FML

     Every now and then I will share a little tidbit that shows just how weird my life can be.  To set the scene, I have been in the habit of putting the toilet seat and lid down for the past eight years.  This is because when Silk was a kitten, he liked to run full tilt into the bathroom, jump onto the toilet and then into the bathtub where he would run, flip, and roll around like a lunatic before leaping out of the tub and dashing to some other part of the apartment.  The problem with this is that Silk is... fearless?  ...impetuous?  ...has no concept of the consequences of his actions?  He would leap without looking, and there were a few times that I had a very soggy kitten running around the apartment.

     Flash forward to today, where for some strange reason I didn't put the lid down.  I'm guessing I was distracted by something the thugs were doing and forgot.  Or I saw something shiny.   Either way, the lid wasn't down. 

     No, Silk didn't have an impromptu bath. 

     I was taking a shower and dropped my bar of soap.  It hit the side of the tub closest to the wall, shot across the bottom, under the shower curtain, and up the other side where it described a lovely little arc and landed square in the toilet. 

     *Bloop* 

       

The Thugs: can't handle the cuteness

     After a week or two of being a minion to two tiny furbabies, I learned a couple of things.  I now had two furry alarm clocks that didn't have snooze buttons, which was good for work-days, but played havoc on my weekends when I usually slept in.  Also, I was totally unprepared for the cuteness factor, and quickly realized that they now ran the show.

     Three of their siblings had the same general colour and markings as Silk, but he had more of an orange tint, especially around the face.  The fourth sibling was totally grey and adorable, but I figured that the dividing line between cat-dad and crazy cat guy was after two cats.  Maybe I should have embraced the fact that I am a crazy cat guy and taken the grey.

     They liked napping on the back of that couch.  I miss that couch.

     What'cha reading?

     Sleepy kitteh.

     Silk likes the camera and doesn't mind posing for it.

     Velvet eventually decided that she didn't like the camera, and often looks cranky when I take a picture of her, but at this point she was still all about being cute.

     Curled feetsies.

     It didn't take long for Velvet to realize that she was a princess and to start posing appropriately.

     The thugs decided early on that they weren't going to be lap cats.  This was one of the few times that they did sit on my lap, and I think that they were simply informing me that it was past their suppertime.

       

The Kitbashes: the beginning

     My third post.  Woo-hoo, I'm on a roll.

     I know that at least some of my readers will have little to no experience with kitbashing and the world of Games Workshop miniatures.  Therefore I will include some links to wiki pages that go into more detail on some of the terminology and background for those who are interested.

     I first started doing kitbashing at a young age.  I would chop up and combine HO scale model railroad building kits to create larger or different buildings.  I also kitbashed a few 1/25 scale vehicle kits, but my interest in those waned pretty quickly.

     My dreams of having a huge model railroad have never come to fruition.  By the time I was in high school, all of my model train stuff was packed away in boxes.  Every now and then, they would be unpacked and I would start a small switching layout.  However, I would inevitably end up moving, and everything would have to be packed up again.  As I have lived in at least twenty different apartments over the years, this happened fairly often.

     In the early 90's, I got interested in Warhammer 40K and converted a few Orks.  This one is a very simple conversion, I just cut the right hand off at the wrist and rotated it so that he was shooting 'gangtsa style'.

     For this one, I chopped both arms at the shoulders so that they would stick straight out from the body, and added sleeves with putty to cover the mess I had made of it.  I also cut the right hand off at the wrist and added that knobby bracelet for reasons that escape me.  I have the memory capacity of a goldfish.  Plus it was about 25 years ago.

     Another very simple conversion.  You can probably guess what it was.

     A quick Google search gave me this picture of a sprue of the above miniatures.  They were pretty simple kits with limited options, but they did have character.

     Google turned up this image for the next batch of miniatures on a sprue.  As you can see, they had no options.  You glued on the arm and stuck him on his base.

     For this fella, I cut the middle horn off his helmet and glued it along with another one to his shoulder pad.  This was apparently before I began drilling out the gun barrels.  More on that later.

     For this happy fellow, I cut into his face, bent his lower jaw down, and carved off his mangled teeth.  Then I added new teeth (or teef, as Orks call them) made from whittled down bits of plastic and a tongue made from putty, if I remember correctly.  I also cut off his axe and gave him a second gun.

     This guy was supposed to represent the leader of my army.  I cut off his side horns and turned them downward (I still like the look of those).  I gave him a power sword and a kustom shoota made from three imperial boltguns and a chainblade.  At one time he had an odd-shaped piece glued onto his belt buckle that represented a kustom force field generator, but it is now long gone.  Although it may be lying in the bottom of one of my many bitz boxes.

     The bright and cartoonish paint jobs were typical of the day.

     I much prefer the gritty, rusted look that is popular today.  I painted these guys about four years ago.  I think my painting technique has improved a little bit.  I'll go into more depth on the process to make these guys sometime down the road.

     I think that's enough for now.  My attention span is... squirrel!

       

The Thugs: the beginning

     In May of 2011, some friends informed me that they had some kittens that needed to be adopted.  They lived in an old farmhouse outside of Ottawa and already had seven cats when someone abandoned a pregnant cat on their driveway.  They were willing to keep her, but eight cats was their limit.

     I went out to visit and of the six kittens, two continually played around me.  I had been chosen.  I had to wait a couple more weeks for them to be old enough to leave their mother, but I soon became dad to two tiny, adorable beasties.

     This is Silk.  Look at those ears.

     This is Velvet.  Her fur is soooo soft.

     Silk started practicing his mind-control powers right from the get-go.  He's very good.

     Toe beans!

     I could barely handle the cuteness.

     I like that Silk's whiskers are white and Velvet's are black.

     You can see that Velvet actually has the same markings as Silk, but as she got older her fur darkened up and the markings aren't visible anymore.

     I had no idea the impact that these two would have on my life, but it became apparent very quickly that I was their minion.

       

And so it begins...

     Welcome to my blog.  This will likely be a hot mess until I figure out what the heck I'm doing.

     The plan is to show off pictures of my cats (Silk and Velvet) and progress pictures of my builds where I take bits and pieces from various model kits and smush them together in an attempt to make what I see in my mind's eye.  There will be the occasional story about my cats or some random topic, and descriptions of the process and parts used in my builds.

     First, a couple of pictures of the thugs, Silk and Velvet:

Silk

Velvet

     And a couple of pictures of some builds:

     So there you have it.  I will start with pictures of the thugs when they were kittens and stuff that I built years ago and add more pictures every couple of days or so until I get caught up to the present.

     Stay tuned.