Let's think of something to do while we're waiting...

I am a child of the 70's... I grew up watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and every time I have to wait for something, be it in a doctor's office or waiting for something to happen, the song he used to sing "Let's think of something to do while we're waiting, while we're waiting..." runs through my head...

There were a lot of things about Mr. Rogers that appealed to me as a kid (and still do now that I'm an adult with teenagers)... As an adult, I really appreciate that he promoted kindness--something this world desperately needs. As a kid, I loved Picture Picture (always informative) and especially loved when the trolley would "take us" to Make-Believe, where my favorite puppet characters were Henrietta Pussycat and Daniel Tiger. (Even as a kid I was on my way to becoming a crazy cat lady... Mr. Rogers was probably the first step...)

Anyway, you might wonder what the heck this has to do with miniatures... Well, I'm waiting for The Arthur to arrive. *sigh* And I keep having to think of something to do while I'm waiting... So I've been working on the witch house (shingles are on the roof and the sides and back of the house are prepped for painting) and Abigail's room (all finished except for the baseboards and a bookshelf that I still need to build). (This might be a miracle here... I'm actually finishing things before I start a new project!) Pictures of both projects will be forthcoming.

If you want to hear the song, you can listen to it here.
It really is a catchy tune, and you can't ignore the wisdom in it either...

Let's think of something to do while we're waiting
While we're waiting for something new to do.
Let's try to think up a song while we're waiting
That's liberating and will be true to you.

Let's think of something to do while we're waiting
While we're waiting 'til something's through.
You know it's really all right;
In fact, it's downright quite bright
To think of something to do
That's specific for you.
Let's think of something to do while we're waiting.

Let's Think of Something to Do While We're Waiting
By Fred M. Rogers
© 1982

Santa was very good to me...

I've been very quiet in blog-land lately. Sometimes "real" life gets in the way... Now that Christmas has come and gone and we are looking forward to the new year, I hope to be more consistent...

Santa was very good to my family this year! ;-)
A wonderful dinner at my parents' with most of our family... My daughter commented to me on the way home, "I really like our family. We should see them more often." Out of the mouths of babes... (this one happens to be 14.)

Anyway... there were lots of minis amongst my Christmas gifts and I am so grateful and happy! They included a darling garden furniture set with two mixed floral topiaries, a room box for Abigail built by my hubby himself, a subscription to "Miniatures Collector" , an Amazon gift card which will undoubtedly be spent on minis, and a gift certificate for a minis company whose catalog I've been poring over almost every night before bed. I am a lucky girl!

Our oldest son (who is 20) had a mini amongst his gifts too! A 7-week-old chihuahua puppy he has named Sox (as in the Boston Red Sox)... We are cat people here (truth be told) but we are all smitten with this latest tiny addition to our family--perhaps my  mom most of all. She spent a lot of time after Christmas dinner with Sox sleeping snugly in her arms wrapped in his fleece blanket.

Back to painting Abigail's new room. I suppose I should feed the teenagers too...

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your loved ones. Blessings and best wishes!

Abigail's New Duds

Good Saturday morning! I've been a bit indulgent this morning... allowing my sweet hubby to make breakfast for me... Then finishing reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes (and dreaming of making some of the Tuscan winter foods she includes recipes for).

I felt like staying cozy in bed for a bit longer so I started reading Ian McEwan's Atonement. Interestingly, in the first chapter, there is a miniatures motif. Early on in the chapter as she is being introduced, McEwan writes:

"...Briony's [room] was the only tidy upstairs room in the house. Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table--cowboys, deep-sea divers, humanoid mice--suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen's army awaiting orders.

"A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit."

Briony, in this first chapter is also revealed to be a writer:

"...writing stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturization. A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm."

I read just a bit past this before I had to pull myself together and get on with my day. We shall see if the miniatures motif persists throughout the book. Onto other things... Today, I thought I'd share Abigail's new jammies and robe that I made for her recently.

Here she is all bundled up in her robe. She is laying on a quilt that I made from scraps in my stash, some of which are leftovers from a quilt my mom made a long time ago. I also knitted the pink blanket next to her.

And with her robe open you can see her white flannel jammies, trimmed with the same lace on her robe. You can also see her booties that I crocheted with pearl cotton left over from a long ago attempt to learn Hardanger and tied with scraps of silk ribbon. 

I still need to recreate her roombox in wood and am revising the plans for that. Maybe that will be my Thanksgiving weekend project.

Abigail's Acoutrements

A while back, I promised a "tour" of Abigail's room. That is being put off for a few weeks, as I reconstruct her room box in wood (rather than the foam core I had used previously). While I'm working on that, here is a sneak peek...

Abigail's toy box... I painted the alphabet blocks and toy chest and made the braided rug. The bears were a gift from my mom. The giraffe is a Japanese eraser. The doll box was a laser-cut kit from Dragonfly International that I picked up at the minis show in Portland last month. One of my favorite things is the antique basket (another gift from mom) that holds flannel receiving blankets, bottles and a rubber duck.

A closer look...

Sorry this picture is blurry! Here's the top of Abigail's dresser. Antique tatted doily. Woven baskets from Small Talk Miniatures, flower pot and mulberry paper roses from Dragonfly International, a beaded baby toy, sweet porcelain rabbit, and hand painted band box. I found most of these things at the minis show in Portland. The picture on the wall is from a vintage baby card.

Abigail in her bassinet with her stuffed kitty that I made from a kit.

Another view... In the background you can see the rocking chair (a Goodwill find).

Back from my blogging hiatus

I can't believe it's been more than two weeks since I last posted... I've certainly had much to blog about. I just haven't had the time... Life!

Mini activities in my world:
--Abigail's room is going to be getting its floor this weekend. I found some bamboo placemats at the dollar store and have taken them apart to make "boards" for the floor. Once this and a few other tasks are complete I will give you a tour of her room.

--My mom found a miniature cast iron potbellied wood stove in a junk store a long time ago and recently rediscovered it in a cupboard. I can't wait to construct an old-fashioned kitchen scene for it. The really cool thing is that it somewhat resembles a wood stove we had when I was growing up.

--I picked up a copy of the November issue of "Minature Collector" at the grocery store the other day. It's packed with all kinds of inspiration and every time I pick it up I find something that I didn't see before.

--Kim and I took a trip north to visit his sister and her husband. While in town, we stopped into an antique store to browse. There was a very large elaborate doll house for sale ($1200!). Kim said, "If I had $1200 I'd buy that for you." All of the furniture had been removed from the house and it very much looked like a real empty house whose occupants had moved on... The shop's proprietor showed me a file folder that held complete documentation of the construction of the house, including all of the original drawings, plans and fabric, wallpaper and paint swatches, as well as drawings of the furniture that had been in the house.

--At the same antique store there were two small antique German dollhouses that were very charming. Coincidentally, I had borrowed a book about collectible dollhouses from the library and had that along with me on our trip. One of the houses I was able to identify as Gottschalk. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, or I'd be sharing photos too.

--Abigail is getting new things all the time... I crocheted some booties for her and have been working on a little pink gingham dress. She likes her jammies though, so I don't know if she'll actually wear the dress or if it will just be displayed in her room. I did make her a pink flannel kimono trimmed with lace and she seems quite snug.

The sun is shining and it's a beautiful fall day. I will post more tomorrow...

New issue of AIM

The new issue of Artisans in Miniature (AIM) has been posted online and I can't wait to read it! If you are unfamiliar with AIM, each issue has a theme and this one's is "Granny's House". It's a bit poignant for me, as I've been missing my grandma a bit more lately for some reason. And this past weekend, accompanying me at the minis show in Portland, Oregon, my mom commented, "Wouldn't grandma love to see all this?" She surely would've.

My grandma (my mom's mom) was a doll collector. But she didn't just collect dolls. She loved them--honestly and truly. I remember her showing me the tiny details in their clothing and how their hair was styled so perfectly... She would point out this doll's teeth, or how that one's eyes were so beautifully realistic, or lift a dress to reveal an intricate lace petticoat. I could go to the 8-foot tall oak and glass case in her living room and ask her about any doll and she could tell me that doll's story. And each one had its own story, its own name, its own personality even...

As far as grandma was concerned, dolls weren't just to be looked at. When I was young, she played with Barbies with me and we had fun making things for them and re-purposing items from around the house for their use. She also happily "babysat" when I played with the baby dolls, lovingly dressing and holding them. What I learned as I grew up playing with dolls with my grandma is that you're never too old to play...and that's a lesson that has "stuck". As I "play" with Abigail and find new treasures or create new things for her I often think of Grandma; I'm sure I'll continue to do so as I try some of the projects included in this issue of AIM.

I'm anxious to try making some of the crocheted potholders on page 53. My great-grandmother (my grandma's mom) was a stitcher and crocheted potholders similar to these in real life.

I'm also looking forward to trying out the train set project provided by AIM member Jane Harrop on pages 39 and 40. It's a 1:12 scale project, but I should be able to adapt it to Abigail's scale (approx. 1:6). I'm becoming more confident in working with wood, so this should be a fun project. Abigail needs more toys for her toy box!

I just tried my first mini printie project from a kit I purchased at the minis show here in Portland, OR this past weekend and I'm hooked. On page 69 and 70, there is a mini printie project that I'm definitely going to make--a vintage keepsake box with letters and photos. This will undoubtedly go into a room box project that has been rolling around in my head for a while... Abigail's room needs to be finished first though...

And THIS will be a much bigger project of an entirely different sort: Miniatura, billed as the UK's biggest dolls house show, is featured in a special show report starting on page 59. Time to get a passport! This is definitely going on my bucket list.

Justification

I took comfort in reading J. Courtney Sullivan's New York Times article "A Hobby Best Kept Small", published on August 17, 2011. Why? Because there's someone else out there who shares my interest in dollhouses and miniatures... (Actually, there are a lot of people... I've encountered their blogs and websites. I just can't find them in my day-to-day routine...)

I can identify with Sullivan's article because I too outgrew my dollhouse, but had my passion for miniatures re-ignited in my adulthood by one small item--in my case, a tiny baby doll.

I can also identify with the author's stolen moments spent looking at miniatures on the internet. (I must add that her "it's research for my book" guise is brilliant!) I too, have no room for a dollhouse. And I don't allow myself to buy the exquisite (and sometimes expensive) tiny objects that capture my heart.

Instead, I create my own from what I have on hand in my crafts stash or from supplies that can be inexpensively purchased. The thrill of the hunt drives me to browse local thrift stores and antiques stores... And every so often I triumphantly return home with a treasure for my collection... Still, the tiny wine glasses and decanters on the websites beckon me and I lust after tiny claw-foot tubs and miniature books... ("Just wait," I tell myself.)

But most of all, I could identify with the subtext of Sullivan's article--that she somehow needed to justify her hobby. She worried about displaying a dollhouse in her studio apartment where a date might see it and think she was strange. And later, when she told her boyfriend she wanted a doll house, he suggested that the dollhouse should wait until they had a real house and it would be "less in the open". Yup. Though my husband is very supportive and doesn't mind having Abigail's "room" set up on the coffee table from time to time, I too know that sneaking suspicion that I need to justify my hobby. After all, I'm an adult. A wife. A mom. A professional. There's really no point in my sewing a 5-inch by 5-inch patchwork quilt for Abigail. She's a doll. She doesn't get cold. But I spent hours doing so and even hand-tied and bound it in the way one would a full-size quilt.

The only justification I can offer is that it gives me pleasure, is an outlet for my creativity and allows me to practice the crafting skills I've accumulated over the years. And besides, it keeps me out of the bars.

(And a side note to boyfriend of J. Courtney Sullivan: it could be worse. She could be into taxidermy... Embrace the dollhouse; It's relatively benign... And will keep her out of the bars.)

It all started with Abigail...

Abigail is a tiny porcelain doll my mom gave to me. She was "born" at the old Bess Kaiser Hospital on Greeley in Portland, where my mom worked in the cardiology department for years... (Hospital gift shops always have neat stuff!)

I immediately made her a bed out of a plastic mushroom basket--weaving pink and white yarn through the sides to create a checkerboard pattern and crudely crocheting a hood for it... I then knitted a striped pink and white blanket for her... Again, crudely... I was 11 and a self-taught knitter and crocheter...

Abigail slept in this bassinet for more than 20 years. Last year sometime, I pulled her out of a box and she sat on my crafts table while I hunted for the right size bed for her... Not finding one, I sketched out a plan for a wooden cradle... But my woodworking skills are rudimentary at best, and I lack the proper tools... I gave up my hunt and finally decided to cut all of my old handiwork off of the mushroom basket and reinvent it... And so my mini mania began...

Abigail in her new bassinet.