Two down, one to go

 Remember I had recently ( finally) started on the doll kits made by Nancy Cronin?

This was on Sept 27 when I had given them shoes, stockings, and pants ( after having put them together).

Two of the gals have now been dressed. They will get a  shawl, once I have located a sock I can vandalize for better use.
The dresses don't look much, but I can assure you that a lot of hard work was put in! Esp as I tend to sew whatever I can.
the hats are leather, btw

Elga wondered where they were going to live, so for her benefit I am adding a pic of this "room". A nice kitsch-y wooden lantern. which has to be dressed up , of course.
Elga, it will live in the guestroom.... :-) Hope you are not afraid of witches having a teaparty while you are trying to sleep!

A great story & Miss Havisham and Saoirse

About 7 weeks ago I bought ( at the Miniature on line show) two dolls from Jain Squires , Miss Havisham and a lady called Saoirse. The dolls looked both as if they would fit very well into my grisly Vic Newey pub ( the grisly story is told here ). Maybe Miss havisham would need a room of her own in the future , but in the meantime I thought she could do very well in the pub.

Alas, time went by and no dolls. So Jain, sweetly , promised to make me a replacement .She was already working on it, full steam ahaed.

And then teh miracle happened : the wandering dolls did turn up, after all !!! Both of us very happy.

I wanted to tell this story because I was very happy with how Jain handled the problem ; I owe her big time for the nice way she took it.
The new Miss Havisham will probaly travel to Kensington ( she looked great, btw )

This is Saoirse ( right hand, to the back. The innkeeper is doll by Jamie Carrington) :

...

And her is Miss Havisham, sitting by the fire, among remnanrts of forgotten guests...

( the whole front, ground floor & first floor)

Working on Witches and a Wench

I am currently workimg on dressing some wqitches made by Nancy Cronin )  actually they were made for a MSATminidolls project in 2010 or so  , but I simply did not get to it, m0ostly being sucked up by the BBB, I am afraid.
Whatever, here we are and after several days of hard work, this is less or more where I have got

You can see that a lot is still to be done, trims, wigging, draping , etc. Still, they have their shoes on, and all of them have hats waiting for them ready to wear. I made two witches´hats

( this is actually both from a tutorial on Gina Bellous site and a tutorial placed into Dolls House Miniatures  issue 215 by Kastle Kelm Miniatures.

Off now, as I will stop again for two days, due to festrivals coming up !

Tiffany has been here one year

                                           and she has developed from a very scaredy little kitty

into a quite happy relaxed gal, that just loves to play and is open to the whole world! And Fluffy, I am happy   to say, has got over his depression .

She actually knows my aerobic routine so well, that she comes near as soon as I get into the stretching routine, which she likes, as I will be able to stroke her. Of course, she is very careful while I am hopping up and down :-). She also happily sleeps on my bed, like the other two cats and loves t big time. Each morning I am awakened by a little smiling kitty face ( she does have a smile, I assure you).

I actually did a lot of miniwork ( for me, that is) today, but not much to show for it yet. Pics will come up in the next days, I hope!

And in case you are thinking

I let everyone in the world make things while I myself do nothing...Nope! Last weeks I have been busy stitching backs of chairs, designed by Nicola Mascall. Background has not been done yet, I first wanted to do the stitching
The same procedure will be followed for the seats ,
As you may see, the designs are workes in mirror images, so that they will be a pair.

The chair backs and seats, as stitched, will fit chairs made by David Booth-sorry, no website- ( well, that is the idea - I do hope it will work out!!! ). There is a third David Booth chair waiting in the wings, that will be the rose in a medaillon design.
My friend Sue Simpson from the UK took care of getting the chairs for me.Thank you so much Sue !

Besides, there is also chair no 4; that was one made  by my friend Elga from SA who was here in June (at the Rheda fair). This one is  destined to have the  stitching from Annelle Ferguson;s book ( out of print, so grab it if you can for a reasonable price....)

In between I am stitching some of the last designs Bobbie Schoonmaker made for some new slippers. I stitched two foxhead slippers and will make two sets of initialled slippers, too.

There should be space for some little schuffs or childrens slippers and some scuffs on this gauze before I take them out and finish them, maybe...

PS and besides stitching I did a big reorganisation of my stash qua dolls/doll dressing/etc!!! THAT was a lot of work! Threw two palstic drawer units out that were gone after 15 minutes next to the trash bin. Good for them.

I already told this at PP( Petit Pointers)

There are some more boxes. Three of them are labelled "stuff", "stuff"and "stuff" and I don't have the foggiest what it is them. There is also a fourth box, labelled "new", which means newer stuff, I am afraid . I still have to overturn these and look what is in them. Bwahahaa!! I think they may contain all kinds of kits and things that were unfinished , not UFO;s , but intentinally bought unfinished to work at in an undefined future.

And a box of flower kits has gone missing, it msut be out here somewhere. We are talking a two bedroom flat, mind you!

Well, that will be a  nice puzzle to solve in my bed tonight....

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.