Work in Progress

Musketeers WIP

Posted by Peter on 31 Aug 2021, 21:14

Is it for laundry? :eh:
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Peter  Belgium

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Posted by steve_pickstock on 05 Sep 2021, 15:07

Good afternoon all, hope this makes up for the recent lack of updates.

It is a classic scene from the 1974 film the Three Musketeers - D'Artagnan meets the Musketeers to fight them but it turns into a fight with the Cardinal's Guard - with washing lines!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj_DmO9 ... 0d&index=4
(there is another similar scene later in the film also in a laundry)

As per the 'teaser' post, I had plans to do the scenery for this right from the start of this project. I had actually started in on it but got side-tracked by the facades and the joys of modelling with polystyrene.
The original design was to have the bases with the posts on but connected by brass wire and the washing would be strung on these wires. (I don't have a picture of that because I never got that far). Instead, after much thought, I decided that I needed to make them more durable. They are going to get picked up and put into boxes, so instead of the wire, I cut rectangles of clear styrene sheet and glued everything tight using superglue.
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And here it it is with a figure.
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These look just how I wanted them and they feel like they will survive being handled much better.
I walked away from them and left them to go off overnight.

Once the bases had been given a coat of paint, I started adding the washing.
I used a 'wet one', one of those wipe things, but the type which is water soluble, (they're only ones we have). The one I used, was one that had dried out because I forgot to seal the top of the packet back up. These are thicker and take the punishment better than a napkin or paper handkerchief. I cut the bits of wipe to size with a pair of scissors, not being too bothered about exactness, or precise positioning - it's washing on a line afterall.
Then I placed it on the 'washing line' and soaked it with matt medium solution - matt medium mixed 50/50 with water.
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The brush was still contaminated with paint at this point but I wasn't bothered because I was going to paint it white when it dried. The matt medium sticks the wipe to the sheet styrene, I don't think it sticks it permanently, but it's good enough for me.
Once the solution has dried out I will paint them white.
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I also added a fine line of white in between the sheets to simulate the actual washing line.

Addressing the lack of female and civilian figures - it was time to get Mrs P involved.
The objective was this:
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her 'posh frock' for banquets and the like.
This picture is from about forty years ago, when we were all a lot younger and a lot thinner.
Took an hour or so over this - well you have to, don't you? The figure is one of the 'command' sprue figures from the Red Box King's Musketeers set.
I made some errors on the face, I think I fixed them and then I reached the stage where I had to tell myself to "stop!" and not do any more.
She hasn't seen it yet but I am happy with it.
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For the last couple of months I have been weighing up the civilian situation - or rather the lack of it. There are very few options available - which leaves me with Imex Set 521 Pilgrims.
Initially I didn't want to touch these with a 5 metre pike shaft. There is so much I just don't like about them - the lack of character in the figures being the biggest thing. These figures are from the 1620s or 30 and so contemporaneous with the Musketeers figures and even the Revell 30YW figures but you wouldn't think so.
But enough of my ranting - it came down to was it possible to do anything with them?
These are the figures I am most interested in for peopling my streets.
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What I will be looking to do - when they arrive - is convert their function to something more suitable and their clothing to something more appropriate to Paris in the mid-1620s - brooms and washing, market stalls and so on, adding bodices with tables and converting their hats to coifs.
More of that at a later date.

Finally then some tableaux using the new laundry
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Thank you for looking in, stay safe all.
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steve_pickstock  England
 
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Posted by Konrad on 05 Sep 2021, 20:07

Again i am enthusiastic about your patience and your skills.
You're slowly bringing together the setting for a Hollywood movie.
(With very small "actors") :-D
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Posted by Santi Pérez on 08 Sep 2021, 19:38

Your collection of musketeers and accessories is growing rapidly, Steve, all of it beautifully painted. :love: :love: :love:

I also like a lot the lady in blue. You have made a fantastic work on her. :notworthy:

Santi.
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Posted by Peter on 08 Sep 2021, 21:24

I won! :shock: What did I win? 8)

Great work on that laundry Steve! :thumbup:
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Posted by PhilC on 08 Sep 2021, 21:29

Sorry to be so late in commenting this wonderful achievement... and my respects to Mrs P who could stand the pose for 40 years before the painting is complete ! :-D
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 08 Sep 2021, 21:52

Peter wrote:I won! :shock: What did I win? 8)

Great work on that laundry Steve! :thumbup:

You won exactly what I said, sir, you won kudos for suggesting that the teaser image was laundry.

I have passed the comments on to Mrs P. She no longer dresses up for events, preferring to take photos from the side-lines, but she appreciates the image, and the compliments by proxy.
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 12 Sep 2021, 18:27

Good afternoon all.

The Imex Pilgrims turned arrived on Wednesday. Overall I have to agree with PSR these are exquisite figures. The detail is very fine and clear, the mouldings (apart from the humongous relief thingies) are very good, and the plastic takes the detail well.
Having said that they are a lot of work to make them something useful.

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I selected these three to start with. The left hand figure will be converted to a sweeper with broom, I am going to make the middle figure as a woman shopping and the lady sitting will be surrounded by baskets of produce.
The same again from the back.
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So, Pickers, why don't you just paint them? Why do you need to convert them?
As my previous update these figures are from 1620s America. I don't know how accurate they are for that time and place (though I have my suspicions), but they will not do for Paris 1625.

This figure shows what I mean.
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Starting at the top - the hat would probably pass for a straw hat, but not for a felt hat, the crown is too low and the brim too narrow, and anyway a woman about the town would probably wear a coif, a white linen cap, covering her hair. Women of lesser virtues would probably not wear a cap and we will come to that in a later lesson.
The extremely well tailored bodice buttons all the way down to the waist, but what is missing (for Europe anyway) is the cloth 'tabs' around the waist of the coat - 6 or 8 of them. She wears a kerchief around her neck, which is good, and does not show her bosom as would a high status lady or a woman of lesser virtue. She does also wear an apron - which was pretty much standard at that time.
Finally, it was common for women to wear an 'over skirt', in effect two skirts, but the outer one would be tucked up to show the lower skirt, in effect showing off the fact that she actually had two skirts, and also to keep the hem out of the dirt.

I spent this afternoon - Sunday - attempting to sculpt the new details I want on these figures. I suppose I could have cut the details out of blue painters tape and applied them to the figures, but in this case I used the green stuff. Tabs are two thicknesses of material and crease and fold and generally take on a life of their own and I thought greenstuff would be best to simulate that. I also added some hair details - 'nice' girls and women generally did not show their hait and kept it tucked under their coifs. These ladies don't give a wet slap about being 'nice'.
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I have done better work. It took a long time and one figure fell onto the floor and couldn't be found - only to turn up later, after I had used the other version off the sprue. I'm not too down-hearted. The tabs look like ammo pouches, they're too big and need trimming down, but they have character and I can do a lot once the greenstuff has set - especially on the head of the broom (at least that is what I intend it to be).
The figure that was going to be shopping was the one which went AWOL on the floor and had to be replaced, so now I am going to have two tavern wenches/serving girls.
I know I am not very good at sculpting, I do not do enough but all you can do is keep trying, pushing to get better.

Stay safe all.
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Posted by Peter on 14 Sep 2021, 12:31

Nice figures indeed! Can't wait to see these conversions completed. :thumbup:
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Posted by Santi Pérez on 14 Sep 2021, 20:15

steve_pickstock wrote:...I have done better work. It took a long time and one figure fell onto the floor and couldn't be found - only to turn up later, after I had used the other version off the sprue...

I couldn't help but smile when reading this, it's something that also happens to me from time to time, and it makes you very angry when you find the lost figure after having used another like it from the same set. :mrgreen:

Best regards. :-D

Santi.
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 19 Sep 2021, 15:16

Good afternoon all,

Another small update today. Well I say small. This has taken nearly four hours of work. That and the other bits that have been going on around it.

Anyway here we go.
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This is the seated lady from the Pilgrim set, done as a fruit seller.
The cloth on the floor is a single sheet of serviette (Ikea's finest), and the fruit are what ASDA call "100s and 1000s" and the inestimable Mr Harry Faversham - from whom the idea was stolen - calls them "Sprinklies". The nice thing about them is that the sugary surface reacts instantly with superglue to adhere them.
I added hair, from under the back of her head-scarf, tabs at the back of the bodice, which is sleeveless to show the sleeves of her chemise underneath.

I am very pleased with this. There was a lot of muttering, some tensely held breaths and the odd swear word in making this happen but I think it looks like i wanted it to.

And now some ladies want oranges.
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Coming up in the near future, some more civilians including a tavern wench, a sweeper upper and a merchant called Guido, le Fromage.

Stay safe all and have a good week,
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 26 Sep 2021, 15:51

Good afternoon all, I hope you are all well.

Busy week this week, so many things going on in 'real life' as they say in internet land. What that actually means is that I didn't get a lot of time in the attic over the last few days.

I have done work on Middle Earth stuff, but not enough to merit an update, (in fact the way that is going, I am considering reducing those updates to as-and-when). However I did get some more work done on civilians for the Musketeers project.

On top of that, I was given a box not unlike this one by a lady I know.
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Her husband was given it with six bottles of wine in. Sadly he kept the wine, but his wife gave the box to me because she knows I "use stuff like this". (Which is true)
The moment I saw it, I thought 'Musketeers'! - as you do. Well, you may not but I do, so anyway. It's roughly a 30 by 30 by 30 cm cube, with space in the lid.
It really clicked into place. The little club I belong to meets in a local community centre. We do have some storage there, but because of the pestilence sweeping the land, we have not been able to access anything there for over a year. Anything I make, any armies, any terrain etc, has to be portable.
So the idea is to make this the carry case to transport the 1625 project. It will also mark the final part of this project and draw a line under it. Trays for storing the figures by faction, the wagons, ladders, civilians, perhaps even re-think the playing surface using the polytyrene sheets, so that I can put them in the case as well.

So, what have I done this week?

I ended up with two of the 'woman with pitcher'
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I went back and re-shaped the tabs on the bodices, reducing them in depth and cleaning them up with an emery board. The serving girl, also had a 'stomacher' added to the front of her bodice.
A stomacher is like an armoured plate - or it seems to be from a bloke's point of view. Actually it's a stiffened piece of fabric that goes in the front of the bodice to shape and stylishly emphasise certain parts of the feminine physique and de-emphasise others - pushing the bosom up and confining the stomach.
Then I added a new left arm to replace the one which had held the basket, so that it holds a tray.
I added a mop of hair - she is not wearing a coif or any sort of hat which suggests that she is not that respectable, though her demur, head down posture suggests she is more towards the 'nice' end of the scale than the sort of girl that takes no lip from any of the customers.
After that I took the pitcher off the other girl and added that to the tray along with a couple of beakers.
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Her friend obviously lost the jug or pitcher she was carrying and gained a sack and large bundle under her other arm.
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The girl with the broom.
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Initially I re-shaped the head of the broom, I also added some super glue to the left hand on the broom-stick, so that she is holding it over-hand rather than under-hand.
Then I added tabs to her bodice, and scribed the head of the broo before adding the woman's head.
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I added another figure to the group by picking the lady with the child from the sprue and basing her up.
The problem with the original model is that the child is wearing trousers, that come down to his ankles. I could understand if the had given the infant knee breeches like all of the other males, but no, they gave it somthing else all together. But in actual fact under 7 years of age all wore dresses - boys and girls. At 7 the boys were 'breeched' and given their first pair of breeches, otherwise it was a long dress like garment.
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In this picture you can see the hanging straps that parents used as reins to keep a grip of their kids.
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I have a friend - no seriously, I do. Over the years he has used several noms de guerre, one of which for reasons unknown to me, was Guido le Fromage. As soon as I started this project I knew that I would have to include a figure to represent M. le Fromage.

The figure I chose to base him on was this one.
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I started by trimming off the musket, and the right arm for re-positioning. (the nice thing about these Imex figures in the brown plastic, is that they glue with superglue really well)
I added greenstuff to the breeches to make them more baggy as was the fashion at the time, and added an apron. I need to add some better shaped tabs to the back of the doublet, but I did add some 'wings' at the top of the sleeves. These were a common feature on men's and women's clothing up to the 1640s and some of the Imex figures do have them, though the detail isn't always clear.
I also extended the crown of the hat.
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He is standing in front of his stall, which was made with some sheet styrene and a tissue soaked in matt medium. Cheeses will be added later, but I'm trying to find the right way to make them.
Next I finished shaping the crown of the felt hat, added a collar to his shirt, and re-did the tabs on the back of his doublet along with the tie for his apron.
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Last of all for this week I started to add cheese to the scene.
Some small white cheeses.
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And some larger wheels of cheese made from miliput, I'm waiting for these to set before I ull them apart and sand them. I also started making some loaves as well.
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I had hoped to get this further along and start some painting but there's still too much work, hopefully they will have colour on them by next week.

Stay safe all.
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steve_pickstock  England
 
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Posted by Santi Pérez on 26 Sep 2021, 19:41

As a fan of figure conversions, I'm enjoying a lot with yours, Steve. Very well done. :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Santi.
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 26 Sep 2021, 21:14

Thank you. I get a little frustrated with the time it takes to do them - waiting for the mediums to set up, but I feel I am getting better at it.
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 03 Oct 2021, 18:40

Good afternoon all.

The busy week continued - service engineers and chores etc, as a result visits to the attic were few and far between. Still some work did get done.

After some sanding and filing the sculpts, I applied some undercoat. I was unable to get hold of some of my favourite Halfords Acrylic Undercoat, and instead bought some Wilco undercoat, from Wilkinson's department store. It seems like a good alternative, reasonable price for a good quantity and it goes on well.

From left to right - Guido, Ann-Marie, Francine and Collette
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After an hour or so I had this
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They still need some work - though Anne-Marie and Francine have turned out really well (better that I had hoped) - I need to detail the faces better, and shade Francine's top better. They also need matt medium on their shiny clothing.
I also need to thin Colette's hair down a bit and paint the pitchers and jars. And if anyone is wondering the big cylindrical things on her tray are 1L stoneware mugs.

I also pcked a couple of other figures off the sprue
the preacher, and the man with the wheel barrow
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From the left to the right
The drover and his dogs, the preacher - I added some bulk to his breeches and gave him a coat over the belted jacket (something that was rarely done); the man with the barrow got more volume added to his breeches - he doesn't need anything else doing apart from his hat as he is working in his shirt sleeves. Finally the girl with the shopping received a new bundle, after I did her left arm.

The first four got their bases painted and Francine had some detail added to her jacket in the form of red braid on the tabs, wings and sleeves.
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That is as much as I managed to do today because I got distracted.

Hope ypu all stay safe
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Posted by Michael Robert on 03 Oct 2021, 19:11

Steve, your conversions turned out really well
This project is a pet project to me now. Lots of good ideas and skilfull execution
Michael
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Posted by PaulRPetri on 03 Oct 2021, 19:49

Steve I have to stop looking at your post!! Every time I have a look I want to do it to!! I then have to take a fork from the drawer and stabbed my hand to snap me back to reality and I don't plunge down another wargaming rabbit hole!!

All that being said your set ups, all of them, are in the epic grand style. Reminds me of what Peter Gilder was doing in the very early 80'd which I thought was impossible to pull off. Top ten painted troops and top ten scenery! I tip my hat to your talent!!
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Posted by Peter on 07 Oct 2021, 14:37

Great work Steve! As usual! ;-) :thumbup:
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Posted by sansovino on 07 Oct 2021, 14:44

It´s always a pleasure to visit your posts and especially this post. I like your work and I love your figure-conversions. The only wish or advice which I have, are to work still more with postures of arms. The Imex figures are quite static. To cut and form the arms in more vivid configurations, will bring more life in them. This is the only point of critic which I have in regard of such a splendid work.
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 10 Oct 2021, 18:21

Good afternoon all,
I was going to paint cheeses today, but it didn't happen. More on that later.

First of all thank you to those that have commented. You're very kind and your comments are always appreciated, they're what drive me on with this.

sansovino wrote:It´s always a pleasure to visit your posts and especially this post. I like your work and I love your figure-conversions.

Thank you.

sansovino wrote:The only wish or advice which I have, are to work still more with postures of arms. The Imex figures are quite static. To cut and form the arms in more vivid configurations, will bring more life in them. This is the only point of critic which I have in regard of such a splendid work.

Sincere criticism is always appreciated.
However, this is a tricky one,
My father used to make model farm carts and horse drawn vehicles in 1/8th scale (among other scales, and this is where I get my familiarity with the topic of horse-drawn transport and driving). He and my mother would travel the country during the summer taking their display to steam rallies and agricultural shows and showing his collection to the general public.
My mother who was a writer, observed that however much people liked looking at the models, and the real life horse-drawn vehicles; these were just what she called "the wall paper" and what people really came to see were the big steam engines (or in my case, the military vehicles. Everything else - the models tent, the craft tent, the small engines and the vintage cars - was just window dressing.

These civilians are 'wall paper', for sure they might have names and/or be 'easter eggs', (like in a Marvel film), but they're props, background colour - window dressing. They're NPCs in the game.
And as such I do not want them to take too much away from the main action which is the duelling bravos and musketeers.

The main issue with converting these IMEX figures is that the original poses themselves are quite stiff. They're useful poses if you are doing a grade school diorama about the day-to-day life of the Pilgrims, but not really representative of busy, bustling, day time (but still sinful, if you're a pilgrim father or a pilgrim mother) Paris. Generally, I would say this is not a huge problem, people are usually fairly sedate when shopping or looking after their stalls - they leave all the leaping and the running and the the jumping and the swash-buckling to the flashing blades.

I think the tweaks I have made to the figures so far work quite well, given my ability as a sculptor. Still, I need to do a boulangiere next, for which I will be using the same figure as M. le Fromage, so obviously I will need to do something different with it.
The seated male figure from the set will become a scribe comme ça
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Always useful to have a reference picture! That is going to involve more modelling than sculpting I think.

As I said though, none of these figures will have an impact on the game - they're just there for decoration. I am also on a bit of a deadline to bring this project to an end - with the club back in operation I hope to play the game soon, and there is still plenty to do.

So I wrote the above on Thirsday, today, Sunday I went upstairs to work on the figures, correct some errors, convert some more and do some painting, including the cheeses on M. le Fromage's stall.

I spent so long on various bits and pieces that when I came to actually painting - I just didn't feel like it. I think that there are some factors from the past week behind it, this dismal, boring weather is one thing, but apart from some final tweaks to the Green Knight, there was no real desire to sit down and paint.

So all of the unpainted figures fro the previous uodate are exactly as they were, and I added the following to the queue for painting.
These are still early in the process - the baker, the lady selling street food and the girl feeing the chickens. (actually she didn't need any work).
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The street food lady had tabs added to her bodice. The baker acquired what is called today in re-enacting circles, a tudor cap, that needs the crown reducing in height, I added an apron up to his chest, and more volume to his breeches. I also had to rebuild his arm. These all need filling and sanding and a bit of carving.

The scribe/clerk chap. The first thing he needed was a table - done. He needed a box or chest for his quills and inks etc - done, and he needed a chair. The chair was a lot of work, and I'm still not sure it's right but it will do for now. I also added a sword, lying on the table as per the original photo.
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The blue stuff is painter's tape which I often use to make straps.

The scribe himself still needs a lot of work, I will probably reposition his head, but it's a promising start.
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Thank you for looking in.
Stay safe, regards
Pickers

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