Merry Christmas!

Wishing the compliments of the season to all of my followers, old and new, and I hope the New Year is kind to you all!

Besides the obvious festive slant to this time of the year, I also enjoy the sort of limbo I find myself in too. For me, the couple of days before Christmas and especially the week between Christmas and the New Year, has an odd quality. I always find myself reflecting on the previous year and of course tentatively planning what will happen in the coming New Year.

When I began this blog back in September 2010, it was mainly for my benefit, a way of sharing my interests with whoever cared to read about them. My thinking back then was to create an imagi-nation; Hispañola, which would serve as a contiguous background in which to play games from a number of periods, specifically a pseudo-Spanish Civil War and in a generic post-War setting.

This never really worked out and the blog became something else entirely. I'd planned to paint figures, construct model vehicles and make terrain features, all of which, like most of the blogs out there, I'd proudly post for all to see. A few life changes, domestic upheavals, my general procrastination and my tendency to fixate on planning and research, meant this that didn't happen either.

Despite all this, I've managed to gain 65 followers (when I'd previously thought 50 would be nice), accrued 25k page views (mostly people following dubious Google Image links, or just plain lost, I imagine) and this will be my 98th post (although I'd thought to end the year with  a nice round 100)... Not bad for a blog of wild flights of fancy, pseudo-history and no painted miniatures, even if I say so myself!

What has been actually most satisfying about the whole blogging experience, is the people that it has put me in touch with... the people who have found themselves here and decided to stick around by following the blog.

It's really encouraging when you attract people this way, even more so when they take the time to comment! I'm sad to say that the odds of meeting many of you are slim, which is a shame, given how interesting your own contributions to the hobby we share are, judging by your own blogs and your comments here.

With that in mind, I'd like to take the opportunity to say thank you to you all! I could have probably done it without you, but it has been so much more fun and far more enjoyable with you along!