What is this thing called 'dollshousing' again？

A few days ago, for no discernible reason, I sort of felt like working on my Japanese dollshouse again.  I haven't touched it since Autumn 2019.  I was thinking about how I might do the garden wall, and I retrieved some insulation foam from the attic stash and started pottering, and just kind of kept going.  I am using photos that I took on our Japan holiday as reference, when we saw a lot of older homes that had plain stucco privacy walls topped with black tiles in varying degrees of elaboration.

I decided on a height and took measurements and cut the foam to size, and textured it by bashing it with a wire brush.  When I went to glue the foam in place, I ran into a problem.  It turns out that when you don't use your craft glue for over a year, the opened bottles dry out and the contents of the unopened bottles separate and turn to useless watering ooze.  I hot-glued the foam to the base and scraped out some white glue gunk to glue the joins, then went upstairs to order new bottles of Aileen's Tacky Glue.

Similarly, when I went to paint the wall to match the house, I found some of my paints had dried up.  In addition, I found that I had ruined the majority of my medium and small paintbrushes on the house build, and dulled the blades in every single Stanley and craft knife.  Upstairs to order more paintbrushes online, and then 30 minutes spent extracting and replacing all the old blades using new ones from my blade stash.  Perhaps I should have done a better job when I tidied up after the Japanese house build, but I think I was so fed up after the Roof of Doom that I couldn't wait to get out of the room.

After the first coat of paint, I filled the joins and applied two more coats, with some weathering introduced into the third coat of paint while still wet.  For the top of the wall, I couldn't think of of a feasible way to create decorative tiles (the roofing strips aren't the right orientation) but I found pictures online of walls with plainer tops.  So I had a root around in the workshop and found a strip of wooden moulding I rescued from a skip, which was just the right size.  I cut pieces to fit the top of the wall, sprayed them with grey primer, painted them black, then dry brushed them with satin grey to look more like tiling.

Then I turned my attention to the little roof over the gateway.  It wasn't too hard to build the wooden frame, but when I stained it with the same stain I had used on the roof, it turned out a lighter colour.  Belatedly I realised that the stain sediment has probably all settled in the year's hiatus and I should have given the can of stain a really brisk shake and stir.

Next it was time for tiling.  I had kept a lot of scraps and leftovers from the Roof of Doom, so I had the materials.  I just couldn't remember how I used to cut the tile strips.  Examining old photos of the build showed the frequent presence of sprue snips/wire cutters, so I guess it was that?  I know I used my little power sander for grinding strips to size and neatening cuts.  Considering it took months to build the roof, you would have thought I would remember, but I don't. I have cut tile strips to fit the front and back of the roof and the glue on those is currently drying under pressure.  It feels weird to be doing this again but I am enjoying it.

This week I also finished the pink capelet and blocked it.  It's probably a little large for me but still looks nice.  I just need to add some kind of closure.  The pattern calls for a metal fastener but I am thinking perhaps ribbon ties.

On Christmas Eve I started knitting a mini bunny girl using a purchased pattern by Julie Williams of Little Cotton Rabbits. I have previously knit one of her larger bunnies and they are so cute, so was quite taken with this mini version.

Still hand quilting, and stitching the bucks lace edging to its mat fabric.  Obviously this week we were also getting ready for Christmas, wrapping presents, getting the final shop in etc.  It all felt relatively calm this year since it was only going to be us plus DS's girlfriend.  She came Christmas morning and they spent an ecstatic day together - let's hope we all don't live to regret this.  She didn't want to stay for the Christmas meal as she's a novice driver and wanted to do the one-hour-plus drive still in the daylight.  So we had our tiny turkey dinner just the three of us, and it was very nice too.  Santa brought me a quilt pattern called 'Campania Reprised' by Hat Creek Quilts, and a ruffler foot for my Janome sewing machine, as well as a Japanese dictionary and a video game.  All chosen by me of course but isn't that the best way to get exactly what you would like? My friend Anita sent me a cute kit for a dollshouse bag and some mini Japanese swords for the Japanese dollshouse, and sweet cute cat fabric.

Campania Reprised

Did Santa bring you anything crafty?  I hope Christmas day was restful and that we all stay healthy in the aftermath.

On hols to the new year, hurrah!

 Yes, yesterday was my last day of work until the new year.  DH is also on leave now, so we are planning to taunt DS on Monday as he still has to work this coming week. The 'Stop the Presses' update on Christmas from just a few hours ago is the announcement that the permitted visiting period over Christmas has been slashed to just Christmas Day itself.  This means we won't be going to the in-laws, and DS is gutted because his girlfriend won't be able to come. Which is a shame, but it does seem the sensible course of action given the statistics.  The in-laws are getting the vaccine over the next few weeks so perhaps we will be able to go down there in the new year.

I made a few Christmas ornaments this week using this tutorial that I found last year.  These are surprisingly easy to make and quite effective.  I cut a four-inch square and sewed it to a 3 1/2 inch circle.  I cut out and pressed all the triangles then did the sewing during online work meetings (with the camera off obviously).

Multi coloured

red and green

The third one is made from Liberty Tana Lawn as an ornament for my sewing room, not as a Christmas ornament.

Last weekend we took the new car out for a drive, to a big charity shop about 25 minutes away.  I donated a large ceramic Christmas vignette with a light, and came away with a few more Christmas ornaments including this rather plain ceramic house with a light. The 'white' ceramic was all in an unattractive dirty grey tinge including the snow, and the existing paint applied in a slapdash manner.

DH asked 'why did you buy that?' but I thought it had good bones.  I tried out some acrylic craft paint on it (visible in the second picture above) and it seemed to be sticking fine, so I kept going. It was rather fun giving the house a new look.  I finished it off with a few misted coats of spray matte varnish.

gratuitous shot of Christmas decorations

I finished the body of the knitted capelet and have started on the collar which is knit separately.  The body seems to have come out a bit too big, I'll see what it looks like once the collar is joined on.  The yarn I am using is thicker than the recommended weight which is why I picked a smaller size, but perhaps not small enough.

I also finished the applique zip pouch  by sewing in the zipper, which is not entirely even but there you go, it's finished.

So this week I put up the remainder of the copious Christmas decorations, and we went for the final grocery shop before Christmas (barring some veg which I will pick up locally in the week).  Even though we left it until 8pm, the supermarket was fairly busy with people some of whom weren't even trying to social distance so it felt rather hazardous.  We wrapped the gifts for the in-laws as well today but now I suppose I had better try to get them into the post.

I've had a few online Christmas parties the past few weeks, both with work and with some online groups I attend.  But today was a different online experience for me: an online funeral, or to be accurate, a Celebration of Life.  My father's sister, whom I was not close to, passed earlier in the week.  The Celebration was hosted from the funeral home where a small socially distanced group had gathered, and then about 30 others joined virtually from around the country.  As one of the speakers said, many of those attending could not have done so if it had been a normal physical funeral.  The internet allows even the unwell and elderly to take part.  It was actually quite nicely done, with various anecdotes supplied by people who knew the deceased.  All positive of course, no warts-and-all depictions, funny how that is.  

I'm hoping to have a relaxing couple of weeks now with lots of crafting, and perhaps a bit of garden tidying if the weather cooperates.  Happy Christmas to all, and enjoy the holidays!

Adulting in my 50s

 I have spent an inordinate amount of time this week on our first ever purchase of a car. Yes, we have both made it into our 50s without ever owning a car.  DH has been lucky enough to have always had the use of a company car his entire working career, but that is being withdrawn this month and a car allowance substituted.  I had the use of family cars when I lived at home, and since then have either been peripatetic or resident in an urban area with good public transport.  In the UK, I have always commuted to work by train.  So we had the company car for personal needs like doing a big shop or visiting or holidays, and otherwise I did without.  So actually buying a car, and being responsible for it, is somewhat terrifying.  Particularly as DH, who is a good driver, will from time to time reverse into a bollard, or our gatepost.  Before it was just a phone call to the company who would get it fixed, and they also took care of all the servicing etc.  Now it will be me having to do all the arrangements.  The rest of you who have owned cars for decades are all shaking your heads right now and saying 'oh poor you' with mild sarcasm. But when it is all new to me, it's been a lot of work to research insurance and road tax and breakdown companies and then make all those purchases and download all the policy documents, choose the car, make the payment etc.  We've gone with a used 2019 Vauxhall Astra because that's what DH has been driving for several years now, so we're used to them and familiar with the nearest garage. We picked it up today and we're waiting for it to stop raining so we can take it out for an inaugural run.  DH is wading through the 300+ page manual and getting a bit mindboggled with all the information that in the past he has blithely disregarded because the company looked after all the maintenance.

Christmas has officially launched this week and DH has been trundling down all the suitcases and boxes of decorations from the attic.  We got the tree into the stand with some difficulty:  it had an enormous base, at least half again the diameter of the opening in our tree stand.  DH spent over an hour sawing slabs off it, with me helping with the hatchet to trim off corners and lumps, and we had to remove a small tree's worth of lower branches which I will use for decoration, before we could wrestle it into the stand.  The tree is not entirely vertical but I've turned it so it looks pretty good from the main viewing angle.  Yesterday we put the lights on and I added the garlands.  So it's ready to have ornaments added this weekend.  I've also been unpacking the boxes and slowly adding Christmas to other rooms:  the green garland up the stair banisters, and draped over the mantel in the dining room. lights in the front windows, the garland and lights for the living room mantel, the nativity scene and so forth. A few presents from friends have started to arrive in the post which is fun.  And I set up my homemade tree from last year that holds my sale-purchased Wedgwood ornament collection.

I've started the three-cornered stitch that secures the lace to the fabric on my Bucks Lace edging mat.  I started on a straight edge because that's the easiest part, it will be trickier when I have to start securing gathered lace.  It should really be on the straight of grain of the fabric but finished is better than perfect.  It's not as slow as I feared, I did about six inches in 90 minutes so the mat is do-able.

I hand-quilted the Japanese applique pouch and then discovered that the tailor's chalk pencil I had used to mark the quilting lines would neither brush out nor sponge off.  I ended up having to wash the pouch and physically scrub the lines with a nail brush, and they are still not completely gone.  Lesson learned for that pencil.  I've stitched the sides of the pouch but haven't stitched the boxed corners or the zip yet.

I also had a go at a little dolly dress christmas ornament, copying a purchased ornament I have, which was quite fiddly to make and has come out a bit long-waisted, but it's not bad. Bit of fun.

In the evenings I am still knitting on the capelet (now on the decrease section), hand quilting on the fourth block of the 25 block applique quilt and doing some occasional cross-stitch on the little house sampler.

Four more days of work next week and then I am on holiday until the new year, hurrah!!  Hope your Christmas plans, whatever they are, are falling into place and aren't going to be too impacted by the restrictions. Let's hope 2021 will be better.

It's an online Christmas

 I spent a surprisingly exhausting 2.5 hours online one evening this week, hunting down and ordering the various Christmas presents from us-to-others, and from otherswhocan'torderonlinethemselves-to-us.  A couple of things I have just sent directly to the recipients because it seemed a bit pointless to have it delivered to us, wrapped, and then I have to go back to the post office and pay to send it to them (and during the christmas mail rush which could cause delays).  Not very christmassy I guess for them, but hopefully they will understand that's it's a weird year.  Yesterday we strung the lights in front of the house and had them on for the first time last night, they look nice.  And we went to get our christmas tree.  Our go-to Christmas tree shop doesn't seem to get big trees in anymore, but for the sake of convenience we took the biggest one they had anyway which is only about 7 feet tall.  Like last year, I won't get all my ornaments onto it but I'm sure it will still look lovely.  We've got it stashed in the front porch (where it takes up most of the space because they couldn't net it, it was too big to go through their netting hoop) and will set it up this coming week.  My 'office xmas party' is an online zoom call this coming week, as is the christmas party for a little sewing group I belong to on Facebook.  I am getting to the point where I am starting to hate Zoom calls - I'm sure I'm not alone.  We use MS Teams for work meetings which is almost as bad.  A few people always dominate the conversation, so you can't talk naturally.  Sometimes I start to talk but Zoom always seems to prioritise certain other people's microphones (stronger signal maybe?) so noone hears my attempt and I get talked over.  My mike is working, don't get me wrong, but I need a clear gap in the conversation before I can make my input.  So I end up mostly listening and then I get bored and find it hard to pay attention.  I am also completely fed up with the endless cycle of 'you're on mute, no you have to bring your mike down it's above your head, ha ha I was on mute' ...repeat ad inifinitum.  Then there are a couple of people at work who have permanently dodgy  internet connections so whenever they say anything (and one of them is quite talkative), about every third word cuts out so it's really hard to understand them.  Mustn't complain, working from home was my goal for most of my working life and it used to be the unattainable holy grail (along with part time working).   ha ha be careful what you wish for!

I finished the vintage style dress I was sewing.  It's made from quilting cotton which isn't ideal dress material but I got it cheap online.  The pattern I had drafted from an existing dress worked out well apart from a bit of discrepancy in the shoulders/side seams between the front and back which I've now fixed.  The dress fits very similarly to the purchased dress which I'm pleased about. So if I ever get to a fabric store again and can get some nicer fabric, I know I've got a pattern that works.

I've finished basting the bucks point edging to the mat fabric, the lace strip was long enough which was a relief. So next I will start doing the three-cornered stitch that secures the lace permanently to the fabric.

I've been enjoying my little Japanese appliqued pouch project this week.  I used my Appliquik tools again for the applique.  I watched a few more Youtube videos on how to use them, and I got on a bit better this time.  Certainly for the really tiny pieces like the windows, they were a big help.  I constructed this scene in stages: firstly assembling the main house/tree block and appliquing that to the background fabric, then seaming the grey fabric on, then appliquing on the smaller details and currently I am adding the embroidered finishing touches.  Just need to add some french knot flowers to the flower tubs and to the wreath.  Cat included for scale.

I've also been knitting on my pink shoulder capelet.  There are about 300 stitches so each row takes a while, but now I'm starting to decrease to shape the capelet for the shoulder.

When I get tired of knitting 300-stitch rows, I switch to my 25-block applique quilt or do some cross-stitching on my little house sampler.  Little by little, they will get done eventually. I did take some time out last week to stitch a Christmas card but I forgot to take a picture before I sent it off!