And Back to the Christmas Market Stall

 

Today I was finally able to wire up the lights of the market stall to my satisfaction, and this afternoon in our virtual meeting, I was able to mount some of the stock onto acetate bases, which will eventually be glued into place.

I remembered that I had a box of Christmas items suitable for miniatures sitting somewhere, so I found it and one of the results is the little Christmas creche on the counter shelf; the floor and the back are pieces of tongue depressor, reinforced with a card hinge on the back. On to that I glued a tiny Baby in the manger, and an equally tiny Mary next to that. There is also a sequin star, with gold wire rays, which is not so visible here; it may be enlarged for better viewing, I hope! There is also some "straw" here and there on the base, made from tiny snippets of fine raffia. I do like the way it turned out.

In the box I found some other items I'm now working on, including a half dozen gift bags, which need a crate to sit in. That is on my list. As well, I intend to make some shallow crates or boxes to hold loose Christmas tree decorations. 

The lighting consists of two strings of dollar store Christmas lights, one around the opening and one around the perimeter of the setting. It took three tries to get the opening swag arranged to my satisfaction, as I didn't want clusters of lights and large bare spots. It also wore out two swags of plastic holly leaves - I've left trails of them all around the house, they're very staticky - and am not sure if I will ever use those leaves again; they were so very fragile!

All in all, I am happy that I can now work on filling my little market stall with merchandise....,.

How I Finish My Rugs or Carpets - Photo-heavy!

Here's hoping this is of interest to you, my readers. Over the years, one of the refrains I hear all too often at miniature shows in my part of the world, is "I can do that myself, and it will be way cheaper". Minimum wage here in my province is around $13.00 per hour. It takes me an hour, on average, to work a square inch (2.5 x 2.5 cm cm) of carpet  or rug, depending on the intricacy of the pattern and the colour changes. This rug measures 4 5/8" x 7 1/8" (11.7 x 18.2 cm), not including the fringe, representing about $375.00 hours worth of embroidery work. The edging would be another $39.00, and the finishing and  fringing a similar amount. We are looking at upwards of $450.00 for the work alone. As costs of thread and backing aren't huge, I'll forgo material costs here.

Offered for sale in my part of the world, I would charge $75.00 - more than that people would not pay. Hmmm! Here's how it's done:

The edges of the embroidery have been trimmed, and the corners mitered and stitched down. 

( The photos insist on being vertical, so I'm sorry, we can't figure out how to get the photos to behave. I've gone to the editing function and flipped and saved them but it isn't carrying over to the blog.) Anyways, the edges are then sewn down using a herringbone stitch, which is flexible; this is important because the continental stitch, the main one used in the rug, pulls on the bias. It is necessary, once in a while, to re-align the sides by pulling and then gently pressing with a steam iron. The diagram for this stitch is in the book, which is of course sideways.... The red centre of the rug is worked in basket-weave stitch, done diagonally and alternating vertical and horizontal rows, which minimizes the bias stretch of the canvas.

This is a view of the long-arm cross-stitch I use for the edges; it gives a braided effect, helps with a crisp folded edge, and doesn't show any of the white background fabric when the carpet is on the floor.

Another vertical photo! I give up. The fringe is formed by wrapping floss around a ruler, and then cutting it off along one edge of that.

This one remained horizontal! (There are gremlins in my computer for sure.) Front side of the carpet, with some of the cut floss fringes. These still have to be separated into bundles of 3 strands of floss each, see below.

 I lay these out on my knee.

Each little bundle of 3 floss strands is doubled, pulled through 2 threads of the edge canvas, and then pulled through the loop formed, using a very tiny crochet hook. These fringes are placed in every second hole in the canvas.

We flipped this one, but it wants to be vertical. Oh well. The fringes are all in place, but are way too long; the next step is trimming them.

The fringes are brushed out nice and straight with a toothbrush, then taped in place, ready for cutting to scale fringe size. Below is a photo of the advantage of doing it this way.

The cut-off bits of floss stick to the masking tape, making them very neat and tidy and easy to dispose of!

And this is the finished rug. Altogether, I spent about 5 hours today, finishing the braided effect edge, preparing and placing the fringe, and bringing things to this point. And my customers balk at spending $75.00 for all this work....

Many miniature rugs have fringes made of frayed out fabric, glued on to the ends. Many also have glued hems, rather than sewn ones. I find that glue eventually darkens and ruins the work, and prefer to work with an eye to the longevity of my handwork. I enjoy seeing the lovely little carpets and rugs grow as I work them, which is probably why I continue making them....

Hope you found this photo essay, gremlins and all, an interesting one! I now deserve a cup of tea and a cookie.  

Progress on Another Front

 No progress has been reported on this since September 1, apparently! I decided to go back to filling in the corner motifs on this carpet, and just did the last one. Now the inner, wide border, which is about half done, is up for completion.

We are once again in complete lock-down here, thanks to the meteoric rise of the Omicron variety of Covid. Our hospitals have more than 100 people in ICU, and provincially, only 200 can be accommodated; my annual mammogram was cancelled, and it will likely be months before my new eye specialist can see me, and then there is another long wait that may need postponing, after that, if surgery is needed. I did fine, until today, when the colours on my embroidery chart started blurring and changing again. I'll give it a day before trying again....

As far as the market stall is concerned, the wiring for the perimeter is in place, and the wiring for the stall itself - a lighted swag around the front opening - is ready to be placed. That's next. I've decided to try and finish some half-finished, small projects while I am under pandemic "house arrest", just to keep my sanity. I am doing a minimum of 10 rows daily on a current sock project (one is done), as wool socks with temperatures well below zero seem a good idea! With the wind chill, we are dealing with -30 C.

Stay well and healthy!

Non-Miniature History....

Sheila's and Huibrecht's comments on the Christmas creche set has set off some memories. As we are in a lock-down here again, due to Covid, I don't know if  I will have minis to write about today. So here are a couple of interesting stories, for those who might want something to read.

The creche figures and the original paper and wire grotto were kept in a Red Cross box. This box was a heavy, wooden affair, painted light grey and with the circle and cross on top. It was probably parachuted down into the occupied Netherlands during the WWII, and found a new life for a family treasure, eventually crossing the ocean to Canada. I have absolutely no idea where it is now, as I think Dad passed it on to someone when he moved from Ontario to Vancouver Island, BC at the age of 87.

(I should mention here that my father was transferred to Canada from The Netherlands, which meant that we could bring most of our household effects with us, as well as flying  - 12 hours (in 1956) in a KLM Clipper,  via Reykjavik, Iceland because Shannon, Ireland (refuelling stop) was fogged in, rather than travelling by boat. We were very fortunate, judging by stories from other immigrants at the time, who came with what they had in their suitcases and with legally limited amounts of money; my memory thinks about $100 per person back then,  travelling 8 or more days on board a passenger ship.)

My father's earliest memory was of standing on the bank of the Maas river, with a large man in a greatcoat and a spiked helmet checking his mother's papers, so that they could cross by rowboat to Belgium. This would have been around 1917, as my dad remembered he was about 3 years old at the time. The trip was because his step-grandfather had died in Liege, and my grandmother needed to deal with some family matters there. My father's older brothers (he was the baby) always teased him that his birth, on August 1, 1914, had been the cause of the outbreak of the first world war.

My only brother has an interest in history, and somewhere, as a child, he purchased a pikkel-haub helmet at a rummage or yard sale. (One of those black helmets with a visor and a brass spike on the top.) A few years ago, he discovered that there was a name under the sweat-band of the helmet, so he looked it up. It had belonged to a German poet, with a museum in his memory in his home town. The helmet was offered to the museum by my brother, and it is now on display there.

My younger daughter purchased a couple of vintage suitcases, to turn into bedside tables for the steampunk-themed guest room in her house,  two or so years ago. In the lining of one of the suitcases, she found an identification bracelet with a full name on it. With the aid of my older daughter, who has a degree in Museum Science, they traced the name back to a Canadian soldier. Research turned up no descendants that they could discover, and I'm not sure where the bracelet is now. Had they found family members, they would have given them the bracelet.

Things hold memories; no matter how humble, a box, a helmet, a bracelet, history unfolds and tells us a tale. It's good to reflect on memories....

A Different Sort of Mini....

 

I inherited my family's Christmas creche, which from the appearance of the shepherds - the youngest is a bit of a matinee idol - dates from the twenties. Over the last 90 to 100 years, this plaster set sometimes develops a few little dings; this year, the ram came out of its wrappings with a broken neck. However, a quick visit to This to That, the excellent gluing site, had him almost as good as new. I can't ever remember our camel not having had a broken neck!

The group at the right with the ox survived the last Christmas;however, the group on the left all needed tiny touch-ups. Our Baby Jesus looks far too old to still be in the manger, he appears to be school age.....

There are three kings with a camel and a gentleman to hold on to the camel, three shepherds, the ox and the ass, half a dozen sheep - one ram, one lamb, and several ewes - along with a dog to take care of them all, and of course, the angel, as well as Mary, Joseph and the baby. Our original stable was a grotto, made by my father from a wire mesh frame covered in brown paper, and then painted and aged. A manger hung on the back wall, and there was a cooking set-up made up of a small tin can cauldron on chains hung a wooden tripod; these survived our move to Canada, but the grotto never made it to my house. We now have a simple wooden frame stable.

(I'll let you in on a secret; I had a crush on the young kneeling shepherd when I was a child, but thought the standing one was pretty cute too. The kneeling shepherd is an older man.)

It took a fair bit of paint mixing to retouch everything! The king in the orange cloak has gold-tone boots, and as one toe was chipped, I replaced the black undercoat and then used my finger to spread a bit of gold. Now, once they're dry, they can go back into their boxes until Christmas 2022. 

The set is quite large; the standing figures stand 9.5 to 10" (24.5 to 25.5 cm); I guess the camel must be a special, smaller breed.....

To a Happier 2022

My mini friends and I got together electronically on Wednesday, as the pandemic is hitting new highs in terms of infections. We had been warned that things would likely get bad post-Christmas and New Year, but 2,500 new cases in a province with less than 875,000 population is very alarming. Too many people out there have not gotten their vaccinations....

While I  did get some mini work done Wednesday, it was unspectacular; installing the light poles on the corners of my market stall base (geez, it is hard typing with a cat on your lap!), and sealing the pavement, as well as a little painting on more stuff for the stall.

This is the sun coming up on Tuesday morning, through the birch and hemlock trees, and our small, south-east facing,  front garden apple orchard. It is too bad the sparkles on the new-fallen snow don't show. We are having a snow storm, that is, 30 cm (a foot!) of snow is forecast, along with 70 to 80 km wind gusts. The snow started about twenty minutes ago, and is supposed to continue tomorrow (Saturday). It is the kind of very fine, powdery snow that tends to swirl up into serious drifts....

This is the view from my living room windows, across our back garden, much of which we have left natural (or wild!), over the Saint John river valley across to the bank on the north side of that river.

The local people call the river, Woolastooq, and there is a movement to give it back its original name, rather than the one given to it by an early explorer. (It may have been Samuel de Champlain, who hung around in these parts.) The mouth of the river empties into the Bay of Fundy at the modern city of Saint John, the river likely getting its name for being "discovered" on St. John the Baptist's feast day, several hundred years ago.

It was cold on Tuesday, -16C, and when it gets that cold and the sun is out, our sky is the most beautiful shade of turquoise blue, sometimes greenish at the horizon. This wonderful winter light is what makes this overly long cold season bearable for many of us.

May the New Year be a better one than the two that we have just endured, and happy mini-ing!