I went back to work today. I actually ended up working a fair number of hours last week because unfortunately January is the busiest time of the year for my most important client. In my previous job, where I got eight weeks holiday a year, I would take four of those weeks from Christmas and into January. Now that I work for myself, I don't get eight weeks. In fact last year I don't think I had two full weeks. Most of the holiday I had last year was either running a roleplaying campaign set in the east of Middle-earth in the Second Age or preparing for that campaign.

This Christmas I made an effort to do some creative stuff.


Most of the creative stuff is directly related to that same roleplaying campaign. First of all, a pair of maps (hand-drawn, using dip pen, assorted calligraphy and cartographical nibs and drawing ink and using handmade paper from Nepal). The first (of Numenor) is a direct copy of a Tolkien map, the second is of a non-canonical Numenorean colony in the east which I wanted to do in the same style.



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The idea is that someone picks five of your userpics and you have to explain what they are and why they are your userpics.

See the comments for my explanations.

Feel free to ask me about other userpics or ask me to pick five of yours.

Earlier this year, I bought bespoke shelves for the games room and moved my RPG collection upstairs from the library (thus freeing up room in the library for actual books). Here is what the new games library looks like.

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As well as me painting miniatures, bunn has been sculpting some with polymer clay. These are also all in 25mm / 28mm scale.

Athach


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I've been buying miniatures. Got home from a business trip (Watford, London and Preston) to find two heavy packages waiting for me, and I won three more on eBay tonight. There's some assembly required, and they'll need undercoating, so that's this weekend's big job.

Here's a sample of what I bought (not my painting - I'm not that good!):

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/gallery/GRRM_jonsnow.htm


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