Once Again, Catching Up

Well, at least I now know why my right shoulder was so sore; I have injured my rotator cuff, by overdoing things getting ready for shows in April and May. This has meant that a lot of the hobbies I enjoy have had to be set aside, as most of them will make the shoulder pain worse.

So no more embroidery for the next while; no more knitting; holding a  book is finally becoming less painful, as I am faithfully doing stretching exercises several times a day. And today, while I was using my sewing machine, one of the few options currently open to me, it jammed itself up completely....

My carpenter-in-chief has taken pity on me, and is assembling another market stall as I write; it was a bit of a chore finding enough 1/4" square wood for it, since even Michael's no longer had that size of basswood in stock. However, there is enough to build the stall, which leaves me to paint and decorate and fill it up with fishy things. We bought the last stick of the necessary wood that Michael's had, which means I will have to use spray paint, as their basswood is a close cousin to balsa, and "furs" up very badly when sanded. It'll likely take a whole can of spray paint, though!

There are quite a few fish items already in my stash to fill this stall with; my older daughter gave me some lovely handmade (by her) fish quite a few Christmases ago, and I've got more sea food items that I began to put together for the Tudor Market Hall.

And speaking of the Tudor Market Hall, here am I standing in the stairway corner of the real thing, while we were at Weald and Downland Museum in Sussex, UK last month. This is the actual hall that Brian Long used to design the one that I made in miniature, and it was one of the places I absolutely had to visit on our recent trip there.

Back of my head, writing up some notes on the hall; the miniature version is very similar, but there is a loft over the stair-well in the actual council chambers; the wall below this is white-washed. My model version has no loft (pity, wish I had known it was there, lots of great storage!), and I bricked that wall in my model. The end wall, which is removable in the model, was bricked in the real thing, while I white-washed this end. We took detail photos of how the jail door was locked, and of how the stair rail was attached, for me to add to the model. Also, I think the model version of the hall is somewhat larger overall than the original. But it was another mini dream come true, to walk around in the real version of this building.

If you ever have the chance to visit Weald and Downland, and are interested in Tudor and earlier architecture, this place is just wonderful. Out of sight behind the market hall photo above are a couple of Tudor shops, with shutters that become display tables. I picked up some ideas there to incorporate into the Tudor Apothecary Shop I've built, and which is now ready to fill up with stuff. There are also farms, yeoman's houses, barns and sheds, in short, anything you might like to study if you like to build Tudor structures in miniature.

We'll see how long this pesky shoulder problem will allow me to work on minis; otherwise, it is back to jigsaw puzzles (can be done left-handed) and short periods of reading my library books....