Playing with my new toys

Today I placed the new items into my big Kendrew house :

                                                   A new kitchen sink for tweeny

 The new bathtub ( mine was 20 years old and the guy who sat in Scenic water all the time, was sitting in some unmentionabe gooey globby substance, so peeled him out and cleaned him, as I did the bathdoll

and the sink for the bathroom.

                                                               Looks much better now !

While I was at it, I also washed the babycape and draped it round the baby who is on Nanny's lap, both of them sound asleep. You may have seen that the cape was not really sitting well on the doll in the last picture, I think it is better now . Must re-dress Nanny , though ; her cotton frock, that used to be light bkue gingham, is now very light grey gingham, a color I do not care for.

Some more kitty stuff

Several months ago I bought a wonderful mini-kitty from Liz McInnes at the online show that Shelly Norris organized and last week it arrived here safe and sound! She is a  wonderful little critter and hangs out on this chest by now :-)

I had first planned to hoist her onto the dining table,full of glass and fine porcelain, but it was so full that she simply did not fit !!

And there is one other lovely thing that I stupidly forgot to photograph at the time, but here is  a lovey little cat quilt that my friend Petra made me for my birthday ( back in March ! Shame on me). It will fit very nicely in my cat house, I think....I love it to bits!

Back from Rheda

And my guests left for home ( Mary Lynne ) and for Castine ( Elga) , so this afternoon, after I had dropped Elga off at Schiphol Airport, I went home, put on the washing machine and basically droped down on the sofa:-).

It was a  great weekend, though, and besides, I got lots of presents! Elga and Mary Lynne came on Saturday night and on Sunday morning, we three plus poor Josje , who had to get up an hour earlier to be here in time, got into my not-cleaned car and drove to Rheda.

The fair was great. It was also big, with 200 stands. I had not been at this venue, but I did like it, it was roomy, clean, there was enough room to park ( but that was, maybe, because on Sunday it appeared to be much more quiet than it had been on Saturday).

I gathered a lot of things, among which supplies, etc, won't bore you with those, but here goes:

I feel for this little baby in the bath by Ankinaki dolls .She is adorable !

I wanted  to have some sanitary necessities, too , so bought ( from Hearth and Home) :

                                           a bathroom sink

                                              and a brass-leaf bath ( that PLUG !!! )

                                                        A kitchen sink

                                                 From Ray Storey I bought this lamp

And from Stokesay ware I bought several ( more than I show here, am going to wait unpacking them until I have a  nice dresser) canisters.they are as lovely as any of their things .

I also bought this doll kit from Helena Reijnen, since I need some guys for that ball in my Kendrew House ( not that anyboy can move there, any more, with those big dresses, but that is their problem)

Of course, this is the Emperor himself, but changing some colors will make the rank humbler, so quite useable.

In between we had a get together :

Afetr we got home, my three sweet passengers presented me with this lovely little , very fine papercut ( see that cat & bird in the tree?) : And yes , it is a papercut, not a drawing! From this man.

This morning Elga and I went to visit Josje and view her miniatures. Her collection is lovely and she makes such beautiful things !!!

And here the ladies are bent over Elga's beautifully made clock, Josje admiring  Elga's handiwork. Elga is a quite gifted craftswoman and she gave me thiswonderful chair to be upholstered ( I am dreaming of the chair shown in Annelles book)

MaryLynne gave me some micro-presents :

                                                           

                                                        a fun little French magnet

                                              a Braxton Payne kit and on of the house of Monet

                                              and from Rheda a little toadstool....


And Gabriëlle, another friend, made me this lovely babygoose. It is hard tp photograph , as he is hiding inside the basket....

OK it is a bit chaotic now, but so am I  , so I am signing off !

Other doll dressed

I am getting into it, it appears!

This lady comes from Helena Reijnen . Also a lady that hung out nekkidly in my big drawer of nekkid dolls. The dress went together quite easily, actually. It was glueing mostly. I usually prefer to sew the clothes, but given the construction of the clothes, that was not an option, so I went along.
My first attempt at wigging looked horrid, so this morning I peeled the wig off and did a  second try. I do like her now. Cannot think why I used to find wigging quite easy and it has become hard , I mean hard!!! Frustrating big time!!

( and yes, she is a teeny bit pregnant ).......

own webpage,too, for other kitties,

                             About a week ago I decided to make the late Floris

                                              and my elderly, but fortunately still living Fluffy,

                                                         their own pages, too.

                                Floris's page is here  and you will find Fluffy here .

Mousehouse goes hi -tech

Yesterday evening I decided to have a go at making the booklet for sale as an ebook version . For now, this is only possible for Ipad and Ipod, but the publishers seem to be working at making it accessible for other devices, too. I set the price as low as I dared (since I have to cover my costs for registering, and possible costs from Apple, too),and a friend of mine, Marja in the UK, downloaded it yesterday. It worked ! For now, it is only the English version that is available, but if anyone is interested in the Dutch version, do let me know and I will try to set that up, too. Here is the link where you can buy and download from. EDITED : this afternoon I also made the hard copy (paperback or hard cover) available for the non-paddo's . You can order a book directly from the site, they make the books up as they are ordered and an order for just one book is fine. Go to the same site and you can order the paperback from there.

WOOOHAAA ! Stacy 's dressed!

Finally ! After having several tries at dressing this beautiful little gal by Stacy Hofman, I finally clad her. My, that was an operation. First tries: dresses too stiff or too modern. Could not find fabrics or thik of decorations to go with her beautiful hair decorations, that Stacy had so painstakingly made.
Finally, I saw a pattern in DHMS last year, called Wisteria Bride by Sue Johnson. I do not need any bride, but reckoned it could double as a ball dress, as the fabric is a soft golden  color. Upon inquiring, Sue delivered the fabric pack needed for thsi dress,a LOT of silk and several laces that I would never have been able lo locate myself. Thank you Sue !
 The original decorations were roses and wisteria; would have liked it, but the flowersoft that I used on other projects is prone to bleach up in the strong light of my house and after a year it looks awful. So I settled for roses only , both wire (faux enamel and silk roses) and wire leaves,
Umm, remind me not to use Dupion silk again, unless I have to... draping is surely not my strong suit, sorry...

I also altered the bodice, since this doll is petite, and the original bodice of the pattern was a bit too modern, too.

After decorating the dress, I also added some rhinestones to the hair decorations, to make them  coordinate better with the dress. And now I have sent her to the ball. She will get a fan, promise, but not right now. Later.