A visit to Leonardslee in print

Many of you will know about the lovely miniature exhibition in Leonardslee gardens (UK), which were, alas,  closed to the public some years ago.

Recently, however, its creator, Helen Holland, has written a book about it. It is great fun to read! There are many pics in it, too, and although tiny, they are excellent , and every miniaturist will have a magnifier, I think, so you can study them at your leisure. Absolutely recommended reading for every lover of miniatures.

Helen kindly permitted me to snag the pic of the cover, so here goes :

You can acquire it from her site here.

Again , the Apeldoorn show

Hmm, this was a bit hard to get to the right page for posting. But I am here, finally.

Yesterday I visited the Apeldoorn fair . Obviously, I cannot drive as yet, but a friend kindly offered me a ride ( thank you Gabriëlle!) .
Thus I was also able to pick up a house , built by Herdwick Landscapes , namely Crosthwaite cottage , a version that was a bit modified to fit my windowsill (!) .
It is a LOVELY 1/24 scale house .
Here are some pictures:

This is a full view of four of its 5 rooms . I bought some furniture to go with it, but more will be added.

You may notice that there are two children in residence in the kitchen , they were made by Kate Pinsent . There are also some porcelain children, nekkid an'all, that I bought from Angel's little ones , will deal with them later!

And if you look closely enough, you can see some rats. Well, let me be honest , I bought them from Georgia Marfels and I am sure they were meant to be meeces , but I thought they would make nice little rats :-)

I am a long -time fan of Georgia and her wicked sense of humor ! She kindly allowed me to snap a pic of hers at the table. She is a lovely lady. And clever.....

Here are some of the thingies I snagged from her yesterday 

And these look big nuff in the pics , but they are very tiny .I hope to see her in Rheda again, always spend at her stall :-)

For the rest of the day I just walked around , had a good natter here and there and bought some bits and bobs for when I can do some mini-ing again. Right now, I have many ideas of course, but no way to go and try them!
Still,it was an enjoyable day, all in all.

Flowers and more flowers

Hi all, long time no see. Well, the problem was mainly  that, after that nasty fall I had back in August, my shoulder kept making trouble. Trying to keep on top of job (even though I just worked for 6 hours a day) and household chores, plus having pain nearly all the time , which did not exactly help if I tried to do anything with my hands, I simply let go.

I hope things are going to change now, though! Two weeks ago I got an implant instead of that useless shoulder; big thanks to my orthopaedic surgeon, who did an excellent job . Of course, I am still recuperating and in a strap, but that will be only one more month.

But I want to show you some things I recently received:

from my dear friend Pat in AZ, USA , these two wonderful bouquets , made by Era Pearce, IGMA fellow. Beautiful paper flowers, I am especially enamoured of the daffs, as they have such "full" trumpets. The tender irises and nearly diaphanous tulips are miracles in themselves.

And today I got this lovely surprise from Pim Sukkerd in Thailand , who works magic creating cold porcelain flowers ( you may remember having see her work before on my blog, try following the tag "fair

O M G !!!!

I will try to add another pic  tomorrow to show you how tiny they are, that lily of the valley is to die for!!!