Forgot to mention ! And update on kitties...

During last months I actually did make some minis.

This witch was made by me in August from a kit by Nancy Cronin , who makes the best witches and crabby old ladies that I know of . As you can see , she has a mini-me with her 😁 . The kit was excellent with clear descriptions, was quite well prepared, as well. Moonyeen Möller did a lot of work on it . It was about the first mini I had made since a long time and I do owe Nancy and Moonyeen for getting me out and back on track. 

The other thing I made was (in October) a bunch of 1/24 narcissi from a kit by Georgina Steed (The Miniature Garden ) ; she makes excellent kits in 1/12 and 1/24 scale. The last ones are rather hard to find . Thank you Georgie !

The vase was made by Elisabeth Causeret.

PS the tape in the pic is a centimeter, not an " inchometer" !

                                       In the meantime my kitties are growing up fast !!

The one with the white nose is Fluffy, the black nosed one is Spotty, and the big striped tiger is Tiffany. 

Here I am ...

Long time, well, very long time no see. Had some health issues, but now have decided to take early retirement. Lots better!

Still doing real miniwork wasn't that easy; everything I tried turned out a disaster. Then , during my holidays I read an article in an old DH magazine about making a bunka rug. Thunk : I can do that ! So went to the website of  Little Trimmings (UK) , then to this page ( scroll down ) and ordered some kits.

Tadaaah, here is the first result :

Not exactly your Great Master work, but it looks nice enough! It is 16.5 x 10.5 cm.

A nice online tutorial can be found here ( Casey's minis ).

HOT !

A small heatwave in the Netherlands kept me mostly in last days....
The upside of it was that the only thing I can sensibly do on these days is sitting in front of the fan, reading or stitching ( or watching telly :-)  ) . Well, I cannot show you any stitching yet, as I have hardly started ( small sampler from a kit by Nicola Mascall).

But I can show you what my kitties do in front of the fan.....!

                                                          Mwah......

My new kitties , RL minis !!

OK , here I am again...
After the loss of Jojo and Fluffy, not only was I quite sad , but little Tiffany was, too. Although she is quite shy, she has always been a very sociable cat . So I decided to import two babybrothers.
It took about a wekk of gentle introduction :-), step by step , but we did succeed and the whole family is having the time of their lives. Three kitties playing around, tearing through the house, sometimes washing each other ( esp Tiffany loves doing that).

                                                           Spotty :

                                                   
                                              Fluffy ( looks so much like Fluffy :-) )

                              Tiffany carefully watching through netted door , for introduction :

                                                          Two playing kitties !

                                                 Tiffany and Spotty playing together

                                                       Tiffany washing Fluffy

And also....

Emma Waddell asked  on one of the FB groups members of the group to post photos of their kitchens there.

Which led me to view my Kendrew House first. I had to put in some recently acquired porceleain, anyway. While photographing, though, I saw not only layers of dust (still in situ I am afraid , grin), but also several appliances etc that had fallen on the floor or such , so some  reorganisation was sorely needed.

So I did that . What with taking pics etc took quite  a lot of time, actually. Anyay, I do have updated pics of the three kitchens now: one scullery, one kitchen, one "nice" kitchen ( where personnel also rests, as you can see, and the butler has his writing desk ).

The scullery :

Left corner :

Right corner 

Kitchen :

left corner

Nice kitchen:

left corner 

Finally....

That took a long time. But I finally finished the chest from a kit by Arjen Spinhoven today . It's not perfect , mind you , but OK..... as best as I can do.

                                 Maybe do some more mini-ing, well I do hope so.

Long time no see

I had some busy months , however and rather sad.
In March ( March 15) I had to take leave of Jojo, my big red kitty, who has been with me since about 17 years . She was a yong stray, wandering around the hospital where I worked and I adopted her. Although she was scared and grumpy during the first years she was with me, she became a really cuddly cat who could purr loudly . I really do miss her .

                                                   

                                                     Here are two pics of her :

                               This one I made when she had snatched a nice Amazon box - too small, so a                                                                perfect fit in her kitty thoughts !

       This one was made last summer , while she was basking in the sun on my balcony.


        And within 5 weeks on April 25, my poor Fluffy also went over the Rainbow Bridge.                                                
                                         This pic was taken when she was still a young kitty.

               

                                        And this is the very last pic I took  of him, poor little guy.

Tiffany and I do miss them both  !!!

Goodbye little friends.

Naughty boy and his bike

Last month I bought that naughty boy on a bicycle from Alicia Volta ( Portugal) . Unfortunately ( but Alicia did agree with me ) we both thought the bike did not quite match.
So I googled a bit , put my thinking cap on and e-mailed to the one and only maker I knew of who would/could help me : Yvonne and Carr Roberson . And yes, they could make one and yes, they did !

It arrived here last week . Yesterday I tried to glue at least on foot of that little ... to a pedal, but whtever I tried, nothing stuck, so I gave up and made a composition.

He has gate-crashed a picnic party before he will get off to his own home, but at least he is safe from playing kitties here ( Sad story : Poor Ann of Green Gables lost both her feet when Tiffany had discovered her and found a new kitty toy, sighs. Feetses never seen again).


                                                                       Here goes  :

finished the AA

And cannot wait until I have some halfway decent pictures to show, I am so happy I got through it after all problems I came upon sttching it :-) ! I really hope to do some better pics later, in real daylight etc.
The design is by Nicola Mascall ( the  problems were NOT due to her, honest, it was entirely me. Breaking an arm is definitely not a good plan if you want to do stitching, and getting mojo going again afer operation , rehab , took its own sweet time )

Anyway, here goes :

                                                    This is it, glory be !!!

And this is where it is going to live for the time being :

Hmmm, late again...

Honestly I had hoped to be able to post earlier. I made up two kits by Arjen Spinhoven , a table and a drawer-chest. The making up-part was the easy one, but painting them was quite a different animal ! I ended up throwing the chest out ( it is no fault of Arjen's, just mine :( )

Here is the table

Not a great pic, but I had nuff after 8 tries or so  ! :

And , this week , two other dollies by Debbie Dixon-Paver did arrive, hale and healthy :

                               Anne of Green Gables ( complete with very small freckles...):

                                                         and this beautifl Edwardian lady :