From my friend Karin F I received this award , which I am passing on to my dear friend Shelly Hawley-Yan, who is such a great animal mom. She is also a great mini-artist, designing and stitching the most incredible things- imagine : 72 hpi is her favourite !!!

Thank you Karin!

Some flowers

After doing some RL needlework (hemming if you MUST know) I decided to spend the afternoon making some flowers , as described in the selfsame magazine I was bragging about in my latest post. They were done using Flowersoft for the flowers and stained paper. Of course , my leaf punch would decide to die on me, so I used ( halved)heart shapes, which were a bit small. Still , they do look nice enough. It was quite a nice project just for some hours.

Me famous ! ( bragbrag)

Yesterday I received the latest issue of one of the Dutch magazines, Poppenhuizen en Miniaturen , in which Dienke Cazemier has written a delightful article about me and my dolls houses. The pictures were absolutely wonderful !

If you look at the pics you will see two of my full size furry critters...

Something more for Bluebell cottage

Last Sunday I went to the Arnhem fair , this time in a new venue.
Although I am not overenthousiastic about the venue ( far too cramped, and the centre of Arnhem is not easy to find for non-natives), I did find some nice and neat things.
Some of them came from Anita Degen, who makes wonderful old-fashioned kitchenware, perfect for my little cottage ! Today I put them into place. An oil- cooker will be added whe she has made one( she only makes them to order) and will be put onto the table at the window.

Been off line for a month

Kitty woes !

My dear cat Floris appeared to have developed a vaccine-related sarcoma. I had never even heard of the existence of such things. After I got the diagnosis I searched the web on his prognosis and it was bad news ; they are highly malignant.
Now , since I am a cliinical pathologist, I know the drill of treating human sarcomas by heart.Clear excision , as far as possible, and radiation therapy afterwards. So I asked the vet to refer me to the Veterinary Faculty in Utrecht ( the only one here in the country).

There , they quickly made an appointment for a CTscan - CTcat - and he appeared to be clean of metastases; only a small possible remnant of the original tumor.
They advised to local brachytherapy - which is , basically , very topical radiotherapy. I delivered him there last week and yesterday I fetched him home.
I was worried sick! The guy was homesick and refused to eat for days. Fortunately they kept a good eye on him and finally coaxed him into eating and drinking.He seems to like sardines ... As soon as he was home, he was a VERY HAPPY kitty again. He is talkative , though , and a bit restless, but I trust that will be over soon( although I like the talking part).
The only immediate problem is that he seems to expect sardines again :-)
As you can see, he has still a mown part on his neck , where they had to mark the spot for injecting him ( the scar). It looks idiotic , but it does not worry either of us.

HUGE THANKS to the treating doctors at the University , for giving him a fighting chance against this tumor.

Adella

I just received my Adella kit from Nancy Conin( the best witchmaker I know of :-) ), she will make a delightful inhabitant for Bluebell cottage, I think. Must make the kit up first ,though.....

There will be some more ladies of this ilk, coming for a teaparty !

Isn't she sweet ? Thank you Nancy and Moonyeen making this possible. I already love her to bits!

and again bluebell cottage

Today I retrieved something from the post office that had been lying around there for some days, but was unable to fetch, a table filled by artisan Carol Smith from the UK, wonderful , with breads and cheese and some rats nibbling.
I will post some more pics of both later on, but first here is the interior of the cottage again: