Back to the Klompenfabriek (Wooden Shoe Workshop)

 It's been a couple of insane weeks, with so much happening that miniatures have had to take a back seat for a while. We were unable to get together for our weekly on-line mini meetings, but I have been working, although not as much as I had hoped.

This is a head-on shot of the klompenfabriek as it is is now, with the buttresses still leaning against the outer walls below the windows. When the base was screwed onto the walls, the floors became uneven back there, not uncommon with MDF, which is the Carpenter-in-Chief's dolls' house building material of choice. The stringers for the stair are in the stairway space, and the wall along the side of the stairs has been cut, doorway and all This will also be the bathroom for the workshop, so I have to seal-coat and then paint both sides of the left wall white, make the door to fit, install the privy box, and then place the stairs.

The gap between the buttresses on the left is for this half wall; this is the workshop side, partially filled in with individually shaped wooden planks. The original design had house siding, i.e. overlapping boards here, but I felt that a small workshop would more likely purchase inexpensive rough planks to cover the walls. Above this planking, the wall will be "stucco", better known as paper clay....

On the hall side, this wall is completely planked. I used dollar store craft sticks, as I wanted the walls to look rough and not fancy. They will be stained in oak; as that paint is oil-based, I will have to do the work outside in the workshop, as I really dislike the smell of oil-based paints in the house.

The smaller buttress against the back wall, between the half wall and the privy door, will have a small sink and a bricked grid to stand on; that is the next part of the work to be done. (I have to make both the sink and the grid.)

The interior walls will be paper clay stucco, with bricks showing through here and there. The working Dutch door is in need of muntins in the window, and I admit to being worried that I will get glue on the perspex windows....

The floor is supposed to be "dirt", and will likely also be made of paper clay. I hope that Das/Prang clay is still available in the stores; there are constant shortages of hobby materials due to the pandemic, I am told. I have some clay, but not enough for the whole building.

Hopefully, I can make the time to do some more work on this project in the next week or so, in between knitting, making Christmas gifts (they need to be mailed mid-November) and all the normal things life tends to throw at us from time to time!

Finished a Couple More Things

 This afternoon, Marilyn and I were working away at our miniatures for our weekly session via Skype, and I managed to finish last week's planter and plants, as well as finish a basic shabby chic bathroom shelf. I am happy with the way they turned out. The planter will go on the side wall of Floriana, my shabby chic flower shop, and the bathroom shelf will be dressed with odds and ends and go into my sales box. I think the shelf might have been an old CMHH item.

As there were some leaves left over of the arrowhead plant in the planter, I potted them up to place somewhere in Floriana; perhaps they will spur me on to make the Autumn window display!

This Week's Mini Creation

When I looked at the date of this project, I gasped; it was published in the January 1998 Nutshell News/Dollhouse Miniatures, to which I subscribed at the time, and I had wanted to do it since first seeing it. It took me 22 years!

The lattice planter is a David Krupick tutorial. As I was using what I had in my scrap pile, the wood doesn't exactly match (witness the gap in the top of the diamond!), so rather than varnish it and leaving it natural wood, I'll stain and paint it, then add some age.

The leaves are printies that came with the article back then, which I will make up and plant in the planter. As yet, there is no specific place for this piece, so we'll have to see if I keep it or sell it.

 

No Minis, But Perhaps Food for the Soul?

My back garden today, around 5 p.m.

A young sugar maple, just beyond our downstairs terrace.

Taken from the front steps, this is the view out to the street.

Why these photos? Autumn has been very rapid this year, and some of the trees are already bare; I have posted photos of the garden in deep snow, and thought I'd let you see the beautiful colours here at this time of the year.

This weekend coming up, which is Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend, will be the end of most of the leaves, although I expect our apple trees to keep their leaves for a few more weeks. Winter is so long here! The trees will not leaf out until late May.....

 

This Week's Project

 

The one time I visited the Kensington Dolls' House Festival, I came home with a lot of bits and pieces and a number of kits; this is one of them, a church kneeler kit from HiJinx in the UK. I really like the way it turned out; it will go into one of my Tudor settings, once I sew it up into a cushion.

The kit was a delight to work; it came with everything, and I have lots of thread left over. I wondered why the amount of thread had been so generous, as kits usually have just enough to work a design plus a bit extra for people who don't like to work with small ends of thread (or who make a lot of mistakes, have to pull the work back, discard that thread, and continue!) If you click on the photo, you can see that the sides of the kneeler have a pattern of crosses, while there are diamond-shaped shapes, flanked by crosses, in the four corners on the top.

While packing the kit to take this photo, I found out I should have worked the design in cross-stitch; I worked it in half cross stitch needlepoint.

Lesson: Even if you think it is half cross stitch, read all the instructions before starting! 

Fortunately, the pattern worked even in half cross stitch.....