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When my Dad carves carousel related items he tries to imitate a particular carver with each piece. For instance the big white horse in full stride  is carved in the Parker style. This maiden was part of a Gavioli Band Organ, circa 1910. He's not trying to copy the piece but to give it the same style. In that vein I will attempt to paint her in the original colors, which will include a lot of flowered lace work. Here are some pictures taken tonight and a picture from the book that he used as a carving reference. She is obviously not quite ready for painting but I might be able to pick her up next week. She stands a lot taller than I though, just about 41" tall, so a big piece to be sure. The airbrush will definitely get a workout with this one. When she is ready to paint, everything else will pretty much come to a halt.

Well, two days in and I'm likely to fail Anne's challenge of not buying any more minis till 1/4 of what I currently have is completed. But there is a good reason, honest. You see I'm in desperate need of minis for my proposed Rohan army which has to be ready by September. I have kept the numbers low, 35 total miniatures, but to do that I opted for a good portion of Rohan Royal Guard miniatures, well because they are expensive and don't come with bows! Even more expensive when you actually have to buy them. I dug through my stuff and came up with 1 pack of 3 on foot which means I need 6 more on foot and 9 on horseback. So if anybody out there has some of these guys they are willing to give up I'm interested in talking. I'm quite certain that I can come up with something to trade for them if necessary or out right buy them. I'm not going with the throwing spear option with these guys so if you have them assembled and have long since tossed the sword arm then I can't use them. I prefer unpainted because if they are painted then I'm going to strip them back down to bare metal and plastic. Quiet frankly with this list I'm not going to win the tournament or even come close so I'm going to have to go after having the best painted army.

I know that these are sitting in one of my many "galleries" but since it I'll be picking up a new piece to work on I thought I would bring them out front for a bit. These are full size carousel horses that were carved by my Dad and painted by me. There are another half dozen or so horses and animals in various stages of completion. He has painted one horse, a giraffe (although I did the butterfly) and a lion himself, but painting really isn't his thing. So here are the ones I have done and you can see some of the others in the background. These can be quite relaxing in some ways because I get to use a 2" house brush for most of it, for some reason a size 0 Kolinsky Sable just does not get it done.


 In this next one you can see the statue that he wants me to paint in the corner. Must be somewhere between 2' and 3' tall. The lion he painted is behind this horse, its not finished yet.

 An in process shot. I love being able to paint with a house brush.

 Hippocampus was the last one I did and that's my Dad next to it
 This is the horse my dad painted, the mane is done with gold leaf. You can see the Giraffe's neck on the edge of the picture that he painted.
 The current horse in the carving stage.

So yes, my trains are suffering as well. Currently one half of the ATSF Patch district has track layed but not wired. I need to figure out a way to keep the two hollow core doors tightly together. I was making good progress on rolling stock but I ran out of the Sergeant couplers that I was using. However, just last week a box  full of couplers arrived so I have no more excuses about not getting the entire fleet finished up. Its not like I have hundreds of cars, its more like 10 - 12. Oh and I would have swore that the two beer cars I got from Exact Rail were 50' and the are actually something over 60'. I'll probably just go ahead and sell those off or trade them.  I have five ATSF Reefers that need to be weathered as well as the two CF7s. I have four background building kits to get me started on the rear portion of the layout and a lot of grandiose plans in my head. Once the layout is up and in place and the track thoroughly tested things should move right along. Unfortunately I have way to many hobbies and I can't seem to give any of them up.

The other layout is in mothballs at the moment. That is my turn of the century Colorado and Northwestern RR. I'm unhappy with the track design so it came down for the time being so that it doesn't frustrate me. There are about 30 box cars and 20 short gondola cars for that along with 3 2-8-0 (Consolidation), 1 2-6-0 (Mogul) and a two truck Heisler (that really should be a three truck Climax but that was way outside of my price range). I also need to acquire a 2 truck Shay but I'll see how I feel about that.