off visiting an archive today, so after a lazy morning with plenty of coffee, a large breakfast, and several hours of German news and culture on the radio ( auf Deutsch naturlich! ), I've managed to pull myself together to head out and run a few errands. First off is our local internet cafe, but the real point of the trip is to find a card and flowers for the Grand Duchess since tomorrow (June 24th) is our third anniversary. We already purchased a porcelain tea service for each other while we were in Bremen last week, but I want to have a few additional small things to brighten the apartment when Sonja returns home later this afternoon. Then, this evening, it's off to dinner with a few friends. Tomorrow, we'll pobably kick around Berlin, specifically the Kreuzburg area of the city where Sonja lived for about two years in the mid-90s when she was a graduate student, doing research for her doctoral dissertation. Thursday, I will visit B...

The Grand Duchess asked if we could drop by an internet cafe after dinner this evening, so here I am, making an unexpected entry to the GD of S blog. Almost two weeks into my visit, and things have been great. We got back from our anniversary trip over to Bremen and Lübeck earlier today. Neat to revisit both areas, but things have really changed in the 20 plus years since I was last in these two smaller cities. Among other sites of interest here in the Berlin area, we have also visited the old Spandau citadel on the outskirts of Berlin early on as well as Sans Soucci Palace and the extensive gounds around it in Potsdam, both of which were fascinating. On the figure front, The Holger Eriksson cavalry, mentioned in a previous post, are lovely, and the Garrison Prussian artillery crew were waiting on our kitchen table thanks to our landlady, Frau Grossmann, who picked them up at the past office while we were away last week. Equally wonderful miniatures there. I will take and uploa...

About this time tomorrow morning, I'll board the shuttle bus for the ride up to Chicago-O'Hare and this time Wednesday (Berlin time that is), I should be disembarking, collecting my baggage, and stumbling into waiting arms of the Grand Duchess, a weary, jet-lagged man. I'm taking a couple of P.G. Wodehouse novels ( Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and one other title) to pass the time since I rarely sleep on long flights: O'Hare-Charles DeGaul-Tegel. The last few days have been fairly calm with bit of work on the wargaming book project that languished on the back burner during last fall and winter while I worked on that translation. Yes! I managed to write almost 2000 words yesterday afternoon, so another short part is almost done, barring some revision today. And the final twenty RSM Prussian fusiliers all have their tan undercoat and are awaiting their coat of white. Don't know if I'll actually get to any of that step before I hit the sack this evening, but we...

The late Holger Eriksson with a few of his masterfully designed and executed figures. The Grand Duchess informed me in her e-mail this morning that the thirty Holger Eriksson cavalry and two Charles XII guns I ordered recently have arrived from Sweden. Hurrah! She received a notice in the mail yesterday and walked to the post office to retrieve the package. Later, Sonja opened it to check that everything was ok. Verdict? Everything passed with flying colors. Wow, talk about rapid service! So, that just leaves the Garrison Prussian artillery crew, which will be sent on or about the 9th or 10th of the month. I can't wait! It's very interesting, this whole notion of rapid, courteous service. All of the companies/retailers I have dealt with in the past three years, since beginning the Grand Duchy of Stollen project, have been great (Tom at GFI, Rich at RSM95, Peter at Spencer Smith, Rob at Garrison, and Peter at PB Toys, et al). The various miniatures I have purchased hav...

. . . ok, maybe to quite to the extent of the Namibian Desert pictured above, but we're getting there. I've run and emptied the dehumidifier almost continuously since the water seeped into the basement a few days ago. The water has receded and the (luckily) cheap carpet is drying out little by little. The cooler, more arid weather has undoubtedly helped things out a little bit too. No unpleasant smell, so I think we're almost out of the woods, though whether I have time to set up my table again before I leave for Berlin next Tuesday is doubtful A number of little things to take care of between now and then, as is always the case before you leave town, but there you go. I did manage to do some painting for about two hours last night -- tan undercoats on those final 20 RSM Prussian fusiliers -- the final draft of Zichenau's 7th (Von Flickenhoffer's) Fusiliers . Later, I watched the DVD that arrived from NetFlix in the mail yesterday. "Beatniks" (1960...

Well, after rapidly gathering my soldiers back into their plastic tubs and taking the table down this morning, the several days of drying out can take place in the next room (grumble, grumble). As I mentioned yesterday, it really wasn't that tragic. There was never any standing water, and nothing was damaged, but the carpet was thoroughly soaked. Sopping wet might be a more apt term. So, I've taken it up off the concrete floor, emptied the dehumidifier, and restarted it. It ran all night long and was almost full this morning. When this happened early last fall, it took about five days for everything in that part of Zum Stollenkeller to dry out completely. Fortunately, the room where my office is and the central part of the basement, where my band keeps its equipment and practices, doesn't seem to take in water when we have really heavy rain. It just seems to be one corner of the furnace room and the room where my gaming table resides. I suppose it could be much w...

Well, we've had a few hours of thunderstorms with heavy rain here in Central Illinois, and the room where my gaming table is has been flooded! Nothing approaching biblical proportions, but the cheap carpeting on the concrete floor is sopping wet. I've quickly cleared some things that were leaning against the walls, or sitting on the floor, out and set up the dehumidifier on "high" in there. But it looks like the table and figures will have to come down in the morning, to make a proper job of drying everything out. The main thing is to prevent the carpet from developing that tell-tale mildewy stench later. That means, of course, that the Saegewerkdorf game between Jeff Hudelson and me is doomed to a premature end I fear. I suppose we could look at it from an Old School point of view, kind of like one of Donald Featherstone's chance cards -- "Due to a sudden and protracted cloudburst, both armies retire from the field with no further fighting possible than...

These are a few of the wonderful Holger Eriksson cavalry, very similar to those I've ordered, from Peter Johnstone, the man behind Spencer Smith Miniatures in the Great Britain. The photograph above comes from the Tradition website. Well, I've bitten the bullet and actually sent off my orders to Rob Young at Garrison Miniatures and Peter Johnstone at Spencer Smith Miniatures and paid for everything via PayPal (a very handy innovation I must point out). Before too long, the extremely patient and long-suffering Grand Duchess will observe yours truly unwrapping the respective orders (30 HE cavalry and two dozen or so artillery crew) in our Berlin apartment sometime in June. Gosh, the new month begins tomorrow! Where did May get to? The last week has been a busy one with not much time left for figure painting or gaming. But I did manage to take about ninety minutes late Monday or Tuesday evening before bed to apply fleshtone to the final 20 RSM Prussian fusiliers on the painti...

Do any of you have this somewhat rare (and expensive when you do find it) uniform guide in your book collection? I've found it any number of times in the past few years via Amazon Marketplace, but the price has always been just a bit dear. Sigh. That about describes life over the past week or ten days. I've been teaching a daily May Term course on Scandinavian/Nordic film and basic film theory, which has been terrific fun given the mix of good students I have, but the almost daily reading (heavy) and preparation just seem to eat up any free time. The class meets for three hours at a time, so it's pretty intense as well, and I'm tired once I get home and change out of my jacket and tie. Then, there has been the typical summertime upkeep outdoors along with some things the Grand Duchess left for me to take care of. And on top of that, the publisher with whom I worked on that translation last fall has sent me a list of minor corrections, suggested by the book's a...

The Grand Duchess and I are talking between Berlin and Bloomington via Skype in just a few minutes, so a quick post is in order. The Garrison Prussian artillery crew samples arrived in the mail earlier this afternoon, and they are wonderful. Their size falls between the Revell plastics and the RSM95s the make up most of the Grand Duchy of Stollen collection, and I will send a full order and payment information to Rob Young at Garrison later today or tomorrow. I'm also treating myself to a regiment of Holger Eriksson cavalry, mentioned a few posts back, and will send the order to Peter Johnstone at Spencer Smith Miniatures later this weekend as well. Whew! Just finished mowing the grass in the front and back, which, since we have had no rain in the last several days, was a hot, dusty job. But it's all done for another week. Finally, in amongst all of the other "real life" stuff currently vying for time, my band The Indras has landed several paying gigs over the ...

And his song, or at least a number he performed on his TV show many years ago, "Monday Morning." Is Mr. Cribbins still with us? I always enjoyed watching reruns of his 1970s TV show when I was a teen-aged, long-haired Stokes in the very early 1980s. And so it is Monday again. Lots to do today, so I was up early to make the coffee and feed the Grand Ducal feline. But, I did make myself sit down last night and do a bit of work at the painting table. So, the two mounted RSM officers now have a coat of Future/Klear, and very smart they look too. I'll add a photo later this evening. I also finished applying a coat of black artists' acrylic gesso to the fourth and final company of the RSM fusiliers, three companies of which are currently serving in the vile Stagonian invasion of the long-suffering Grand Duchy of Stollen! So, those figures are now base-coated and ready for painting. I leave to join the Grand Duchess in Berlin three weeks from tomorrow, so I think I...

Where in the world did the last few days go? No painting since before the Grand Duchess left last Thursday and no Saegewerkdorf updates (Jeff has been a bit under the weather). Nope, yesterday it was mowing the grass for a good part of the afternoon. And here we are at the end of the weekend with student papers to read, and final course grades to tally and submit. Sigh. Well, the one beacon of light in all of this is that a sample figure or two will be on the way from Garrison Miniatures tomorrow thanks to the good graces of proprietor Rob Young. I'm eager to see these in the flesh and, maybe, add some to the Grand Duchy of Stollen collection. We'll have to see. But it is certainly exciting waiting for the samples to arrive. On a different note, my band The Indras has managed to land a gig at one of the premier nightspots in Bloomington (Daddio's) in mid-July, so we now have three appearances lined up for July and August. Best of all, the person in charge of hiring...

Hah! The artillery question may be worked out. I posed a question about size and compatibility of the old Garrison SYW Prussian range over at the Old School Wargaming Yahoo group this afternoon, which yielded quickly the answer I sought. Seems there is life in the old girl yet. John Preece and Doug Crowther indicated that the Garrison figures are indeed 25mm and comparable in height to MiniFigs, but much slimmer and with better proportions. An added advantage is that they are also cheaper than MiniFigs at this point. So, without seeing any photos of the SYW miniatures by Garrison, my impression is that they will be reasonably compatible with my RSMs, Spencer Smiths, Revells, and scattering of MiniFigs already in the collection. It would appear that these might, therefore, be just the figures I require to finish up Stollen's artillery contingent. But I must be strong and wait for a definite response from Rob, the man behind Garrison Miniatures, before I dash off an order vi...

Well, Blogger still refused to accept my HTML (Aaagghh!!!), so I've simply printed, scanned, and uploaded my chart as a jpeg picture. Not quite as nice looking as I had hoped, but it presents all of the vital information anyway. As you can see, there is still quite a way to go before the initial Sittangbad-sized forces are complete. Note to self -- get off of lazy you-know-what and get moving on return from Germany in July! Still, I can probably finish the fourth company of von Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers in the next three weeks once my May Term film course finishes. In July, it's onward to the regiment of RSM cuirassiers that has been sitting on my painting desk since last November when I purchased them as a birthday gift to myself (and in celebration of last year's article in Battlegames). These will be followed by more (as yet unporuchased) artillery, another 30-figure unit of cavalry, and then another 60-figure unit of infantry, hopefully before year's end. K...

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 o...