A new adventure begins; Cobweb cottage :-)

When I was at the Apeldoorn fair, splashing out big time, I also acquired a kit from Petite Properties for their new halfscale (1/24 scale) Cobweb Cottage kit. I have taken off some days from work to do a lot of things that I ought to ( like visiting vet with my zoo,3 times, eek!,  getting winter tyres sorted , etc) , but certainly also to mini! And I love having days in a row to do this, so that I do not need to tidy all my stuff away every time, hoping I will remember where I left it when I start again.

So here we go...

Cobweb is kind of a 3D puzzle. The kit is very easy to handle ( and me being me nearly blooped big time already ). The  manual is very nice and clear, although it is about building only, so one has to think ahead about wiring, decorating, etc; well, the good ole' stuff, really.

Up till now I have glued the fireplaces together and am in the process of sticking the "beamwork"to the wallls ( I want to dry them flat under a weight, so wait until I have got the ornaments in place before building.
The fireplaces  are different, though, one has to glue them together first thing , as they will be stone (read : filler).

So this is where I am now; doesn't look much , but it still a bit of work ( well, a gal has a RL to attend to) :
           

                                         Fireplaces:

                                                         Front wall , painted

                                                beam panel , sticky tape on backside

Ditto, with side panel 

Rear panel, beams in place

Needs some mucking up, but it does look like something!

the Rijksmuseum

This week I had a guest staying with me, Anne, Lisa's daughter. She wanted to visit the Rijksmuseum, so we went!

It had been closed for years for renovation, was reopened this summer. I did not fancy going there in summer, though, as Amsterdam is a tad busy with tourists , esp these places, so I hadn't been there yet.
We saw a lot of things- well, it is not exactly small. Fortunately , like in most museums here, photography is allowed (although preferably without flash), unfortunately though, I had forgotten to take my camera and ever tried holding an Ipad steady with one hand ? It won't do !

Anne took several pics for me and I hope to put them on here next week when she will be able to send them.

I downloaded these pics from the Rijksmuseum site. One can register there and happily download to one's heart's content.


(We also saw a lot of other "olde friends" in chest, silver , porcelain , etc....I had seen many of them before- in miniature ! Esp several inlaid "Barry Hipwell"chests :-) )


Here are some things we saw at the Rijksmuseum :

If you follow the links, you can zoom in wonderfully.

The Simplicia chest ( a collector's chest , actually, looking very much like a  miniature apothecary!)

Of course , the two Petronella houses ... 

The Petronella Oortman house

The Petronella Dunois house 

and something I saw at Jens Torp recently - he just made a very limited edition of these! ( yessss, I do know where one of these went, gal)

Playing with my minis

Now that I am strapped up,(which will be,unfortunately, until the end of this month instead of last week , as originally expected), but not in incapacitating pain, I have taken up digging out and rehoming homeless minis. I am probably also going on with trying to catalogue my most important items . Not everything!
Anyway , I had a lot of food items , meats and fishies, made by Georgia Marfels (remember the gal ? She makes those delightful rats...), so here goes:

The meat/fish chest for my deli shop was actually a sideboard . I put the upper part up , using wood and for backing a plastic tile sheet ( Lamatile) with two mosaics embedded, also on wood . All food was made by Georgia. Look at those handsome lobster and crab!

Also , finally filled up the basket of the butcher's boy , standing in front of Victoria House. It ia a Roberson bike, painted with the name of my butcher (special request) . Basket had been empty for years, since the first batch of meats rumbled out one by one. Now they are glued down.

                                A little , optimistic dog watching the sausages....

THE HIGHWAYMAN!!!!

Grisly, grisly...

I recently obtained some nice whitewood furniture from Anne and Robin Lucas  Did stain it last week and then grunge again. Who said a miniaturist's life is simple ?

Most of it went into the pub. I made some extra pics as finally found out how to turn off that infernal flash on this camera, and there are some spooooky pics here.

                                                                 This is the bedroom....

and here Doris in her kitchen 

Diningroom with some forgotten guests

                                                                      Doris again

And something more...

To my great delight I was able to buy ( on Ebay) this WONDERFUL little roombox, built by Shane Downes .
I fell for it big time ,as the craftsmanship is great ( like it does show up in all pics of the earlier works I saw of his work). This is the first piece in 1/12 scale he has built, and as I am not really inyo smaller scales, I had let them pass- although regretfully, I must say.
This, however, is  a nice little project that will even easily fit onto my windowsill

I think I will make it a small second hand bookshop with an old, seedy looking man for a bookseller in it , but I haven't quite decided yet.Any other ideas , please let me know. Not a grocer, though ( have got one ), nor a pub ( have got a very grisly one) .  Hmm, I could do some Harry Potter thing , maybe...:-)

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)