The aftermath of the online miniature show

Glory be! My loot starts turning up in earnest now, so lots of pics....
I received some whimsical teapots and a mushroom with a hangover , made by Loredana Tonetti ( Lory's little things)

                                                   A romantic teapot with roses:

This one has found room in my tearoom ( an online workshop by Cynthia Howe)

                                  And these two teapots were sooooo funny, I couldn't resist:

                                 ( yes, they both do have lift-off covers, as has the rose teapot)



                                  I also saw a nice mushroom with a hangover and in very bad humour:

                             Which , of course , was delegated to the mouse house :-) Poor meeces....

                                                                         OK , next !

I also received the flowers I had bought from Pim Sukkerd in Bangkok, Thailand ( sorry, no website, I have nearly begged her to make one or to make her preence more known by blog, whatever. She can be found on Facebook, though). My, that gal makes wonderful flowers!


                                                       First : this vase of mixed flowers

                                going to live in a separate posh roombox ( yes , I am a posh lady....)

                                                     Lilies, for now in the selfsame roombox

                                  Roses.... They have such a wonderful warm pink/ orange color !
                               So decided to  put them on the dining table in the Kendrew House

                                                              But I ran into a bit of trouble here:

When I first put the roses onto the table I discovered that the silver was very dirty and needed to be cleaned and the wonderful dinnerware ( Stokesay , no less, giggle) , so I sighed, cleaned the table off  and cleaned all little thingies on it.

                  I love that table, btw, it was made by the late Allan McKirdy. He was a lovely man.

                                                                  I also bought some irises:

They were in a basket, so I thought I had better put them into Bluebell cottage, my adorable little cottage

                                                                     OK, next :

I had also fallen for some of Ludwina's hand-knotted carpets! Never having seen them "in person" , but having heard how wonderful they were, I nosed around at her "table"at the on-line show. One of the great things is, you have the dolls house sitting next to you while choosing a carpet, so I looked with my ruler and decided which color I wanted .

                                                     Yesterday they also arrived...

             And with a cleaned-up dinner table I could finally lay this wonderful carpet in the dining room !
                In deference to Ludwina's artwork, I put aside some chairs for one of the pictures:

                                                And here is the setting as it looks now.
                                   The rug looks somewhat blue in the pic, but in person is it darker.

The second rug , the small one, went into the young ladys'bedroom ( the only bedroom I have got, except for those of my housemaid, all others must sleep in the gutter, I am afraid)

Onthe right hand side you see a youthful sin of mine, a carpet I stitched eaons ago. It will be replaced, eventually, by something stitched on gauze, but I have a  bucket list of stitching to do, so that won't be soon, I am afraid :-)

                                                  The third was one of the little kitty mats

That went into the cat lady's house, of course !

And I also received, earlier this week, lovely sets of correspondence etc from Montserrat Folch ( Spain)

I snagged these pics from her website, as it was hard for me to photograph them . At least my dolls are going to have some social life now, I hope .

Soooooooo you can see, I had a LOT of fun at the on line show and I want to thank Shelly Norris for all the work she has done !
It is so nice to see work by people that either you did not know of, or that you could not buy at the web otherwise, or sometimes, just to dive in and look what you find :-) And happily looking / browsing for a morning behind your coffee ( I love minishows, but always need more coffee than I have time for and my feet , even in sneakers , will kill me) has definitely its points.

My very vocal Tonkinese & Edwina at work...

Last weekend the online miniature show was on again ( thank you Shelly Norris for all your hard work ! ) I enjoyed looking at all the tables ( well, virtual tables, that is ) and seeing many sellers that I either did not know of or had no access to, otherwise.
Anyway, I did fall for a  miniature cat again, made by Sue Veeder  and it arrived at breakneck speed ; I ordered on Friday and it arrived yesterday.That is one fast swimmer. Maybe customs 7 posties got tired of the noise coming from the package ...?
I have put her up in my mad-cat lady's house. She may still move yet, though.

                                                             But isn't she adorable??

On the kitchen table is really the best place for any cat, I am afraid....

While I was at it, I also added some very small nice kitties I found when on holidays , to the front of the cat                lady's house :

                               I made a set of towels for Edwina, too, so she has got to work now.

PS : I have found the button for my tags again ( after Google placed it somewhere else I could not find it,stoopidly, but I have made tags for my rcecent posts now, so that you can refer to them, if wanted)

Nicola Mascall carpet complete !

This evening I finished the little Persian carpet/ rug, designed by Nicola Mascall.  I needed to fringe it, and always ( I mean : always) forget how I did that. There are several excellent tutorials on the web, a.o. Janet Granger's  and Anna-Carin Betzen's , but  they did not work for me , somehow. So finally I went off to my own tutorial to find the stitch I wanted :-) and yes, this worked.

                                                               Taaadaa: here it is :

                                  And here it is in its own home, bathroom of my Kendrew House:

                      Now on to the next projects ! I seem to be in the swing of things again .

In case you are wondering

How my zoo fared during my holidays : well, great, thanks . They were wonderfully cared for by cat-sitters who adored them.
So here they are again:

                                                            One lazy happy Jojo

                                           

                                              One very happy stewing/baking Tiffany

And here are Fluffy and Tiffany together, next to me on the sofa :-)

It is rather funny, actually, since Fluffy has never been too happy to have another cat too near.But who could resist such a lovely little girl ?

Meet Edwina

My new housemaid!
She is a bit past "best by"date , and a   lovely kit by Sherri Colvin . I put her (plus a  gent that I don't know yet who he will be ) together day before yesterday and I dressed her yesterday. This evening draped her skirt and apron. She is due to get some towels or so in her hands , as soon as I have got them . Baby wipes seem to work well, so will go out and buy them on Friday and see whether it will work.
I added a belly and a  big bum, as her face was rather fat :-) Gent got some extra sculpey body, too. Arms and legs were padded ( kind of quilt padding , cut into strips).

.
I gave her stockings and shoes ( even buckles on her shoes) and a crocheted collar.I will have to look whether I can still find some sombre ebony medaillon in my stash , containing locks of her parents'hair or so...

OK here are the shoes :

and here is Edwina herself ! Right now down in the kitchen , but I think I am going to send her to the bathroom , it is quiet there, anyway.

The story of the Berninapass and the little red train

I do not want to keep this lovely little story from you .
I found it on a tablet, first of a series , that was set up two years ago, when the Rhätische Bahn ( the local railwayline, that operates with red trains) celebrated its100 th anniversary. The series explains about the building of the many bridges and tunnels , needed to get over and through the Alps, plus the maintenance of the lines, which is not a piece of cake, either.

Here is the translation of this first tablet:

A long time ago, when God created the high mountains from His hands, He said: "Now I am a bit tired, but before I am going to rest a bit on my cloud-home,I want to finish the creation of this world in a good way.So in the middle of these mountains I will create a lovely place.It will be sweeter than honey, a place with the name "Bernina",where all people will be reminded of My work.I will always be between these snow covered mountains. I want the sun to shine on these tops before all other mountains, and that the sunshine will only disappear after it has got dark in Poschiavo.I want the color of sky to be like that of mine eyes, that the air is as clean and clear like after a september storm, and that the smell of resin from the trees will mingle with that from the high valleys of Arosa. I want  the sound of the bells of the cows in the pastures mingling with the prayers of the people, who walk the paths and search for peace here, in the mountains. I want this place, which will one day be named Bernina, to be magical and full of consolation for those, who are tired from work and thinking. And when they are sitting next to a brook and hear the murmurs of the crystal clear water, they hear My words and it will be, as if were they sitting on My knees".

He had just spoken the word, and it happened! Immediately the mountains of Bernina stood up.And the Lord said : "that is good, but I am not yet really happy. When the time has come,a little good-natured little red dragon will take the people through this place and show them My beautiful creation"
Then he yawned and withdrew .

And in 1910 happened what He wanted: "Il trennino rosso del Bernina"was born.

( Ezio Maifrè, Tirano)

Home from holidays again...

And finally uploaded my pictures. Photobucket kept breaking down or so, but finally I got the pics into my album, Here are some of them :

This was the view at sunset when sitting on my terrace outside the apartment where I have been staying during the last years. Wonderful, isn't it ?

The famous "Montebellocurve "at the Bernina pass, where one has a  glorious view of the Morteratsch glacier.
( and yup, a  storm is breeding here)

Lei da Silvaplana Sils , near St Moritz. The river that connects them ( there are four lakes in a  row ) is the young Inn, which will flow into the Danube.

The beaurtiful green valley around Bergün , along the Albula pass.It was a  great hike.

And, finally ( for here) the Dischmatal , near Davos, where I hiked, too, I still feel my knees buckle....:-)

The whole lot is hanging out here ( in my photobucket album)

And some weeks later...

Here it is again. I was away on holidays and had brought the little carpet with me. As you can see, only the fourth outer border needs to be stitched now. I had started out too far from the corner ( no fault of Nicola, mine entirely, I am afraid, but I am rather bad at starting from the centre), so got slightly into trouble.
still, I love it. It is also easy to work on, with many small motives that just seem sto cry out "just do me before you go to sleep", so that you keep going, and it is not frogging-prone, either.
Pics of the holidays ( or  a link thereto ) to follow later, I am fighting with Photobucket right now and it is nearly steaming in an attept to swallow all those megabites :-)