Just About Ready to Give Up....

 Well, here we are half a year later, and I'm still not able to move photos into my blog page. The Carpenter-in-Chief is trying to find time to help me, but all we know at this point, after a visit to a camera store and then a computer geek outfit, is that my new camera will not interact with old photos taken on the older camera. This has something to do with the amount of pixels, I understand. The solution is to move all old photos to a memory stick, delete them from the camera card, and then the current camera card should, once again, be able to interface correctly with the new computer. 

Time is very difficult to come by, as the C-in-C is involved in a lot of volunteer work. When he does have time, other things like a vacation to visit family out west or a dying garden  (we're in a drought) understandably take precedence, along with his increasing volunteer work helping newcomers deal with government paperwork.

The bookbinder's workshop I began last Fall is still being worked on, with a lot of the furnishings and the tools, machinery etc. being well under way or done, but there is no time really to deal with the actual building carcass. I had hoped to have the building ready to accept all the furnishings in six weeks from now, but that is unlikely to happen. 

The wooden shoe workshop needs its lighting done before I can finish that project. Several smaller projects I started to fill in time are also waiting for help, as it's becoming increasingly difficult to source needed materials on the internet (we have no hobby shops here in town!).

In the meantime, our son and his wife moved from Alberta to Nova Scotia, and we have yet to go visit and see their new house. We did visit with our daughters in Alberta, as well as with my brother on Vancouver Island, and while I was out there my youngest daughter gave me a book nook project kit that I'm dying to start on. However, given the backlog of projects currently on my storage shelves, I can't in good conscience start something else before I finish some nearly finished projects....

I'll soon have another birthday, and just hope I can hang around long enough to finish my projects (and that includes my other hobbies, like quilting, sewing and knitting).

I need to find the Fountain of Youth!

Still Around, Believe It or Not!

 A lot has happened since my last post - in October - and I'm still at it with  miniatures, although with all the mess I created while "cleaning up" not all that many minis have gotten done.

I'm still not able to get at my photos, but as I've now changed computer programmes, I hope to figure that out in the near future. I had been operating on Windows 12, but I'm now somewhat more modern!

Our mini get-togethers have changed to Tuesdays, and as I prescribed a thorough sort-out of all my far too many hobby projects, I've been taking various knitting, sewing and embroidering projects rather than mini ones to those.

Don't give up on me, I will now be able to at least blog again.

Oh Boy!

 My house looks like a disaster area, as my daughter has used her last day with us here to go through all the boxes that need to move to the other side of the country. In the process, we discovered that two large portfolios of art work were totally destroyed by mould; somehow, they got wet and then the fungus began to grow. It's kind of heart-breaking to see all those sketches, drawings and paintings end up in a bonfire.

We have NOT had time to go over the camera, so the Carpenter-in-Chief will try, once again, to help me figure out how to move photos to the blog. Our daughter's flight leaves at 5:45 tomorrow morning, which means having to be at the airport at 4:45, and it is at least a half hour's drive. I will be more than just slightly worn out tomorrow, and will have to make do with perhaps three hours of sleep, as we are having a visit with her mother-in-law this evening.

However, the good news is that our mini/craft afternoons will be resuming, and I will definitely stay awake for that. Both of my mini partners have moved from houses to apartments, so it has been a very long job to thin down decades of accumulation for them. Many minis have also had to go....

I've had a significant birthday, and have received the beginnings of a very large 1/12 scale pub, that was begun at least 25 years ago, so I had better get moving.

Thank you for continuing checking out the blog, one way or another I will start posting progress on a great many projects within a few days.

Still Here, Still Working....

 The previous owner of my newest camera arrives in a week, and will hopefully give me some help in how to move photos from the camera to the desktop and from there to the blog. I was, kind of, under the impression that improvements in electronic technology meant that operating these various computer-assisted items would become easier, but it appears that they just become more and more complex, difficult for those of us who are, ahem, older! I long for the day when all my devices will respond to my voice commands!

There is another carpet in the making, rather a complex design that I can only do for a little while each day, as my fingers cramp up. There have been a few non-urgent health issues, that have required in the last month three or more doctors' visits to deal with; among other things, I dealt with a bout of shingles on my, shall we say, "sitting surfaces", which made me rather short-tempered and not at all prepared to deal with complicated stuff. Lots of simple knitting, some puzzles, and a couple of nice days out have helped to deal with it all. The end of the road to recovery is just around the corner now, but I desperately need a week of decent sleep to be up to par again.

On my work table right now are two Christmas vignettes, one of which I hope will leave with my visitor, my younger daughter, as it is hers; we began it together, but with the distances between us now (6 or so hours by plane) it has languished, but I really would like it to be usable this coming Christmas. The other Christmas vignette is a Christmas market stall, mine unless one of my children or their partners would like it, that just needs a little tweaking and gluing to be done. I need space for the other vignettes I've been working on!

I hope to have everything up and running again in a week and a half or so. Thanks to all of you for sticking with me, it is much appreciated.

Please Bear With Me and My Camera(s)....

 This may be a bit of a messy post, as we're experiencing camera woes once again. The camera I was using has developed a mind of its own, and is flipping photos I want to import to the blog from horizontal to vertical;  no amount of editing is fixing the issue.

This little rug is now done; it was partially done, but I ran out of the background floss colour, which had no number or band on it, and finally broke down during my recent vacation and pulled out the entire previous background. I don't like pulling out! The colour scheme is interesting; it is from a very old (50 years or so) pamphlet I picked up second-hand some years ago. The size makes it useful for both 1.12 as a small rug, or in half scale as a full-size rug.

Now, this is the photo that absolutely WILL NOT behave! I have flipped it numerous times, and even cropped it to get rid of the stain on the surface to the left, but nothing works. It is from the book that I was given recently, and I did it first because I really like this blue and cream colour scheme. It is also a smaller rug - I worked it in 22 ct. instead of 18, as the pattern recommended - and will also suit both 1/12 and half scale.

This is where the mess really took off. The old camera was replaced by a new-to-me camera, that has more pixels. It came to me without a manual, and although we have managed to get it to show the thumb-nail photos on the old card, it will not allow me to take photos yet. It appears to take the photo, the flash goes, but then when I go to download it to the computer, there is no photo there. So, you'll just have to trust me when I say that I also finished a lovely Bokhara rug, in browns, reds and cream. When we figure out the new (old) camera, I'll post a photo.

In the works also are grapes; they are still too purple for my taste, which means discarding that batch of clay and starting over. I've "lost" my recipe for lovely red grapes I made a few years ago, and suspect that the instructions I tried to use this past week just gave the wrong quantities of clay to mix. I'll try again!

Baskets are also on my work table; I'm making a wooden basket with two bail handles, hopefully for the grapes when I make them. I'd also like to try making woven baskets out of card, as with a bit of patience and paint they can be made to look a lot like ash splint baskets.

Hopefully we can figure out what is going on with the cameras soon!

Here's Hoping This Works!

My camera isn't responding well, which means the following photos are likely over-exposed or out of focus, but I thought I'd try anyways!

Last Wednesday, I did some clay work for the Autumn vignette, and these are freshly dug potatoes, which I think came out fairly well.

The apple photos are very sad, in that I can't adjust the flash mechanism; we're at the tail end of the current tropical storm, which is leaving us pretty much in the dark and the camera won't work without the flash, and with the flash the colours don't show at all well. However, I'm quite pleased with the apples, they were coloured with chalks before the polymer clay was baked.

On Friday, we spent the day at a huge outdoor flea market, but it may be the last time we go, as the offerings were very very boring! It used to feature lots of antiques dealers, but nowadays seems to have personal garage sale stuff, discounted stuff, lots of homemade bath products and endless piles of crocheted novelties. However, I did find a couple of things that can be used for minis.

Although the pictures aren't that great, the frames are very nice and in 1/12 scale; I'll fill them with my own paintings one of these days.

These rather thick little 1/12 scale containers will work well in prep board settings; I think the two-handled pot will work for something like baked beans, while the little pitcher might work for pancake batter. They were very inexpensive, and small porcelain items are hard to come by locally.

Wednesdays are still "Mini Days", and I hope to make grapes for the Autumn vignette tomorrow. And I hope the endless rain stops soon.....

The Autumn Vignette So Far....

 The vine has been re-leafed, and I do like this better. The apple basket has been aged (outside only, as it will be "filled"). At the outset of this project, I stated that I hoped to make as much as possible myself, mostly out of cardboard and the like, just to prove that anything can just about become something else. 

So far, the structure is 1/4" (1 cm) foam core, doubled for the floor. The wall and door are made of packaging cardboard over foam-core scraps; the window and door frame are more cardboard.  The apple basket is made from an old school binder divider and a bit of wire. The birdhouse is a shaped scrap of 1/2" square basswood, with a roof from a bit of moss ribbon. The vine leaves are painted paper, in 4 different sizes, each shaped individually. The window glass is a piece of packaging plastic, while the box of fertiliser  (I think!) in the window is a scrap of wood and a cut-out from a gardening magazine. The stone doorstep is a strip of builder's foam, while the grey basket is a painted plastic bottle cap. 

The tools and watering can are commercially made, from my stash. And the shingles are left-overs from a very old project, each shingle cut in half to look more to scale, while the door-handle is a bit of carved and painted wood. The weathered bench is a left-over kit from a course I taught pre-Covid,while the trunk of the vine is made of floral wire and floral tape. It still needs to be "planted" on the base.

I was able to find a very simple, warm brown wooden picture frame, which the box will be set into. At the moment, I'm working out how to make a woven basket from file folder cardboard, a bit of a challenge although I do think I have instructions somewhere in my (far too many) magazine stash. 

I'm still looking for beads for the grapes, but if I can't find the right colour this week, I'll make up a batch of polymer clay grape bunches to hang on the vine, with some tiny tendrils made from fuse wire wrapped over a sewing needle.

It's coming along! And the weather has cooled, although that may be temporary; we were in the tail end of tropical storm Debbie here. And much to my chagrin, the trees are beginning to change colour and the birds are flocking. Winter is coming but not for a couple of months, I hope!