T is for Two from Timpo

Right; because I forced horrid, boring, real life on you this morning - before it disappears under a mountain of plastic bottles, spat-gum and crisp wrappers, all choked in exhaust-fumes - here's some toys for the addicts!

I think we've seen these before, but I shot them again and we have been slowly working through the duplicate shots in posts like this!

These were real 'behave yourself' treats when we were kids; sold from counter displays (so not Christmas-or-Birthday 'boxed sets'), but priced above the single figures (so not pocket-money 'choose one's), they were guaranteed to keep us quite in the car for . . . oohh . . . whole minutes!

Nothing unusual about this chap, the brown head is common with this pose I think, and the mauve caparison doesn't get the evilBay Germany guys terribly excited, he probably needs a shield, but otherwise a nice enough stand-alone figure.

F is for the First Hornet of Spring . . .The First Hornet of Summer!

I like the hornets, they get a bad press, but are in fact less aggressive than wasps (who are - themselves - less aggressive than their press!) and have become regular visitors to the garden, always happy to pose and never having had a go at me!

Tuesday found all these (cropped and collaged to approximate scale with each other) sunning themselves on the fence panels, although two were also busy making wood-pulp for their paper nests.

The hornet (left) is a newbie, and not much bigger then a queen wasp; half the size of the big brutish-looking ones who will be getting drunk on wind-fall apples in five months time! The wasp is a worker, there has been a queen hovering round the back of the house looking for somewhere to start a nest, but this is the progeny of a sharper one, who's already got started elsewhere!

The bee seems to be a carder or mining bee of some sort, or maybe a rarer eucera? People tend to call them all bumble bees but most of them aren't! I shoot loads of fury bees through the year and one day I'll sit down with a good bee-book and sort all the pictures out - then I'll really bore you!

Earlier (last week particularly - but for most of a month now) we've had some lovely weather and a lot of butterflies have been out, I've seen holly blues, an over-wintered peacock (in March), lots of brimstones and various small whites (mostly female brimstones and female orange tips), these are speckled woods which were sunning themselves on the Spirea

At the same time I caught this ant dragging a fortnight's rations home to the nest! I have a little video I'll try and upload to Youtube, if successful a link will follow. I think the victim is a smaller beetle larva.

That worked! I'll have to do more video's? 

My favourite butterfly at this time of year (it used to be brimstones, but they are two-a-penny!) is the orange tip (or copper tip) and they can be fidgets; difficult to catch, but on cool mornings  they prove a little sluggish before they've topped-up the tan, and can be photogenic!

Something that's really hard to shoot is the bee fly, it never stops and so is never in focus as every (literally 'every') fibre of its being is vibrating like a humming bird! I love them, they seem to be a cross between teddy-bears and alien Starfighters - little pointed triangles of purposeful fur!

This is some kind of dwarf euphorbia I think, the flies and hoverflies love it at this time of year.

I also shot these commas at the end of March, the wing-edges are lacking the usually more uneven topography or crenellations distinctive of the species (particularly the left-hand example), probably due to them being over-wintered specimens who's wings have somewhat 'rounded off' with wear and tear!

It also has the darker colouration of the winter generation. The commas have two generations per year, which makes the instinctive behaviour of each all the more remarkable, as all the genetic coding has to jump a 'season' in order to get the child to act like the grandparent, not the parent!

We dumb, curious monkeys struggle to teach basic manners to our children with the aid of a compulsory schooling process, a police force and a judicial system - yet we're threatening most butterflies and most other life on earth!

News, Views Etc...Plastic Warrior No.166

Out for about a month now, so I'm slipping, but nothing to worry about yet! Issue 166 is a cracker, with all the following to tempt those living in the non-subscribing, PW-desert.

Articles

* Starting in the middle with Colin Penn's wonderful look at a medieval fort by Lone Star, which when you see it, finds you thinking "I've seen bits of that somewhere!"; but not the whole thing. He also mentions the rest of the Lone Star City range's wild west town

* 'Elastolin at 40' (part 8 - I thought it was more) gets to the American Civil War (ACW) with Alwyn Brice still at the helm

* Page 24 is the killer though; Joe Bellis has found the other [54mm] Trojan paratrooper, with card! A stunning piece in superb condition and one of the items hanging from a parachute in the card atrwork is particularly interesting . . . but you need to subscribe!

* Also of interest is Juan Martin Garcia's piece on Reamsa pirates and their relationship with MPC, which also serves to muddy the waters on those Plasticom and other premiums we've looked at here - again - subscribe!       

* 'Converters Corner' this quarter sees Les White outshine himself with a conversion that is simply sublime, described as 'Victorian/Edwardian Lady Adventurer', I suspect she's been seen defending a ranch near Dead Man's Gulch! But wait until you see what she's made of!

* 'New for 2017' by Peter Evans is missing, but then he accidentally sent it to a Blog first - you just can't get the staff! [I'm using PW 163 as a template!]

* Ashley Needham has sent in a fantastic thematic article on 'by-the-right' and left-hookers (or 'southpaws') which starts by looking at Guardsmen but manages to cover everything from Conte's Norman invaders to Airfix space invaders!

* Yours Truly's HR Production farm sets got their curtain call in this issue

* 'What The !&*$?' has no less than five question marks this quarter;

• A set of nice knights from Barney Brown (Russian copies/based-on Cherilea?)
• Eric Critchley is looking for an ID on a Hong Kong figure (which looks a bit like Joe Stalin?)
• While Brian Heaps has an orphaned pig, unknown bear (which I'll be following as I think I have one somewhere) and a rather unloved-looking, plaster-composition, prone, 1940's rifleman

* Tom Stark looks at the two recent sets of four [each set] smugglers from Replicants

* Joseph Svec shares pictures of a charming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea diorama he made for a local book store window-display in Jackson, California for Jules Verne's birthday. It includes a hand-made model of the Nautilus submarine and LP divers he found carded in fours and branded to Zenith

* A form of 'From The Archives' is this month's main editorial piece, looking at all the previous stuff on MG Southall's Dan Dare figure set, brought together in one place.

Regular Features

* 'NEWS and VIEWS and other stuff ' has a reminder of the show [see also below], which - at time of publishing this review - is less than a month away, and a reminder of the table price reduction if you fancy a go at selling your overspill spares!

Notes on the PW website, the purchase of Forces of Valour by Walterson's Industry (via Steve Weston) and the Airfix catalogue (via Jeremy Brook) are also mentioned, while Rick Berry of Michigan Toy Soldiers is advertising a new polyethylene glue/primer.

* 'Book Review' is busy this quarter with three new titles

•  'Toy Soldiers: War Games of Non-resolution in Western Sahara' by Simon Brann Thorpe is reviewed by Peter Cole of Replicants (I think we've previously looked at the website here?), it's deep stuff, but also it's guys pretending to be Toy Soldiers, a popular meme these days.
•  'The Greek Toy Soldier Scrapbook' by Markos Plytas does what it says on the cover! And John Begg will be carrying some at May's show.
•  'Soldaditos de Plastico - Reamsa' (Reamsa plastic toy soldiers) is an full update of the same title by Juan Martin Garcia originally covered in PW 157.

* 'Readers Letters' this issue cover

• A wants list of future articles from Patrick Broquet (hopefully busy writing some?)
• Britains palm trees from Peter Watson
•  Dave Clark's memories of Cherilea's Boudicca
•  The sad announcement of Harfield's closing sale, but happy for Andy and Jackie as they get to retire!
• HK rack-toys from PL Cunha
• HäT Industrie crowd-funding - Clayton Schweitzer
• Unknown Spanish Bullfight set - Colin Penn
• Takara Samurai - Mathias Berthoux
• Tom Smith / Thomas Christmas cracker spacemen from Eric Keggans
• Patric Brouquet, Juan Carlos Martin and Paul Stadinger all help ID the 'unknowns' from previous issues

* 'What's New' covers recent releases from:

·         21st Century - the WWII British swansong

·         CTS - North Koreans (ooh! A bit topical there CTS!)

·         Paragon - Alamo Mexican Regulars

·         TSSD - US Marines, Vietnam

·         TSSD - NVA

All brought back from the Chicago show by Steve Weston

Plus all the usual small-ads

Front Cover is a diorama of an Indian pow-wow from Jack Shalatain

Back Cover is a tad more grisly; a guillotine scene from David Stefancic

Remember also; for subscription details or to 're-up', for contributions, letters or queries, Plastic Warrior is now on-line through various platforms:

Facebook

Blogger

eMail; pw.editor@ntlworld.com

And they are on Paypal.

01483 722778

65 Walton Court

Woking

Surrey

GU21 5EE

UK

The old website is being run-down/retired.

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As we're looking at Plastic Warrior and as it's less than a month to the year's best polymer-fest, here's the poster again and don't forget that the table rates have been reduced!

C is for Cloisonné

Not quite up to Peter Carl's famous jewelled 'Faberge' eggs of Imperial Russia's Czars, but pretty nevertheless. My favorite type of decorative object - if I have just one! - as cloisonné tends to very rich colours due to the depth of the enamel - powdered glass - while the little trails of metal always give it an outlined, cartoon-like, quality.

Cloisonné is a method of enameling, especially curved objects, by reducing the area to be covered by breaking it into lots of little areas or chambers, using thin metal wire or ribbon which is then soldered into place.

The chambers are then filled with enamel powder (or on something as curved as this; a paste) and when fired it won't flow beyond the 'walls' of the chamber (which on these eggs; is formed of fine brass ribbon) due to a type of 'water tention' keeping them within their bounds.

From a distance we can see it's a mass of blue chrysanthemums (a typical oriental or 'chinoiserie' motif) with the odd green leaf sprinkled among the blue.

This one is a mass of butterflies or moths flying hither and thither! I don't know the significance of the holes both these eggs have, but suspect it's related to the firing; as in somewhere to hang the egg in the oven without leaving a mark in the enamel? It may be for more straightforward, decorative 'hanging' purposes?

And . . . is that the Cherilea hen we looked at the other day? It makes a good painting guide!