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.

 

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!

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....

 

It's a Matter of Go and Stop

As you can see, construction goes on, but the need to prepare all the individual units before actual assembly is driving me a little bit crazy! The toilet area is done, I just have to install a door in the partition, but I can't glue anything in place yet, as I have to finish the hallway, install the faux slanted area of the roof, and finish the back wall before anything can be made permanent. The buttress and toilet block will help support the wall with the door, and the stairs will go on the left.

A lot of the pieces are currently living in a box, awaiting their installation. The end of the hallway area is next, to finish the walls, and the floor. Right now, the wall between the hallway and the main portion of the workshop is screwed in place, but not glued, as it has to come out again in order for me to work in that area. A slanted beam goes at the top of the wall,  and it has to be covered in "reeds" - I am using an old corn broom whisk, which is nice and dirty as it is used....

So, next up, I need to reed and beam that roof slant portion, and when that is in place, I can do the buttress and wall. When those are done, I can install a small sink area and a bricked drain. Then the hallway partition will be affixed, after which comes the slanted roof portion over the workshop, with reeds and beams. Rinse and repeat - finish buttresses, walls and floors.

It will be a while yet!

 

New Colour of Cellulose Clay

 As mentioned in the last post, Das/Prang air-dry clay has a new colour, Stone. I bought it thinking it was the white clay. Anyway, I find that I like this colour for certain applications, and the photo below shows the clay freshly applied to the wall on the hall side of the wooden shoe factory:

It is quite dark when it is fresh from the package, but as you can see in the photo below, it dries to a nice concrete colour:

I can see using this to represent cement and concrete in mini structures in the future. For the klompenmakerij, it will form a very good, slightly dirty background for the walls of the wooden shoe manufactory. Das/Prang has been used extensively in my structures over the years. Usually, I apply it directly to walls and floors, over a thin coat of wood glue; as it is a cellulose product, this is the best glue to use for it. In my house, the clay usually dries overnight hard enough to sand and paint the next day.

In case you haven't used this product before, it comes in two sizes of bricks, and in white, terra cotta and now stone. I use battens taped to my surface to dictate the thickness of the finished slab of clay, and a marble pastry roller to flatten it out, on a piece of wax paper, which makes it much easier to lift and place on the surfaces. Aside from walls and floors, I've also used it successfully to make brick slips and tiles, which I allow to dry under weights (heavy art textbooks!) between pieces of wax paper and plastic wrap. This takes longer than drying it on the surfaces themselves, of course, more like 48 hours depending on the amount of moisture in the air. However, these days I usually apply it directly to the surfaces to be stuccoed, bricked or cemented.

The brick walls of the Tudor Apothecary and Workshop were applied directly to the MDF base with wood glue, and the bricks inscribed in situ. The tile floor in the workshop was dried under weights, then cut and glued to the MDF floor. Two or three thin coats of matte, outdoor varnish waterproofed the clay tiles enough that I could use spackle compound for grout. The spackle was then tinted after it had dried.

Klompenmakerij Update

I do have half of my hand-made Christmas gifts done and ready to send off, which gives me a half day on which to work on minis. We missed two weeks of virtual meetings, so it was very nice to be able to get together again today.

Work did continue, however, so this is to show you a little of what has been accomplished (and it is just a little, sadly!). However, any progress is better than none, right?

 

The toilet is ready to be installed in the space under the stairs, at the left. I have to add "water" to the pail, and make a lid for the box, as well as dirtying up the wall a bit; it is my experience that gentlemen don't always "aim" that well. Only a part of the floor will be finished, with spackle compound painted gray, as very little of the toilet area will be visible without physical contortions, once the roof is in place. I do think it might be nice to add a duckboard to the front of the toilet box, as the floor is supposed to be dried clay.

The door to the toilet is in the process of  being worked on, part of what I did today, but requires some drilling I can't do with my little pin vice; I'll have to asked the Carpenter-in-Chief to do this for me, as well as some drilling for a little tool shelf.

The wall in the hallway is stained, and I am currently making the sink and grate for the end of this space. To give an idea, I put some of the furnishings I finished earlier, in place. The little knobs in the wall above the bench are for coats, hats and aprons. As I couldn't find my manufactured knobs, I cut some fancy toothpicks down to replace them.

The plastered wall on the workshop side of this wall has now been dirtied up and aged. There will be some tools hung here, as well as on the small shelf near the floor. I used a new colour of Das/Prang air-dry clay for this, a stone gray shade. There are photos of this as it was applied, as well as when it was dry, and I will try to get those posted later. The wall was then textured with a small wire brush, and once dry it was painted with white paint with a little bit of ochre in it, to make it look aged. The "dirt" marks around the edges were done with powdered chalks. I want this workshop to look rough and utilitarian.

This is the workshop space proper; the little stove in the right back corner will be given a better chimney and a coat of black paint before installation. (It's a pencil sharpener.) The yellow object - the inside of a Kinder Egg - is going to be transformed into a propane tank. On the little table will be coffee and tea equipment; a hot plate, kettle, and above it, a small shelf with mugs, and tea, coffee, sugar and milk at hand.

The sloped buttresses aren't in place yet, below the windows, as I have to coat them in plaster with bits of brick showing through. As they were cut from a piece of melamine shelving, I will also have to sand to give the surfaces "teeth" to grab the glue and paper clay.

Two more Christmas gifts to get done and mailed await me; I cut the pieces for one this morning, and the other one requires knitting. Once those are done, I will be able to work a little more rapidly on the wooden shoe workshop, I hope!

Progress Report Wooden Shoe Factory

 I am still trying to do some minis between all the other things I am currently working on. Today marked one of our "live" mini get-togethers; once a month we meet up in person, pandemic conditions permitting. I brought the stairway wall to begin gluing on the rough planking.

Hallway wall planked from floor to ceiling, but not yet stained. I am using skinny craft sticks, as I want my wooden shoe factory to look old and used, and those sticks are quite rough, which is the effect I am trying for.

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This shows the inside wall of the toilet under the stairs; everything in terms of partitions has to be made flat, as the working space is quite tight! The end wall will be whitewashed; right now, it has its seal coat on. The toilet box will be on the end wall. And the hall wall has been stained. There is going to be a dark area, with a small sink and faucet at the end, below the (invisible here) window. The door to the toilet opens out into the hallway, which will partly hide that sink and the duckboards on bricks under it. However, I will know it is there....

View from the other direction; the hallway side of the stair wall is being planked. This is a tedious job, as each stick has to be chamfered along the edges, and these darn sticks are skinny, too. Again, once they are in place, they will be stained. This area will have a light in it. I may have to put a candle on the toilet box, or hang a fake light bulb on a cord, with a pull-spring, for effect.

I have to have the toilet and sink in place, along with shelves and a tool holder, knobs for coats and other things, before the partitions can be glued and screwed in place, again due to the tightness of the stairs/toilet and the sink area. The back wall of the larger workshop will need to be finished, as well as the floors. I should be busy for a while yet!