Thursday 31 December 2020

Happy New Year!

My sincere wish for all of us is that 2021 will be a better year all around. It has been a horrible year, and it needs to be over. 



The reeded slanted roof portion is in place; the next step is a small sink and a mop drain in the hallway of the klompenfabriek, to be followed by "stucco" on all the remaining walls and "clay" on the floor areas. When that is done, I can install windows and doors, and then this room box should look more like what it is supposed to be!

Thank you for reading the blog, I hope it inspires you or simply gives a few minutes of enjoyment at the joy of tiny worlds.

 

Saturday 26 December 2020

Season's Greetings!

May 2021 be a lot better for all of us than 2020 has been! Minis have kept me sane, and my mini friends report the same thing, but I would sure like for everything to be normal again.

The work on reeding the roof of the wooden shoe factory is on-going, but at this busy time of the year Real Life has to take precedence over hobbies; that said, my sewing machine is probably happy to have a bit of a rest, after all the work it has done the last several weeks. That includes, a week and a half in the repair shop, which kind of put my schedule right off course! (The Christmas tree skirt I decided to make at the last minute, in a quilting design with endless bias seams, finally got finished at about 1 a.m. on Christmas day.

The slanted factory roof portion is nearly done, I still have glue and corn broom straw to work with and probably enough to eventually finish the entire flat section of the wooden show factory roof....

This year here the weather has been very atypical; usually I have a lovely photo of snow and ice to share with you at Christmas time, but it has been 15 Celsius here for several days, and there has been endless rain. It has been looking and feeling more like a Dutch or German Christmas in terms of weather, and the rain is the Scots mist kind, fine and nearly invisible except when it hits the windshield of your car. 

Santa brought us food gifts this year; everything from pickled carrots and jams to international chocolate and snack foods. I think I have to begin walking again, just to keep from turning into a balloon! 

Stay healthy! Be safe! And I hope to be back with miniature progress very soon!



Wednesday 9 December 2020

A Little More Done

The Christmas presents are mailed, and the only projects left to be worked on are my own, which should give me a little more time to work on the Wooden Shoe Factory. The inside of the roof of this building is supposed to look like it is thatched, which means adding reeds.



This was the sample I did today; it is a right-angle triangle that will make the roof inside look like a barn roof. The reeding has to be done on the entire length of the roof in the workshop area, so this was an attempt to see if it would work. It did, but I had to adjust the spacing in order to get things to fit into place in a logical fashion. That meant, sigh, taking off the right-hand side of the reeding in order to increase the spacing. The ochre part is the reeded area; the white areas are where beams will be glued into place.


Yes, that was only the reeded roof for the hallway; the long strip is the reeded roof for the workshop proper; I see a great deal of glue being spread upon my fingers, work area, and work apron!


The donor of the "reeds" is this old and used corn whisk; it previously got cut into to make the sleeve fence for the Japanese Garden vignette. Gradually, the corn fibres are being cut out and glued into place onto the wooden block. It will take some time....