A Bit More Productive...and a Kilt!

The poor unfinished Easter toys have been completed! Here are my fuzzy chicks and bunnies.

I made a couple of the bunnies with floppy ears. I think they turned out cute. I also like my pink chick. Thank you, Casey, for a fun little project tutorial!

I did some more work on the Anasazi rug.
There's only so much of filling in the white stitching that I can handle at once. To combat the monotony I've jumped around a bit. You can see where I still have places to fill in on this portion. I also have one more black motif to stitch on this half.
FH took me back to a doctor today. The pain in my jaw that we thought was sinus pressure isn't. It's an inflammation of the mandibular jaw that I now have proper medicine to treat. On the upside I've somehow lost a good deal of weight since the last time I was there.

I am still working on the sewing cabinet for the BD that I mentioned before. I'm waiting on the varnish to dry so I can fill the inside. I won't have handles for a while but once I get the goodies in it I will take pictures to show you.

I didn't go to sewing circle today. I still felt awful but at least I got more minis worked on. I'm trying to work through the projects that have somehow migrated out to the kitchen table (again) so I can clear it off (again) and pull out the sewing machine to try the mattresses again.

I took some pictures of FH in his Utilikilt tonight. He's letting me post one without his face here. Something about the picture with the particular (somewhat naughty) shirt and it somehow getting back to work.


Take the "somewhat naughty" as a warning. I suppose you could say it's rated "parental guidance."



It's not really that bad. ;-)

Welcome Nikinik

Здравствулте! niknik!

Hello and Welcome to my newest follower, niknik! To see beautiful sculpted dolls and lovely paintings, please visit niknik's blog Я просто живу....

Slightly More Productive and the Boys

I managed to make it to the couch with some stitching in hand. Does anyone out there remember the Anasazi Rug pattern that was featured in the July 1999 DHM? Well, that's what won.

Here's the picture from the magazine:


Here's where I am so far:
It's worked on 18-count Aida with 6 strands of floss. Almost wished I had started with pearle cotton given the consistency of the floss. But the last couple of days have been about experimentation and learning. So this fits. It doesn't look bad so far.

At least this way I have actual needlework for the sewing circle gathering this Saturday. Between this and the mattresses, there won't be a glue bottle in reach! A rarity for me at sewing circle. ;-)

Oh and since it was brought up, here's a picture of Pollux. This boy loathes the camera but I managed to get this one when he thought he would get a treat. It's really one of the better ones he has even taken.He has his father's size and a random grandparent's coloring. It's hard to fathom, but Castor used to be the same size. Here's Castor from this past December, before we knew he was really sick. Even here he is skinnier than Pollux.
Every vet we've seen says Pollux looks like a classic Siamese and Castor looks more like a Snowshoe cat. I think they're onto something. ;-)

Unproductive

I'm tired and dizzy. Not quite sure why. It appears to be "just one of those days" where I'm a bit off.

Trying to choose a color of paper for the walls in the Greenleaf is simply exhausting for some reason.

I did manage to listen to the swarm of gnats in my head and start experimenting with making realistic, modern mattresses last night. I need a bed for the Greenleaf, two for the BD, one for FH's hunting cabin, and probably others down the line so I decided to let the gnats win and started measuring.

These two pieces are the same width and length, but different thicknesses.

I only had one piece of foam that was 1/2" thick and when I went looking for more I could only find 1" thick pieces. So I thought I would play and see which I liked better.

Modern mattresses tend to be thicker these days, so 1" thick might not be a bad thing. I can always use a thinner piece for the base or box spring to make up for it.

I followed the directions for making a mattress in Dodge's Doll's House Needlecraft book and covered the 1/2" piece. I have to say I'm not happy with the way the sides turned out.

I think the cover is way too tight. I'm going to take it apart and try a wider piece of fabric for the side. That ought to do the trick nicely.

I haven't covered the thicker foam yet. I'm waiting to see how much wider the fabric needs to be for the 1/2" thickness and then I will adjust it for the 1" thickness.

I also think I will break out the sewing machine for these. I stitched the first attempt on the 1/2" by hand. The seams are alright and are holding well (huzzah for even backstitching) but it just took too bloody long. So I will be dragging the machine out at some point in the next few days and trying again.

For now I think I will drag myself over to the couch and maybe put in season 1 of the new Dr. Who. I may or may not do some stitching. I think it depends on how ambitious I feel once I leave this chair.

The Nose Knows

In case you are wondering, Castor decided to "help" me take pictures this evening.

See how regal he is? Even sick he can still be handsome. Now let's just get some meat back on those old bones so he can be sleek again.

More minis after the Sun is up again. :-)

Wanna Know A Secret?

I have a form of dyslexia. Apparently that happens with spina bifida. Mine doesn't bother me when I read... only when I spell and try to deal with numbers and equations. This sometimes can cause problems when I'm building rooms and furniture.

Kim of flowers and art mentioned a way to plan a mini room setting that she's figured out in her most recent blog post. She's making mock ups of her furniture to see how they fit into a room before she builds. I think it's fantastic!

I shared with her a trick I learned from my engineer mother and I after I posted the comment decided I should share it with everyone.

Measure your existing dollhouse room, or start with your measurements to build from. Either way it works. Get some quadrille graph paper and sketch up a scale version of your room. Calculators and rulers are both my friends and enemies. This part always takes me a while as I check and recheck my figures.

Make sure you mark where your doorways are and which way the doors need to swing to open and close. Very useful to know. Mark where the windows are and make notes of their height and how far up the wall they begin. Remember that you're working in only 2 dimensions (length and width) and you need to remember height.

A "footprint" is the term for the amount of floor space a piece of furniture takes up. I measure my furniture pieces or again use the measurements from the furniture design and make shapes from the quadrille paper that correspond to the furniture's footprint. I can move them around a floor plan and end up modifying my furniture designs to fit the room.

Remember that this trick works if you have a room and furniture or not. You can use it as a complete design tool. It's also cheaper than fancy software and you can store your furniture footprints in a box or baggy for use again on other floor plans.

This trick works great for moving into a new house too. Get room measurements and make the footprints of your real furniture to figure out how your furniture will fit into the new house. It takes a bit of time but think of the energy you save rearranging furniture! ;-)

I think any technique or trick that can be used to help visualize an idea for a 3-dimensional structure is awesome. Some of us need to see what we're working on. We just can't do it all in our heads.

Kim's got a get way of seeing things. Does anyone else out there have any tricks they'd like to share?

From My Stash 4-15-09

For a change of pace this week's stash installment will be entirely of foods I have made. None of it is currently plated since at the time I didn't really have any particular setting in mind. I was just having a ball making foods.

Mushrooms in earthenware bowls:
Blood sausages (a favorite as real food in our household):
Breads:

Potatoes:Citrus candy sticks and lollipops:
More candy sticks:
Chocolate bonbons:

Another Finish!

My white sand showed up this afternoon so I was able to finish off the quarter scale Adobe. Here's the inside portion of the setting from last time.
Now here are pictures of the outside.

The bunny trying to hide in the flower pot is my favorite. ;-)

Independence Day Vignette

It's done! I'm calling it "We the People."


I would feel smug but since I started this on Independence Day last year and it sat unfinished for months, I think I will just be happy that's finished and leave off the smugness for a faster completion time. ;-)Full shot of the left hand side.
Full shot of the right hand side.
The bag of the bag has the Declaration of Independence decoupaged on it along with some quotes from the gentlemen responsible. The sides of the bag are covered in similar quotes.
I decided Ben could stay where he was. It grew on me after a while. I did move the "United We Stand" sculpture next to him. It looked fitting.

The star decoration came from a magazine. I trimmed it up and decoupaged it to a piece of scrap wood painted deep burgundy.
The kitty on the quilt and the dog came out of my stash. They had no particular destination and I thought they looked the best.

Castor's Medicines

The injections of B12 are once a week. Not a problem.

Trying to crush pills and hide them in food = FAIL!

The steroid and the imunosuppressant pills are not cut, and therefore not that difficult (for now) to get down his throat. We shall see how well that works. He's on them for about two months.

The appetite stimulant IS cut in half and apparently tastes foul. That one may prove difficult. Fortunately it may not be necessary.

Between my health and Castor's it was decided that I will not be going to St. Louis for the miniature show this month. Fortunately I've won several items by a particularly wonderful artisan and have found various wonderful places to order supplies like hat straw, no-hole beads, and other bits that I could only find at shows before.

I think once I order my copy of Angie Scarr's new book I will color myself content with new toys for the season and not be sad to have missed the show...at least not too much.

My ME Inspired Kitchen

Anyone who knows me in person knows that Mary Engelbreit's style is something I can only handle in small doses. It's like sugar... sweet, fun, even tasty. But it should be consumed in small amounts lest my blood sugar get away from me.

That being said, the subject of this post should cause readers to feel a bit of curiosity. Why would I make a room themed after something that I like in small doses? It's simple: I made the room in a class where I wanted to learn the technique and did not want to waste the room.

My dear friend, Fay Zerbolio, was teaching her room in a bag class and I decided to take it. The theme was "Cherry Kitchen Bag." Her version of the room can be seen here. Having spent most of my time up to that point buried up to my nostrils in microfossils in a laboratory, I had no clue that Cherry Kitchen meant Mary Engelbreit. I learned. ;-)

If you followed the link to Fay's bag, you can see how perfect and ordered everything is. It's wonderful in the coordinating accessories and matching colors.

Her class was over, lunch was eaten, and the next class of the day (sugar cookies with Barb Lewis) had started when I figured out how I would make my kitchen. If it was my house nothing would match perfectly and the cats would be tearing things asunder. So that's what I did. I call it "Not Quite Fay's," which amused my dear friend greatly.

Here's the left side of the room.If you look carefully at the right side of the room, you can follow the path that the cat took to the top of the hutch. He bumped the picture and knocked over a candle stick and some cards on his way.

The tiny figures on the hutch shelves were made by Barbara Meyer of Mini-Gems. Notice the greeting cards are from almost every holiday. Obviously my mini self doesn't put things away often. I made the teapot.I still need to get a bottle of chocolate syrup and a set of modern keys for this shelf. Chocolate+Kahlua+vodka=Mudslide. The dishes are Chrysenbon that I colored with a fine tipped Sharpie pen.

Here's the over-stuffed kitty sleeping on the rug after opening the cabinet to ransack the food. The cat food is bits of a gunny eraser that I colored with paint.One of many cay toys in this room. He's made from a single pompom and a piece of thread.
Here's a better view of the toy mouse.


Here's the right hand side of the room. Notice the spilled cookie dough.

The jar of shells is a special gift from my friend, Barb H., the same person who made the Christmas cookies in a recent stash post. Fay gave all of us in the St. Louis mini group a Chia Head for Christmas one year.
Cookies from the class by Barb Lewis. I plan on getting a calico cat that is hanging on to the edge of the table.

The reason the cats trashed the room looking for food: empty food dish!
Here's my favorite part: the white mouse carrying off a jelly bean. He's in the back corner on the right side of the room.
When these rooms were displayed at the next show, the ladies made sure my room was right next to Fay's. We all had loads of giggles over it...especially Fay! :-)

Enough Fooling Around...

I have to get back to work.

This weekend FH and I mostly ran errands. Saturday he helped dig and set 13 support posts for a ramp in concrete. His shoes were covered in good old Portland cement when he got home.

Sundays are his "grumpy" days. I think it has to do with the weekend ending and the inevitable commute to work the next day. I packed him off to an impromptu picnic at the nearby park in an attempt to snap him out of being grumpy. It worked!

We ate lunch in a gazebo on the lake shore and watched a pair of mallard ducks wander around.
Then we drove to the riverfront to check on the flooding. It was down a bit since my post in March.
Then we went exploring some of the back roads around the area and discovered new ways of getting to certain areas.

Today I picked up Castor's medications from the vet and started him on his treatments. Let's just say it's going to be a long next couple of months.

On the mini front I wetted down and draped the barn star quilt on a chair for the Independence Day vignette. It's currently letting the hairspray set.
I primed the interior of the Greenleaf with Gesso, tried making the little pompom animals from Casey's Easter post but can't find my beads or paper in a suitable color (ugh)- they are deaf, blind, and footless right now... poor things...
...and started playing around with a Michael's hutch that will be a cabinet in the BD's sewing room. Pictures of the sewing cabinet will come soon.

I did get a smile today when Alice of Double Purr sent me an email saying her package of goodies arrived. I put a few little things together on Friday morning and sent them to her. Glad you like them, Alice!

I'm going to finish watching what's left of House (ahh.. Hugh Laurie!) and then see if the quilt has set. ;-)

A Dear Blog-friend is Moving

Fret not, she isn't going far!

Mary, formerly of Sunny Sunflower Miniatures has a new blog that she will be posting her miniature adventures on. Please visit her new "premises," Miz Mary's Minis.

Welcome, Miriam!

Hello and welcome to Miriam of Fairystudiokallies! If you want to see some of the most fantastic and awesome sculpting ever, treat yourself to visit to her blog! Simply amazing!

Kitty News and Mini Work

Apparently our dear Castor, aka "Bubba," is suffering from a case of pancreatitis. That added to the irritable bowel disease has caused the severe weight loss. The happy news is that it's totally treatable and in general does not cost very much.

The irritating news is 2 of the 3 medications he needs can only be given as a pill or a gel that is absorbed through the ears. This cat will not take pills. He will kill himself trying to get away if you even hint at a pill. Yet we can give him injections with no trouble. *sigh*

We are going to try and slip crushed pills into wet cat food and see if he will tuck in happily. Failing that we pay for the pharmacy to compound the medication into the gel and hope we only need one or two rounds of each before he's straightened out.

Either way he should still have between three and five more years, or hopefully longer, with us that are comfortable.

On the miniature front, I fiddled with the Greenleaf's electrical and everything works with the new junction splice. Best yet, I managed to not impale any of my fingers this go 'round. Had to reglue a couple of places on the walls. They worked loose during the man-handling process of electrifying.

Once the glue dries I can coat the interior with gesso and then start waiting for it to dry. I also drew up an annotated skematic of the wire placement. Took pictures as back-up as well.

Last night I kept walking past a plastic bag with random bits thrown into it. Or at least some of them were random. The rest was a kit for a room in a bag that had been given to me by Aunt Pat. She had thrown some other bits of paper and things in there because it all related to Halloween.



I sorted through it and put together the room using the wallpaper and flooring Pat had put in the bag. This style of room bag had a closed top that was decorated with gift tissue.. a look I really don't care for, so I trimmed the top "cover" down to fit into the bag's bottom and covered it with flooring.
Unlike the regular bags I do this one also had a piece to put at the front of the bag on the inside. Not wanting some other strange piece of craft supply cut for a specific project floating around my craft room, I decided to go ahead and use it. At least I would try something new and see if I liked it or not.

The result is: not really. There are small edges that can be seen in the opening of the bag when the piece is in place. and it being there interferes with my regular method of sliding a thin piece of plexi-glass into the front. Did I mention that piece was double-sided sticky? I did have the forethought to not stick it directly to the bag as the directions called for. Instead I stuck it onto a transparency sheet and turned it into a clear cover. Now I just have to cut a piece of plexi for the top.

Not sure what I will put in there. Probably a table with Halloween treats and a chair. Nothing too fancy. In fact unless I put something in there that is priceless (which I don't forsee) I will probably donate it to be raffled off at a miniature show or something.

The chair for the Independence Day vignette is painted. I'm waiting on FH to return from setting support posts to build a handicaped rap at a friend's home. Then we will go to the store for much-needed groceries and a bottle of hairspray. I don't use it on my hair, so I was irritated when I needed something to drape the quilt with.

Before I would take whatever needed draping to Aunt Pat's. She has a stash of the "good" stuff that you can't buy in stores anymore. It can hold pleats and drapes like magic.

For now I will be thumbing through some books to see what I can make for the Greenleaf with what I have on hand.