Forecast is snow

 My virtual work colleagues, dotted around the country, have mostly been reporting snow the last week or so, but here in the Midlands we've just had rain.  But today apparently we may get snow, and already there has been one practice swirl of flakes. It is quite cold. we have to keep the heat on all the time now and there are still icy draughts sweeping around my ankles - one thing about an old house is that it is very well ventilated. I am yet again grateful that I am not commuting any longer, and I can choose whether or not to leave the house for my daily walk (staying in today!). I try to get out most lunch hours and walk at least a mile, I think it is beneficial for both my muscles and my mental health.  It's always a bit of a surprise to see other people when I'm out, we are so embedded in our little isolation bubble that it feels like we have always lived this way. Thank goodness I am retiring within the year, I fear I may no longer be in the right mindset to return to a physical office.

I had an extra day off this week, and amongst other things, I finished the Mountain Saddlebag.  It's not perfect but I am relatively pleased with it. I bought the cat fabric in Nippori fabric town in Tokyo so it was nice to use that in a project.  The bag is stiffened with Decovil Light and Bosal foam interfacing. The handle is a purchased one I had in my stash.

I've continued to potter away on the Japanese dollhouse garden.  My faith has been wavering slightly as we are still in the stage of 'looking worse' but hopefully it will get better.

For the thatch effect on the pavilion roof, I was going for the ancient decayed look that we saw on so many temples and buildings in Japan.

Three tiers of 'thatch' applied and a haircut to tidy it all up

Texture added with 'coarse dirt' and 'foliage' scatter.

Paint effect applied to the whole thing, and some highlighting.

This is the sort of look I was aiming for.

I cut into the foamboard to start embedding rocks in strategic places, to become driveway edging and stepping stones. Then I added the driveway edging blocks - these weren't quite tall enough so I had to lift them up by laying them on a little bed of filler tinted grey. This is when I started getting a bit depressed at how messy it all looked.

Then I got to the really anxiety-inducing part: trying to 'pave' the driveway.  My experience with trying to glue down any kind of scatter (sand, grass flock etc.) is that you paint the glue on, sprinkle the flock, the glue dries, then 90% of the scatter falls off leaving you with a streaky mess.  This time I have turned to the experts who build wargaming terrain.  Wargaming terrain can look amazingly realistic and detailed, yet has to stand up to the rigours of having models moved around on it, being transported to and from venues, or even having heavy battle tanks driving around on it.  So I watched several terrain videos such as this, and this, to try to learn how to do it better.  The unlikely solution (unlikely because I didn't really think it would work) is to use the wet-working method.  For this method, you start the same way I usually do: painting the area with dilute PVA glue and sprinkling your scatter.  The difference is that they keep adding more and more scatter in different textures and shades until they have achieved their finished look.  At this point most of the scatter is of course just sitting there, not held down by anything except gravity.  After letting the first glue layer dry, they then wet the whole area with a spray bottle containing water with a flow agent additive, such as Isopropanol (I think this is rubbing alcohol in America?).  Then they spray the area again, this time with dilute PVA glue, until it is all sopping wet.  The flow agent attracts the dilute PVA mixture into all the cracks and crevices. Once it all dries, they are left with a hard scatter layer which is purportedly rugged and durable.  At least, the presenters were knocking the boards with their fist on camera and nothing was falling off.

Getting your dollshouse sopping wet is obviously not an option, but it was something I decided to try on my garden board which I hoped was thick enough not to warp under the treatment. Surprisingly I was able to order Isopropanol on Amazon for delivery, despite it being a flammable product.  I started out with the 'cobble' effect in front of the front door, using aquarium gravel. When I got to the part where I flooded the loose cobbles with dilute PVA, I have to admit I had very little faith.  But having let it all dry, the black gravel bits are held onto the board. Not with a particularly strong adhesion, but I expect that's because rocks are not porous. Encouraged, I then tried the method on the sand for the driveway - this is currently drying so fingers crossed.  I added some more dilute PVA to the aquarium gravel while doing the sand, for good measure.  Once it all dries then I will add some paint effects to both areas.

We took down the outside Christmas lights this morning, so it feels like Christmas is officially over (although I still do have a couple of Christmas houses on display because I like them). I'm still wearing my Christmas sweatshirt because it's so comfy and warm, but expressed my concern to DH about how long I could get away with wearing it.  He looked at me and asked "Why, because you're worried about what the other people in the house think?" He has a point. I guess the usual rules are out the window.  I've perfected my camera angle on MS Teams so that I am viewed only from the neck upwards, so that I can wear whatever to work (I will admit, this is sometimes pyjamas). I've also positioned the camera to the side, so that it is unclear what I am looking at - which allows me to look at something else of much greater interest than the boring team meeting.

I've been borrowing my son's ancient laptop that he used at uni several years ago, to watch videos and Zoom calls while in my sewing room - because the screen is bigger than my tablet and shows more participants.  But the fan was horribly noisy, like an industrial vacuum cleaner about to launch into space.  I looked into buying a replacement but it turns out there is a global shortage of key components for laptops and everything is terribly expensive at the moment.  So on my extra day off, I sat down with a screwdriver and a good light, and took the laptop apart.  Luckily it wasn't difficult, it was obviously designed for it.  As well as being filthy inside, it turned out the fan was almost completely jammed with a thick felt of dust and hair, like something you'd find in a tumbledryer.  I'm surprised it hadn't just exploded.  Much cleaning later, and reassembly, and  now the laptop purrs most of the time with only the occasional louder fan kicking in.  Then I spent most of the rest of the day downloading upgrades, cleaning up the disks, upgrading to Windows 10 (it was Windows 7) and installing an antivirus license.  The result is a much more usable device which I now claim as mine (DS doesn't know that yet but I put the work in! I'll fight him for it...).