Happy New Year?

 We missed most of it, this year. We were away for 4 whole days at Christmas, visiting with my sister-in-law in Nova Scotia. Driving up was good for the first 6 hours, but then we hit drizzly rain, poor visibility, and then darkness hit. The last leg of the journey (2 hours) was mine, but with cataracts in both eyes and the car lights in the dense drizzle, it was a white-knuckle journey.

On the way, we made a stop in Kentville, NS and visited Freedom Miniatures there. To say I was blown away by what Shelley carries, is an understatement. It is well worth a visit if you are ever in Nova Scotia, as she has just about anything a miniaturist might want. Santa arrived! 

We picked up a number of components required for the book bindery so it appears that the project will become a reality. We just have to recover from Covid first....

On Tuesday, we headed home via the ferry across the Bay of Fundy, which halves the trip in terms of time for us. I had had a bit of a sore throat the last couple of mornings, but didn't think too much of it as the house we were staying in was dry enough my sister-in-law keeps misters going in the living room and main bedroom. But, the Carpenter-in-Chief had the entire drive from the ferry terminal to our house, as I was totally out of it. Two days in bed with headaches, fever, congestion, aching bones and so on, and then I realized I had lost my sense of taste and smell -- a test proved I had Covid. Which means we are both under voluntary house arrest until our tests come up virus-free, which cannot happen soon enough for me. The C-in-C also caught it, although a milder case, but we are still not rested enough to do very much beyond reading and sleeping. However, my sense of taste and smell has returned, thank goodness! A life without stinky cheeses and dark coffee would have been a bleak thing, indeed!

Now that we have the doors and windows, we can cut the carcase components; we are using commercial ones rather than attempting to make our own from scratch. That means cutting out the front and back, as well as the false wall, and using the commercial windows and door to mark the appropriate openings for them. The large shop window has a fancy header, which will have to be replaced as the shop is in a humble fisherman's cottage, and dentil moulding just would not have been on the builders' horizon. We'll see how that goes.

I do hope 2023 will be a good, productive, happy year for all of us!

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Our corner of the world is very much black and white today, and it really is quite lovely. No miniatures, but beautiful scenery.

 

We have had 15 cm (6") of snow over the past 36 hours, and as you can see from the white sky, more snow is on the way.

The only real colour in this photo is a small patch of light brown birch bark, which has peeled away, near the top left of centre.

The Carpenter-in-Chief, heading back uphill getting rid of the snowpile the snowplow left behind. We will shortly try to drive in this heavy, wet and sticky snow.

But it is very beautiful.....

Still Here and Still Doing Minis

Real Life keeps getting in the way of my pretty much favourite pastime,  but I haven't stopped making stuff despite that. It's just that I keep having to put the minis on hold in favour of things that need to be done. It has also been difficult to get together for Mini Wednesdays due to Real Life, like snow storms and illness, getting in the way of fun.

Although it doesn't look all that spectacular, this is the beginning of a small, two-room up and down cottage that is a late 19th century book bindery. The cottage's carcase is being provided by Santa, aka the Carpenter-in-Chief, and is a regional, wooden structure known in The Netherlands as a Zaans Huisje. or a little house from the Zaan River area, north of Amsterdam. You can look up an outdoor museum, De Zaanse Schans, where examples of these little utilitarian cottages as well as a number of windmills have been placed along the banks of the Zaan as a sort of recreated village. I first visited this museum in 1970, on my way home to Canada from the Middle East, when it was quite new and there weren't all that many buildings and mills in place yet. Most recently, I visited about 5-6 years ago with my older daughter, who wanted to see the country I grew up in. The museum had expanded dramatically in the intervening decades, and we both loved our day there.

The table is the work table, and the top of it needs an appropriate edging put on it. I'd like to try half-round for that, and think I have the correct thickness in my stash. If not, I may try sanding wooden skewers to make my own. The other pile of stained wood is the actual work bench, which fits across the back of the cottage. It has a couple of interior dividers, and a single shelf. 

The plans for the cottage are in Dutch, so I have to do some translating for my spouse. It will be finished in boards, horizontal as well as vertical, and painted in the same green colour as the trim on the wooden shoe workshop (waiting for the lights, there!), with white paint on the various architectural details. 

But, right now, I'm working away on nearly finished Christmas gifts, as they have to be in the mail next week to guarantee delivery (well, that's what the Post Office claims, anyways!). One of the reasons for the lack on entries here has been the fact that I was asked to work two  days a week at my volunteer job for "a couple of weeks", which turned into a month and a half of very physical, hard work. I admit now I'm too old for that sort of work. Last week was my first one back at one day a week. That I can still handle....

My sincere thanks to "Huibrecht", of the blog Huis ter Swinnendael, who was kind enough to send me the plans for the tools and furnishings that will create the book bindery!

Sort of Saw That One Coming....

Earlier this week, I was informed that I have cataracts in both eyes, and that it would be 3 to 4 months before surgery would be scheduled. I knew it was coming, but I had been told more than a year ago that I might have a cataract. It took 13 months to get an appointment with the eye specialist; the medical staff in our little province is worn out from Covid-related cases, and staff is retiring in massive numbers, without enough replacements wanting to come to our lovely but admittedly quiet little backwater.

I think we have only about 800,000 people in our province; Toronto alone has more than three million! Many are elderly, as our young people tend to migrate to the "bigger cities" for their careers. All three of my children live further away from me, in our own country, than the distance to here from Europe....

The downside of the wait is that my glasses are not very useful any more, and there seems little point in getting a new prescription when, in 3-4 months, I will need a completely new one  again. My sight is getting blurry, which is not so great for the detail work of miniatures....

I am doing small things for short periods, in the hope of stretching out the eye use - and as I am a person who needs something in her hands, it is a learning curve! I also read a great deal, and that is becoming a little more difficult all the time; I may have to check out large print for a while. Winter is also on the way, and I really don't like being cold, which means that I usually spend much of my winter indoors, doing things with my hands and eyes! I do, however, love to sit by my window looking out at the snowy world from the comfort of my living room, as the sun usually shines in vivid blue skies here during our coldest months.

Perhaps it is time to tackle some of the polymer clay projects waiting for my attention, or some larger miniature pieces, like furniture. We'll see!

Just to Let You Know....

...I have not disappeared from the face of the earth! We had our older daughter visiting for 3 weeks, and she headed back home Saturday morning. This evening we are expecting our son and daughter-in-law for a visit, although they will be touring the Canadian Maritimes while they are here.

There should be more blogging in the not-too-distant future....

Almost overnight, Autumn happened; the mornings are foggy and cool, but the day soon warms up. The trees are changing colour overnight, with more and more orange showing. And our apples are starting to ripen, encouraging a young porcupine to pay our front garden a visit recently. We warned our neighbours who tend to let their small dogs wander!

See you soon.

Small Progress Report

Real Life keeps getting in the way of making minis, but I did manage to get some things done. Currently, I have a box of unfinished kits into which I'm dipping when I have a bit of time to mini. Over the last ten or so days, I've manage to actually finish one of those kits. I made some slight adjustments, as the designer provided two sets of card bases for the lid and I didn't really like the thickness of that arrangements. Which means, of course, that I fiddled with it, came up with a single lid, then had to rethink the hinging arrangements, and while I was at it, I also replaced the silk ribbon ties provided with some cordonnee embroidery thread. The proportions were more acceptable to me.

The fabric provided is very dainty, and I still have some left for another small project, at some time. The bottom of the basket is also covered with a card covered with this fabric. The two halves of the lid lift up, thanks to a fabric hinge which also covered the raw edges of the fabric on top.

The little basket is woven "wicker", made with waxed linen cord. I like it, although I don't actually have a use for it right now, but I suspect it will end up in the scullery room box, currently on loan to a local living museum. There is a basket of mending in front of the settle bench, after all.

As strange as it may look, this is a view down into the bird cage, with the Japanese newspaper covered in gravel secured to the bottom. Next is the bird, and Lady Iolanthe, my older daughter who at times comments on the blog, will be here on Saturday for 3 weeks, so she can help me figure out the best sort of bird to put in the cage. She suggested a Japanese nightingale, but it may be too drab in colour to show up in the cage....

 

What I'm - Very Slowly - Working On

 My camera has been fixed, and I can use it again. It was actually fixed for me by a very nice young lady in, of all things, a record store! The mall directory implied they also dealt with cameras, but I was informed that the mall lumps records, videos and cameras together, for some reason.

  

This is a very old, laser-cut kit that was won as a door prize at either the Camden or the Boothbay Harbor, both in Maine, miniature shows, at least twenty or more years ago. It has taken me a while to get up the courage to assemble it, and at this point, I'm not sure who in the family actually won it. Anyway, I hope I can use it in my Japanese Garden room box once it is done.

This is as far as I have gotten; the instructions tell me I must be sure things are dry before I go on to the next step, and with our busy summer so far, I've got half the roof on the first level. I need to decide if I am going to put old newspaper and gravel in the bottom, and that has to be done before the next level goes on. I'd also like to put a bird on the perch, which goes right across the cage, and I'd like both the bird and the newspaper to be Japanese, to fit with the room box's theme.

There are a lot of very fragile pieces in this fabulous kit, and I have to fight the cat constantly to protect the bits that I've already glued! Another (one-day) trip is supposed to happen mid-week, so I hope to do the newspaper and gravel by the weekend, leaving me time to make the bird before our next very welcome visitor arrives, next weekend, for a 3-week visit. Stay tuned!