They are finished! After a good while of painting sessions, all of the QuoddHeroes miniatures are finished, and protected by a double coat of varnish. Yesterday they went back to their happy owner, hopefully to see many fun game sessions there. We've been promised an epic session playing that game once the general situation will allow it again.

It was a lot of fun painting these - especially since there were many different styles, and a few new playgrounds to explore. There was a light source in one case, and freehand details to draw in in another, and doing glazing, and playing with drybrushing and different kinds of washes, and edge highlighting, and a lot was learned in that way.



In the game, the cubes move by rolling from the face they are standing on to one of the adjacent faces, so that another face then sits on top. Each has a special action connected to it, so you need to plan your moves carefully in order to get where you want to get. Accordingly, there's two of each of the cubes, one to sit on the board while playing, and the second identical one is used by the player to handle. Actually turning it in your hands while thinking about what to do makes an incredible difference to just thinking about it, and is really necessary.



Each of the sides looks differerent, to make it easy to see which one is which, and they are all shown on the player board, of course. Sometimes they hold something in their hand on one side only, sometimes on both sides. Usually there's quite a difference between the left side and the right side, but not always - the mini on the far right, for example, only has a tiny watch as a difference between left and right.



They all have a face, and feet, and carry something like a backpack on their backs, or there's a cave or hollow with something inside in some instances.



Those were a bit tricky to paint, but hey, challenge accepted!



In some cases, the image on the player board and the actual sculpt of the miniature were a little different, and in a few cases, there were significant differences, which also made things a bit tricky. I was trying to go for "as close to the player board as possible" in these, which meant trying to match the colours, or painting in some details not in the sculpt.



I also tried to make the two in each pair as identical as possible, which was not always easy, because I like to paint with mixed colours... and you inevitably have too much or too little of an individual mix. For me, it's usually way too little, and then it is hard to match the mix again for the second piece.

Two of them don't really match the colour on the player board really well; one is a bit too dark (the magenta-furred one) and one a little too blue (the robot-like one), but overall, I'm really happy with how they all turned out.

So there's another thing for me to look forward to when the pandemic gets under control: Actually using these in game play!

This photo shows a happily sleeping cat:



While that may be no big new thing, the fact that the slow-motion-penny has finally reached its groundfloor destination might be. Today was the first time the little cat used her stairway-board to get up onto her cat bed without getting a reminder first that yes, this thing exists and yes, it's possible to use it, no necessity to try and jump up if you don't feel like it, little cat.

Yesterday, she still waited for such a reminder from me as she was considering how to get up onto my desk. This morning, after having polished off some food, she strolled into the office, went to the cat stairs, walked up and lay down for a nap, witnessed by the Most Patient Husband of Them All. So yay! It only took, what, about two months? We installed the thing around February 15 or so - proving that it does take an old cat some time to learn a new trick, but it's not impossible at all.

It seems that the shapely Easter Lamb/Bunny cake is actually not a global phenomenon... so here's a bit more about it.

Baking shaped cakes is in the tradition of the "Gebildbrot" (image-y bread; link takes you to German Wikipedia, which has some images), and that reaches back a bit. It also seems to be a German-Austrian thing, though specially shaped baked goods do occur in other countries.

[caption id="attachment_5964" align="alignnone" width="300"] If you eat the antlers first, it looks much more lamb-like...


We have the Easter bunnies and lambs, though. There's also yeast dough bunnies and lambs. Plus, in the wintertime, there are gingerbread men, and other gingerbread shapes. There's the Stollen, too, which is supposed to remind, with its form and white sugar covering, of the swaddled child. And even the very common find-it-at-every-bakery-every-day pretzel is a form of Gebildbrot. Then there's the Plätzchen, with their many shapes and forms, that get baked for Christmas (and, to a lesser extent, for Easter).

Anyways... back to the lamb. Traditionally, the way I know it and grew up with, the cake made in lamb-shape is a very simple one, nothing fancy: flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder, a bit of lemon peel grated in and maybe a dash of lemon juice. That's also the kind you would get at a bakery. When I was small, our church also gave out a lamb as a present to each of the helpers with the festive service. (Everyone who attended got an egg, coloured, of course, that had been blessed.)

The moulds are usually considerably smaller than normal cake tins, so my mum always made additional small cakes to use up the batter. The cake she made in the bunny mould was usually a marble cake, one of the usual suspects to be made in our home (with lots of dark and little light dough, because everyone liked it better that way). I made an eggnogg cake for the elk, because of eggnogg being there, and anything with eggs is considered quite easterly, so it sort of fit. (Delicious, too, by the way.)

Baking in these shaped moulds is quite fun, but you do need to grease them thoroughly and then powder them with crumbs, or ground nuts if you like nuts, so the cake will not stick. My elk has an anti-stick coating, which does help, but it still needs the assistance. The older bunny mould my mum has really, really needs the buttering and crumb-coating, else you'll have bunny crumbs only. Also I tend to fill in too much dough, and there's always some left over anyways, which means it's a good idea to have an extra small cake tin or some muffin thingies handy. Unless you like to eat lots of raw cake batter, of course...

I hope you had a nice long holiday weekend - here it was wonderful weather on Saturday and Sunday, and quite cool on Monday. Then it actually started snowing on Monday evening, and has been snowing on and off all day today. That's true and typical April weather!

Speaking of typical - one of the typical things for Easter in Germany is cake. Special, shapely cake. This year, I had the strong desire to follow this Easter... and this is what ours looked like:



Admittedly, this is not the entirely traditional cake. That, of course, is in form of a sheep or an Easter bunny. You can either buy a special baking mould and bake them yourself, or buy a ready-baked sheep at about every single local bakery that exists. (The reason for the elk? I own neither a sheep- nor a bunny-shaped mould. My mom has a bunny... but in our household, there's only the elk, which we got as a wedding present and use far too rarely anyways. Also, if you cut off the antlers and eat them, it looks much more lamb-like already.)

And now I'm curious - do you have Easter cakes like that in your spot in the world? Or is that entirely unknown where you are?

It's well and truly spring now hereabouts - which is good for the mood, and thus very, very good at the moment, with all the stupidity running rampant in this country. The planned lockdown-esque thing over Easter? It's been cancelled again, because of reasons. So we'll be going on just like right now... which, according to my personal prediction, will mean we'll have a 7-day incidence of about 200 by next Tuesday. And then it will rise some more. And, with the incredible ingenuity and flexibility of our politicians, combined with their courage to do the things that are necessary even if they are painful and the lobbyists protest, and their disregard for bureaucracy when things need to move quickly, nothing will happen for at least three more weeks.

My unexpected laugh of the day from yesterday, by the way, was hearing that the Irish news say Germany wants to have all adults vaccinated by July. To which the most patient husband instantly commented that yes... they may want that.

Me, on the other hand, I think it's entirely possible that this happens - as they did say July, but not which year. July 2023? Totally possible.

Ah well. Nothing I can do to change all this. So - let me entertain you with the flowers currently blooming in the garden!

The first violets are coming out...



...while the crocuses are still going strong. And there was a white-butted visitor snacking on these this morning:



Also - mini-Iris blooms!

It's been a while since I posted a recipe - time to change that!

It feels to me like there's been a bit more experimentation in the kitchen since the start of the pandemic, and there's definitely a few more recipes in my personal recipe book now. I try not to buy cookbooks or other printed cooking-related items, but I don't always manage to resist. Most recipes that I use, though, are adaptations of things I find on the Internet, where I look at a number of different recipes for one thing and then make up my own version.

In some cases, the adaptation is due to things not being available here. In this specific case, the things (Ginger Nuts) are not available to buy in German shops, and one of the ingredients, the molasses, are also not readily available. In addition, at least the cookies would be packaged in plastic foil, and since we're trying to avoid single-use plastics wherever at all possible, they'd be out anyways. (We solved the coffee problem, the Röstorium does not only sell wonderful coffee, but also posts it in paper packaging on request. We mostly solved the meat problem, finding a regional farm shop that even packaged things for us in their own reuseable boxes and lending them to us. Fish still is unsolved, and will probably stay thusly, unfortunately.)

So... here's my recipe for ginger nuts, which turn out hot and fiery and crunchy, and taste just like I remember the bought ones from Britain and Ireland, only maybe even better.



100 g flour (I use spelt)
1 level tsp baking soda
2 level tsp baking powder
40 g sugar
7 g ground ginger
pinch of salt
50 g honeydew honey (original calls for molasses)
50 g butter
a bit of finely grated orange peel (of c half a fruit)

Melt butter and stir together with honey, warming it until all is nice and liquid. Stir together remaining ingredients, then stir the liquids into the dry mixture. Divide into 16 parts, form each part into a ball, flatten slightly, and bake at c 190° C no fan for about 10-13 minutes. Take care not to let them turn brown.

These will be quite spicy, so maybe go down a bit on the ginger if you like them more mild!

With the pandemic still wreaking havoc on all plans for cons and such, I'm utterly delighted to be part of an online convention: Flights of Foundry!

It's getting better still: The con is free to join! You can register via the website link above. It will take place on Discord (mostly) on April 16-19 (depending on your timezone) and there's a lot of programming planned already. Around the clock, to give everyone from everywhere the opportunity to join in for interesting and exciting things.

Just like I did at the actual real WorldCons that I went to in the past, I will hang out in the dealer's room, and I'll give a presentation about medieval spinning techniques! That will be on Sunday, 13:00 German time. It's all very exciting, and I'm very much looking forward to this. How good that there's still a bit of time to figure out how everything will work...