Once again dollshouse knowhow applies to the real world!

Last year I figured out how to build our pergola out in the garden by planning out how I would build one in dollshouse scale.  This year, dollshouse logic has solved the troublesome issue of what to do with the wires from four CCTV cameras sprawling around our front rooms.  I spent ages trying to think where we could conceal the ugly CCTV hard drive and monitor  on the main floor and still have the camera wires reach to connect.  Bolt of lightning moment when I suddenly thought that, if it were a dollshouse, I would just drop them down through the floor to the basement out of sight. So that's what we did.  I knew there were sections of floorboards pre-cut from previous owner's renovations in both the dining room and living room.  So with a bit of measuring I was able to drill up through the dollshouse room ceiling in the basement, coming up underneath the removable floorboard in the dining room.  We bought two boxes of cable clips from B&Q and clipped the porch camera wire and the two camera wires  coming into the dining room, down and along the skirting and dropped all three wires down through the hole into the dollshouse room.  We peeled back the living room carpet, lifted the board there, and drilled up from the basement workroom to do the same with the camera wire coming into the living room.  All four wires now lead into the basement hallway where we've installed a £7 cabinet from the junk shop to hold the drive and monitor.  I still need to clip the wires up out of the way at basement level, but at least the main living floor is clear and tidy and the CCTV is functional.

It's been a DIY-filled weekend as we also installed the trellis at the side of the house today, to raise the level of the side wall to make it harder to climb over (I hope - I'm a bit concerned the trellis is so sturdy that we've actually made it easier... but it looks higher at least).  That pretty much concludes our defensive measures, let's hope it's sufficient and things improve. Our last exhausted act was to trim off the trunks of our two christmas trees (one medium-sized for the hall, one small for the dining room) and get them into their stands.  It was really time for a cup of tea after all that lot!  We'll start decorating them after work this week.

I was glad to be feeling up to all of the above, because Tuesday I had my two punch biopsies on my nose, fastened with a stitch each, and felt pretty cr*p the rest of the day and Wednesday when I went back to work.  It was done under a local anaesthetic (sp?) but was still fairly unpleasant, particularly putting the stitches in.  The doctor also removed the BCC on my back which didn't hurt at all, no nerves there?  But the wounds are healing well and I'm getting the stitches out on Tuesday.  Today I had the fun job of figuring out how to wash my hair without getting the stitches wet, managed to do it very carefully in the shower and with a towel handy for blotting.

So I spent a lot of time Tuesday and Wednesday sitting fairly motionless in my armchair trying not to move my nose much - it's surprising how much you need to do that for smiling, laughing, yawning, sneezing etc.  I kept busy with stitching up a couple of little kits from my personal advent calendar.

I made a little tree ornament from a Trimits kit - these are such good value at only £2.50 each.

And I stitched a magnetised needleminder from Sue Hawkins Needleworks - you can see it holding my needle on my Christmas House cross stitch here.  You can also see the room scene I finally finished last week and forgot to blog

I also forgot to blog last week that I made some pattern weights.  I've been wanting to make some for a while but the tutorials  I saw were either stuffed with rice (bad idea in a basement sewing room where they might attract vermin or moisture) or sand (too messy).  Then I saw a brilliant idea online of filling them with aquarium gravel.  I used the general construction shape from this video, but cut my rectangle 8.5 inches by 4.5 inches.  I filled each one with 200g of gravel (2kilo bag only £3 from Wilko) and just stitched them shut on my sewing machine.  I didn't bother with a ribbon handle as it seemed unnecessary. Voila! 10 pattern weights made from scrap fabric.  I just hope I remember I've got them next time I am using a paper pattern with fabric.

Once I started feeling better, I did some dollshousing this week on my Japanese dollshouse.  I put together a kit for a 'bamboo' made out of cut-out paper leaves, wire and kebab stick.  After I took this picture, I decided it looked too much like green paper so I dry brushed the leaves with some ochre which breaks them up a bit more realistically.  I'm preparing the ceiling for this room so once that's glued on, the bamboo will be at the back of the room and not highly visible.

I finished the rest of the sliding windows for the balcony and installed them, and now I'm working on the balcony structural supports.

On my day off, when I was still feeling a bit grotty, I made a push to finish my Torchon Lace bauble wrap and then spent a couple of hours making a pig's ear of the join that connects the beginning to the end of the lace to form a tube.  Joining lace is hard to do neatly, and as it isn't something that I do very often since I mostly work samples, I'm really bad at it.  In my own defense, I stupidly followed the instructions in the pattern book to knot off every pair with a reef knot. All's that did was to create a ridge of knots which interrupts the pattern, especially for the thick gold thread. I managed to bodge the join in the end to look acceptable from a distance.  Here's the good side, which I'm pleased with:

And here is the horrible join which is distorting the pattern terribly.  The 'spider' at the bottom has morphed from a neat oval into a giant splodge, and  there are several other problems.  I'll just have to hang the bauble so that side faces the tree trunk  :)

I did a bit of sewing this week, more because I felt I should than because I actually felt like it.  This is a smaller block which will finish at 9 inches, for my 30 sampler quilt.  I need to resew the solid purple triangles because I haven't ended up with sufficient seam allowance to avoid cutting off the points. You can see I am partway through stitching machine blanket stitch around the fused applique shapes.

This week will be the office christmas team lunch for both myself and DS at our respective workplaces - DH already had his last week. So two more weeks of work and I'll be on holiday for the holiday!  I've booked off the week of Christmas so I won't be back at work until New Year's Eve. I'm looking forward to the break.  Hope your festive preparations are well in hand!