Speed bumps in historical movies.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a wargamer in possession of a good knowledge of history will occasionally view an historical movie and yell "Oh, that's not right..!"

So it was with me last night when my wife and I watched the biopic Hemmingway and Gellhorn. It's a good movie and the two leads look uncannily like their principals. Then came the Spanish Civil War and the first 'speed bump.' Ernest Hemmingway was holding court at an hotel in Republican-held Madrid when Martha Gellhorn arrived outside - aboard a Russian IS 2 tank.

Later, during WW2 and a scene where Hemmingway was prowling the Caribbean Sea aboard his fishing boat, looking for U-boats. He wore a kind of jerkin made from a modern US camouflage pattern.

*Head desk.*

All that aside, it is a good movie and worth watching. Just be prepared for the anachronisms. 

More Autumn trees

Autumn: The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is right. An inordinate amount of my free time has gone towards processing the hundreds of tomatoes our garden produced this year. Home made soup, ketchup, veggie stock - you name it, we're making it. Thankfully we're coming to the end of the harvest. The next phase will be making green tomato chutney from the fruit that won't ripen once the weather turns colder.*

Anyway...

I found a few minutes here and there to expand the number of Autumn trees using the homemade flock. The latest batch is shown below.

The photo's not that great, but it does the job. I'm thinking of making one or two small hills or rocky outcrops with a number of the smaller trees growing on them.

With that done I think I'll take a break from the sands and relentless heat of the Sudan and return to Early Medieval England's green and war-torn land for my Dux Britanniarum campaign.The previous game was played in December, so Saxon Lord Ebba and Romano-British Lord Gaius Uselessness - sorry, Menusius - are due for a revisit.

In campaign terms it's now July 472AD. Ebba has acquired enough loot to attempt the conquest of a province. He's confident after inflicting two serious defeats on his enemy, but for the Romano-British, the third time may be the charm...



* Recipes available upon request!

Autumn trees

My experiment with homemade foam flock worked - after a fashion. I found that with this stuff, a lot goes a little way. The coverage was good, but nowhere near as much as I'd hoped. Still, the result isn't too shabby.

Apart from a few touches of orange and yellow I left the foam in its natural colour. I mounted the trees on one of a batch of old hip-hop CDs I found, using hot glue. The CD I then glued to a slightly larger and irregularly shaped piece of card. A paper-mache mix of spackle/filler, tissue paper and chocolate brown craft paint went on next, spread over and around the tree roots and trunks. Whilst it was still wet I applied a few patches of dried used tea leaves to represent deep drifts of brown leaves. When everything had dried, I painted it a mid green, followed by a lighter green wet-brush then a even lighter yellow dry brush. Since I still have a lot of foam to hand, I'll add a few more to the stock over the next few weeks.

My next project will likely be a circle of standing stones to add a bit of ancient mystery to the Early Medieval English landscape. Another hip hop CD will go towards a better cause...

Homemade foam flock

In this week's Huh. What Do You Know? It Worked! category, we have homemade foam scenic flock, as prepared in a food blender.

I admit I had doubts when I read about this method of producing cheap and cheerful foam flock. Visions of burned-out blenders danced before my eyes, but since it's my blender, I thought I'd give it a go. We've got wads of foam sheeting left over from our house move, so I took a chunk of that, tore it into pieces about the size of a chestnut, and tossed it into the blender along with a cup full of water. Speeding it up by stages helped. The water carries the foam into the blades, which sliced and diced it into a cornmeal consistency.

Once done I cleaned the blender carefully - I don't want any bits of foam in our food. I'm making 10mm/15mm size trees in Autumn foliage, so I added a few dollops of orange and yellow craft paint to the foam then squeezed it so it absorbed the paint. I could've added the paint at the start, but thought it a step too far where appliances intended for food prep are concerned. Once done, I spread the foam out to dry, which only took three or four hours.

The core of the trees themselves will be teasels. I have a box full of these harvested a couple of years ago. Thistles are considered an invasive species around here, so I'm doing the environment a favour by taking the seed heads out of circulation. I'll use spray adhesive on the teasels, then roll them in the foam. The spikes will hold the foam in place while the glue dries. I'm of two minds whether to paint the trees, or leave them the natural yellow foam colour. I'll post photos of the results, unless they're too unspeakably awful so I'll need to discard the lot and pretend I didn't make them in the first place...