Back from East Frisia

Moin moin !
(salutation in East Frisian dialect)

After one week of idleness and relaxation I'm back from East Frisia. Most of you might not know East Frisia. It's a part of Germany at the North Sea Coast known for tidal flat, nautical tradition, Pilsener beer and a very special kind of folk music called Shanty (view example). However it's a very popular holiday destination because of its quietness and lonesomeness here and there.My family and me spent seven days there on a nice little farm called Hof Itzen. It's a small farm which runned livestock farming until 2011. Since then Anneliese Itzen and here kind husband do Bed and Breakfast only. However they're having some chickens still that provide fresh eggs every day. Additionally there is a pony and a Frisian horse which are held for riding. Unfortunately our daughter has been a bit young for pony riding.
Nevertheless we spent some really great time there and I can only recommend this hostel!

Since my wife and daughter are taking a three weeks of rehab on Langeook Island from now on I returned home alone this afternoon. Although it was hard to leave my dears behind at the ferry, a kind of elation arose when I reached our humble home: Three weeks grass widower... Three weeks time for modelling, painting, watching sports... Although I'm  already missing my wife and daughter I'm confident of finding a way to deal with the parting. This evening I started with a nice bottle of Belgian beer, a large plate of French fries and a movie my wife would never ever watch and -to be honest- which wasn't worth two hours of my life... (Punisher: War Zone by the way).

Therefore the next three weeks are packed with tasks:
- Exploit about 350 pictures from vacation
- Write a report about our visit at the German Navy Museum
- Visit Crisis at Antwerp and write a report about the trip
- Finish the next Highlanders for the Black Watch
- Finish the Hussars' horses
- Proceed with the new gaming board
- Play some games
- Clean the flat before the wife returns

I'll try to keep you well informed so stay tuned!
;-)

Here's a little teaser about the Navy Museum:
Since there's the former German destroyer Mölders  at anchor as museum ship, we were able to visit the whole ship. Unfortunately they seem not to have cut all important wires. So  a little mishap occured when Viktoria inspected the bridge:

On vacation...

Finally the time has come to leave the dull routine of everyday life behind and go on holiday!

My lovely wife, our cute daughter and me are just about to leave and will head northward. We'll spent a week at the North Sea coast and will reside at a little farm with rabbits, sheep and chickens running around. They offer fresh buns and fresh eggs from their own chickens every morning and I expect to have a really good and recreational time there.

Although we haven't planed to much for those days and want to spent a lot of time at the seaside, I'll try to find the time to visit the German Navy Museum this week. Anyway I bagged my camera to be prepared.

I'll try to send you some news from the coast but I cannot promise to be able to.

Weekly News 21st October 2012: Foot Artillery based

Time goes by so fast and another week is over.
Unfortunately I didn't win neither Fran's nor Ray's lottery for some Rejects' dice. Congratulations to all lucky winners here and there!

On the workbench there has been some progress. Finally I managed to finish the basing of my first three batteries of Royal Foot Artillery:

The three bases from obove. In the middle there one space left to put another crewman or officer in.

These are the three 9pdr guns which I made from the Victrix plastic set (look here or here). The miniatures are nicely modeled and cleanly cast. As all Victrix plastics they have to be assembled from five to seven parts. The guns can be build as 6pdr guns, 9pdr guns or 5.5" howitzers. I decided to build late Napoleonic 9-pounders and add a howitzer later (I already got the one from the Perrys...).

Here are the three:

If you remember some of the crewmen then you are completely right. I finished some of them in June for the great Kolberg game and presented some bad cellphone-photos then. But I hope you like those pictures better.

Next week will be quiet on Monty's Caravan because I'll go on vacation with my wife and our daughter. Although we plan to visit the German Navy Museum in Wilhelmshaven (look here) I'll probably not be able to present a review before I'm back home.

Weekly News 14th October 2012: Bolt Action

During last week only some minor events happened besides this award thing (look here). However I managed to get some things done at my workbench:

On Friday my Bolt Action-rulebook arrived which I bought for a fair price (26 €) at Amazon-Germany just two days before. Although I haven't read the book completely the game give a good first impression. Especially the way initiative is determined promises to be interesting: Both players act within the same turn and who's exactly allowed to activate a unit is determined semi-randomly. I like games without strictly separated turns because players sometimes tend to digress when turns last long.

Motivated by the WW II background I put some matching stuff together. For example I started to paint a building which I bought and build some months ago from Jens Najewitz (link) who makes very nice 20mm and 28mm buildings for WW II. It's a model of the house located at "Dead Man's Corner" near Carentan. In addition I finished some new bocages according to the scheme I explained some months ago (tutorial here).

Unfortunately my Napoleonic effords were retarded a bit. Yesterday morning I wanted to airbrush a set of 24 horses, but the bloody gun didn't work. Instead of generating a well targeted stream of paint it blew the air into the cup with the paint. I presume this malfunction might be caused by a damaged gasket ring within the tip. So I'll have to wait since it's fixed.
After this throwback I didn't have the leisure to deal with the highlanders...

An Award! An Award!

Last week Asuka of Nadelspielereien (in English this means something like "needle shenanigans") gave an Award to Monty's Caravan.

To be honest I don't really know what that means but it's kind of small gift between fellow newbie bloggers and it's linked to some rules:

1.) The blog which is priced must not have more than 200 followers.

2.) There must be written some kind of post about the Award on the priced blog.

3.) The distributor of the award must be mentioned.

4.) The Award must be passed to five new blogs.

5.) These rules have to be published on the awarded blog.


Therefore thanks a lot to Azuka and here come the blogs I wish to pass the Award on:

Mojo and his WeaponsInMassProduction

He is one of my first followers and was encouraging me from the very beginning. His blog is superb and present really great pieces of modelling. I highly recommend his post about self-made 75mm round.

Michael Awdry and his 28mm Victorian Warfare

He is always posting some nice comments and encouraging words when painting goes wrong. On his own blog he presents his 28mm miniatures in best quality recuringly.

Scott with Scott's Wargaming

 A nice fellow from New Zealand who present a lot of excellent wargaming stuff from different eras and in different scales. His articles are always worth to read.

Michael with Kukuruza's Corner

He's one of the fellow with whom I've been playing for more than a decade. He started a nice little blog with pictures of our last WWII games. I hope he'll proceed with that!

Feldmarschall and his blog

One of the very few ice hockey loving wargamers I know. But albeit he runs a nice blog with lots of historical information. Unfortunately it has been a bit quit for the last week.

Well then... Those are my nominees. It was a hard choice since there are many blogs I love to follow. Anne's Attic with her artistic touch, Angry Lurker Fran with his great 15mm figures and the stories of the Rejects as well as his Buddy Ray, Tamsin one of the few wargaming girls and the many, many other great blogs I became acquainted with. Fortunately most of them had more than 200 followers so they were unelectable...
Please take a look at my blog list on the left and enjoy the of my favourite blogs (not only those I mentioned here).

In this spirit I wish you a lot of fun within the blogosphere and will report to you the Weekly Update by Friday.

Weekly Review 04th Oct 2012: Horses undercoated, Highlanders ready for finish...

After half a year of blogging I decided to add a new category to Monty's Caravan: Weekly News from the Workbench

Within the last weeks I didn't manage to produce any presentable things. Just several small steps were taken and so I decided to put them together in a small "this-and-that"-style post. In the future I'll try to write such a post every week about thursday or friday.

All the pretty little horses...

 After having cleaned the Hussars' horses from the disasterous painting, I re-undercoated all of them successfully. Next step is to paint them with airbrush and by hand. I hope to get started this weekend.

More Highlanders ready to finish

Fortunately the highlanders didn't suffer the same fate as the horses. The varnish shrivelled at some rare and small areas only and I'll be able to fix that when highlighting the boys I hope. I'm confident that no one will notice those flaws when the whole unit is finished.