Not entirely indolent

It's been a few weeks since my last post. Historically, that's not surprising. I get busy, life goes on, yadda yadda—then all of a sudden I haven't blogged in 3 months. But I am trying to do better and get at least one post every month; more if I'm diligent.

But it's not like I'm doing nothing.

We have our Lion Rampant/Dragon Rampant tournament coming up on March 24. I've been working on the long-delayed Spanish and am down to just completing the bases, which I expect to do this weekend. It's been a long time coming and I hope the army does well in the tourney.

I actually have many more figures painted than I need for a single retinue, so I'll have a lot of flexibility in retinue composition. I have even more figures unpainted (you knew I would) that, once painted (there's the rub), will give me even more flexibility for building retinues. The unpainted minis include 24 figures of serfs because you never know when you'll want to deploy speed bumps to prevent your enemy killing you too quickly.

Back before Grendel died, I'd completed 10 figures of mounted men-at-arms and lots of skirmisher/shooty types (including slingers, of course). What was partially painted were the light horse (to be mounted yeoman with javelins):

And spearmen (to be foot sergeants):

I recently added crossbowmen to the mix after it dawned on me that slingers, alas, are pretty crappy missile troops in Lion Rampant. I'll keep slingers as bidowers, but my firepower will be crossbows:

By the start of the month, I'd completed the painting and dipping. I let the dip "cure" for several days before I do anything, but by midweek, all the figures were based, had the coarse pumice gel applied (and left to cure also) and the base coat of Vallejo Mud Brown applied.

Today was spent doing a lot of flocking on 35 bases:

At this point, I have the fine flocking done and have the coarse flocking yet to do. By Sunday night, I expect to have everything complete, figures dullcoated, and stored in their box until next Saturday.

I'm also going great guns now on my Irish Project units. I recently got some more Irish kern, pikes, and calivermen. I'm also up to my eyebrows painting a lot of the English:

What's on the painting table now will, soon I hope, be three 12-figure units of English pike, four 12-figure units of English calivermen, 2 units of 6-figure English commanded shot, 1 6-figure unit of English billmen, various command figures, 2 6-figure units of Irish cavalry, 2 12-figure units of Irish calivermen, 4 6-figure units of Irish kern with calivers, and one 12-figure unit of Irish pikes.

174 figures. All to be complete by late May.

That's a tall order, but helping me out is the fact that I went TV-less today. I called in the 1-800-GOT-JUNK guys to haul away (among other things) my old Sony Trinitron and the big oak cabinet it was in:

I'll put a bookcase there. That will alleviate my bookspace crisis for a little while.

I'm not sure if being without TV will make me paint more, but I will have no more temptation to sit on the couch watching TV and eating. I hope I'll fill the time painting. Or reading. But I could also spend it surfing the Interwebs. Let's hope I do the former.