davidcook

So, I made a bookcase. Actually, I made a bookcase a while ago, starting just after Bub arrived, and finishing a few weeks back too, but I'm just now getting around to gathering the photos required to tell you all about it.
The concept was to use Lego colours, or the nearest matches I could get. I went to the local paint place with yellow, green, blue, red and orange bricks, and asked if they could colour-match to them. Amazingly, they managed with red, blue and yellow, but the green and orange were too shiny, so I had to find the nearest match manually - fortunately, the orange matched pretty closely with paint we'd already used for some highlights around the house, and there was a good green there as well. All the white is done in a colour called "nearly white", which we'd also used around the house in various places. And finally, it got a clear gloss acrylic finish over the top, because the matched paints only came in matt.

It started like this ... well, this pile actually has parts for two bookcases, the other got made and stained and put in the library:


( Three progress photos )
And finally it was done, and is in use with various books and Bub-related items in it :

To me, one of the best accounts on Twitter, possibly a reason to join up and read it all by itself, is RealTimeWWII.
As you can guess from the name, it is relaying events from WW II on the dates they happened, currently from the year 1940.
Over the last month or so, of course, it's been describing the German push through the Netherlands, Belgium, and through to Paris - for me, it brings home how desperate the situation must have looked from the UK at the time (and how incredible the evacuation at Dunkirk was).

Some examples of the tweets:
4 May - Surrounded by Germans after Allied retreat & down to 1 day's ammunition, 2,500 Norwegian troops- last in southern Norway- have surrendered.
10 May - 4.35AM German armies are now advancing into the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, & France. "Fall Gelb"- invasion of the west- has begun.
11 May - Germans invading Low Countries are just a feint. Main Wehrmacht force secretly advancing through Ardennes Forest, to trap Allies from rear.
15 May - Surrender of Dutch Army in Holland now being negotiated. Netherlands resisted for 5 days, at cost of 5000+ Dutch lives.
28 May - King Leopold has surrendered Belgium, unconditionally, to the Germans, saying: "The cause of the Allies is lost."
17 Jun - French Marshal Petain, already planning armistice with Germany: "Franco-British Union would be fusion with a corpse. Britain is doomed."
17 Jun - Noon. France's new PM, Marshal Pétain (84) on radio. "With a broken heart I tell you fighting must cease." French govt. seeking armistice.