And also....

Emma Waddell asked  on one of the FB groups members of the group to post photos of their kitchens there.

Which led me to view my Kendrew House first. I had to put in some recently acquired porceleain, anyway. While photographing, though, I saw not only layers of dust (still in situ I am afraid , grin), but also several appliances etc that had fallen on the floor or such , so some  reorganisation was sorely needed.

So I did that . What with taking pics etc took quite  a lot of time, actually. Anyay, I do have updated pics of the three kitchens now: one scullery, one kitchen, one "nice" kitchen ( where personnel also rests, as you can see, and the butler has his writing desk ).

The scullery :

Left corner :

Right corner 

Kitchen :

left corner

Nice kitchen:

left corner 

Apeldoorn fair- I SPLASHED ! Part 1

Yesterday I visited the Dutch twice-a-year fair. And since I had been a bit impaired during the last two fairs, trying to get around with my arm in a sling -believe me, that is tiresome, it feels as if you have grown a piece of heavy luggage that you would love to put into some locker to pick up later - , plus having had to miss out on the Rheda fair too, I fully intended to have a very good time and to have some treats!

Well, that I did....

Here are , to begin with , my worst sins:

I started out hitting Karon Cunningham's stand , there was a nice David Booth sofa with a stool, that I "needed" big time :

It is living in my "posh "roombox for now, may move later on, not quite sure yet.

And there was this little Humpty Dumpty by St Leger , needing a home... :-( (if you know their work , you know that when you pull the little lever underneath, he will start to fall)

A gal can never have too much kitchen equipment :

Then there was this lovely chest , made by Chris Malcolmson

Oh dear......

Jain , ( the Giddykipper) had a bad tempered cook, who has sunk into a chair for a cuppa and a break. - varicose veins? corns? both, maybe?)

Then there was also Shirley Scheibehenne , who makes lovely and very clever little critters, all hand sewn.One can see them , making pics is a lot harder, esp in artifical light, so I can ony show you some of them now:

Sleeping duckie ( flat on his belly)

and a little hedgehog :-)

To be continued.......

Drinking old lady & Pinterest minilibrary

Sorry , not been around much , not done much.

I recently bought a Fern Vasi doll from another miniaturist who is downsizing . An old gal , happily sloshing and surrounded by het cats ( do I see a view of my future here ???) .

She arrived last week and since an hour or so she has been misbehaving a tea party in my Kendrew house. The guy sitting next to her , watch in hand, is spying out how much time he has left until he can decently say goodbye.
If she carries on like this , I am sorry to say that I will have to relegate her to my boarding house. I mean, hardly there and one of the cats is already sitting on the table in between the procelain and silver....

And now on to the second subject : PINterest.

Since a year or more I have happily pinned away, also about miniatures . But this weekend my two braincells suddenly decided to talk together , so lightning struck and I decided to make a PINboard of books about dolls houses and miniatures- inspiration and making . Spent hours at Amazon (nope,, no shares, I am very sorry to say) and other sites .
I have noticed that over the years miniaturists have searched for something like this. So if you want to copy the idea and start it on your own ,or with a group,  please do so by all means , it is just something I like to do so that I am able to share.

The site is here:

Bookcases in place :

Made it to the Apeldoorn fair

Well, this time I did not have the energy to browse much and find surprise things, something I always love to do at fairs, but at least I could take home some things I had ordered . Since, however, hoisting around an arm  which feels like a piece of unwanted luggage (should have left it at home?) is rather tiring, I left early. But, got some glues etc , too, which I do love.
Alas, no rats this time, no other funny things, too, sorry :-(

Here are the things I snagged:

Two bookcases for the Kendrew House, made for me by Gradus Ulfman. Yes, the doors do contain glass . I will fill them up later, maybe today ( first want to see if they fit around the existing mantle, which will come in the centre)

And a David Booth table , brought by Karon Cunningham, to go with my NM chairs. The chairs themselves were made by David booth, as well.

When I came home ( the joys of public transport!), kitties were ready for me!

Try again !

So here are the pics I promised :

Here is the little kitten , he was obviously bored , so set out to explore the dining table ( yep, silver must be cleaned, sigh) .Glad there is no tablecloth , or the whole caboodle would be sent crashing to the floor. Don't ask me how I know!

                                                   and here is the small plate :

In the meantime my RL kitties enjoy me being at home ! These are the two little friends as they were on the sofa this morning. I had taken some pics of Jojo ,too, so as not to leave her out, but those weren't any good, so will add one later on . But these are so sweet :-)

WOW...!!!!!!

This week I received three vases I had ordered from Marsha Hedrick waaayyy back in time.OK, OK , not that long, about 5 months or so :-).  When you see the pic you will understand why it takes "some work"to make them ( this clever cookie makes her own porcelain and then handpaints it, as well!)  and also why I was quite prepared to wait!
Well, I was content to wait anyway; since I have been able to live without them for many years, there is no reson to hurry anyone. Here is the pic Marsha published on FB, I nicked it and cut it down as there was another vase there, which was not  mine. Will put on another pic later in time, when I have found the really perfect places for them.

                         
                                                          FANTABULOUS !!!!!!

The Kendrew house

As you may know ,I did not decorate the outside of my big Kendrew house, as I liked the color as it was. It did get a coat of varnish, though.

The house was standing on an MDF base, though, not really pleasing to the eye, so I had decided to do something with it. Real bricking was impossible, as it would not have been possible to move the big front stairs away to open the centre panel. Vinyl sheets looked AWFUL. So then I decided to have  a go at stencilling with the Bromley craft stencils and I was pleased with the results.

here the house  is as it looks now:

The aftermath of the online miniature show

Glory be! My loot starts turning up in earnest now, so lots of pics....
I received some whimsical teapots and a mushroom with a hangover , made by Loredana Tonetti ( Lory's little things)

                                                   A romantic teapot with roses:

This one has found room in my tearoom ( an online workshop by Cynthia Howe)

                                  And these two teapots were sooooo funny, I couldn't resist:

                                 ( yes, they both do have lift-off covers, as has the rose teapot)



                                  I also saw a nice mushroom with a hangover and in very bad humour:

                             Which , of course , was delegated to the mouse house :-) Poor meeces....

                                                                         OK , next !

I also received the flowers I had bought from Pim Sukkerd in Bangkok, Thailand ( sorry, no website, I have nearly begged her to make one or to make her preence more known by blog, whatever. She can be found on Facebook, though). My, that gal makes wonderful flowers!


                                                       First : this vase of mixed flowers

                                going to live in a separate posh roombox ( yes , I am a posh lady....)

                                                     Lilies, for now in the selfsame roombox

                                  Roses.... They have such a wonderful warm pink/ orange color !
                               So decided to  put them on the dining table in the Kendrew House

                                                              But I ran into a bit of trouble here:

When I first put the roses onto the table I discovered that the silver was very dirty and needed to be cleaned and the wonderful dinnerware ( Stokesay , no less, giggle) , so I sighed, cleaned the table off  and cleaned all little thingies on it.

                  I love that table, btw, it was made by the late Allan McKirdy. He was a lovely man.

                                                                  I also bought some irises:

They were in a basket, so I thought I had better put them into Bluebell cottage, my adorable little cottage

                                                                     OK, next :

I had also fallen for some of Ludwina's hand-knotted carpets! Never having seen them "in person" , but having heard how wonderful they were, I nosed around at her "table"at the on-line show. One of the great things is, you have the dolls house sitting next to you while choosing a carpet, so I looked with my ruler and decided which color I wanted .

                                                     Yesterday they also arrived...

             And with a cleaned-up dinner table I could finally lay this wonderful carpet in the dining room !
                In deference to Ludwina's artwork, I put aside some chairs for one of the pictures:

                                                And here is the setting as it looks now.
                                   The rug looks somewhat blue in the pic, but in person is it darker.

The second rug , the small one, went into the young ladys'bedroom ( the only bedroom I have got, except for those of my housemaid, all others must sleep in the gutter, I am afraid)

Onthe right hand side you see a youthful sin of mine, a carpet I stitched eaons ago. It will be replaced, eventually, by something stitched on gauze, but I have a  bucket list of stitching to do, so that won't be soon, I am afraid :-)

                                                  The third was one of the little kitty mats

That went into the cat lady's house, of course !

And I also received, earlier this week, lovely sets of correspondence etc from Montserrat Folch ( Spain)

I snagged these pics from her website, as it was hard for me to photograph them . At least my dolls are going to have some social life now, I hope .

Soooooooo you can see, I had a LOT of fun at the on line show and I want to thank Shelly Norris for all the work she has done !
It is so nice to see work by people that either you did not know of, or that you could not buy at the web otherwise, or sometimes, just to dive in and look what you find :-) And happily looking / browsing for a morning behind your coffee ( I love minishows, but always need more coffee than I have time for and my feet , even in sneakers , will kill me) has definitely its points.