as it's May...

as it's the start of May, I figured I'd quickly get this finished... it's been a thought for a while and is a simple enough quick bit of scenery...

the Maypole itself is one of my Woodland Scenics trees which I decided to sacrifce as finding a straight and sturdy twig was not going well... the branches were removed and a bit of g/s added to give the stump look, not that you can see them well in the pic, there are also wedges at the base were the pole was stuck in the ground... the upper garland was an old Citadel plastic shield with the main shield removed leaving just the rim, wire keeps it hanging down from the top and loads of g/s was smothered over the shield rim to get a nice irregular shape... this was then covered in a mix of leaves and purple flower bits... I had tried several different ways of doing ribbons, using thin plasticard, g/s and paper but nothing looked right... the lower garland started life as a way of having some decorative ribbons against the pole... then I discovered something very strange... they didn't have ribbons - they are a Victorian invention, as are most of the dances, and even more oddly, an invention attributed to John Ruskin, the reknowned artist (and alleged paedo) that my former university and current employer is actually named after... turns out he thought it was good healthy fun and when he was training teachers, he taught them the dances and they went to schools all over the country and took it with them - so that really annoying attempt at synchronised dancing in primary school is his fault... on the plus side I didn't need to worry about bloody ribbons...

so, just an interesting piece that any good puritan witchfinder could take great objection to...

and as you may have noticed, the flowers from Salute have made a showing, I need to restrain myself...