Unhinged......

My goodness, time whizzes past at an extraordinary rate.   All too soon we shall be opening to the public for the first time (May 11th - one day only, to coincide with the local Farmers' Market) and that same night we head back to England.

I return to Bavorov about ten days later but without the incomparable help of Butterfly who celebrates her birthday today by not going into Small Worlds.   Instead she is following her other profession at this very moment by recording a voice-over down in my former cowshed.

There is still so much going on at once in Small Worlds that this blogpost is as tricky to write as the last one.   We have nearly exhausted the list of tasks ready for our willing but "unskilled" helpers and are moving on to only having jobs requiring a high level of skill.  Luckily I number some "highly skilled" helpers amongst my friends and relatives.

For the past few days my sister-in-law Mette, who has an amazing collection of room boxes lining the whole of one wall, and who writes for the magazine Dolls House and Miniature Scene, has been here weaving her magic on tiny soft furnishings.   Neither Butterfly nor I can work with needle, thread or textiles so Mette's skill has been invaluable.   The beds in the big Walmer are now made, so too in the former orange bungalow, which is also replete with beautiful silk cushions.   You will see these when the houses are revealed in due course.












In the meantime here is a glimpse of her work in twenty-fourth scale for the tiny pink Fairfield (half the size of most of my houses)



In the picture on the left it is standing next to Mouse Mansion which has its new roof and is waiting for the outside paper to be applied. Once again, note the weeny teeny front door...all that will change shortly.   Well, from the outside at least.

Meanwhile, inside, the mice are having a wonderful time...

they're deciding on the interior decor...   

So much choice, so little time to choose... 

because Mette needs to make the bedding and curtains before she leaves again for England.  

The post title came about because I have spent a couple of days trying to sort out hinges.   The department-store-to-be has suffered from a maker of great ambition but sadly lacking the practical skills to match.   If you have a large heavy piece of wood for example, it is no good at all trying to hold it in place just with two small hinges.....

Nor does it help to continue to try and fix a hinge to a piece of wood that is already riddled with holes and repeatedly glued together from abortive attempts to get a hinge to stay in place. 

So armed with some lovely long piano hinges (hands up whoever knows that's what long hinges are called - I didn't) I have been trying to remedy the situation on two of the houses.   However I am spatially challenged and cannot reverse patterns which means that I am capable of screwing the hinge on incorrectly, removing it because the doors won't close, turning it over, and screwing it on just as incorrectly again.    

Grrrrr......by the end of the second day I was ready to scream and chuck the lot out of the window in the best Czech style.   I have now abandoned the whole hinge horror to hand over to my highly skilled Dutch friend who arrives on Friday.   She can turn her hand to anything......little does she know it yet, but one of the things she will be tackling is the very large thatched roof on the English cottage.   There will be pictures in due course....

Thank you for following my journey so far.   I look forward to seeing you again soon.   In the meantime I am off to do some (full-size) gardening whilst the sun is shining.......

Busy, busy......

From a tidy, coherent workplace we seem to have descended into chaos again.   But it's a good sort of chaos, resulting from the many different things that are going on at the same time in Small Worlds at the moment.

In fact there is so much going on that it's hard to know what to write about.   I am tempted just to post loads of photos and let everyone become as confused as we are!

There has been much cleaning, scraping, mending, gluing, removing of unpleasant substances (mould, moth eggs, rust), writing of lists of what to do next, interspersed with some actual creativity for light relief.   (For those who wonder why these nasty things have infected my houses, remember where most of them were stored for nearly ten years.  We actually got away with relatively little damage.)

The plan had been to clean and roughly repair all of the houses during the past week so that they at least looked reasonable from the outside, even if unfurnished.   But this well thought out plan soon foundered on the rocks of temptation.   

Butterfly got her hands on the ugly orange bungalow and was swept up into a dream of what it could be like - and had to start making the dream reality.   That process will have a whole post to itself.   The same happened with the Cape Cod house.











I have been employed on much more mundane tasks.   The nastiest of which was ripping out the moth eaten carpets in the Lundby house.  

 

One would think that the eminent Swedish dolls house manufacturer would have known better than to use felt for the carpets since it is notoriously prone to moth.   But as Butterfly pointed out, they probably didn't expect their houses to still be around some forty years on.

And she said the same when I was moaning about the rusty front of my baby Triang house which looks as if it has the measles. 

I have decided to leave all except one of the Triangs (I have six, including the rather bizarre Jenny's Home, of which more in another post) in their original condition, much though it goes against the grain given the scale of some of the wallpapers in them.   

This means that I will probably not be repainting the rusty window frames or replacing the very tattered strips of curtain material in the bent latticed windows.  

I am giving them all a thorough clean, gluing down bent and twisted roofs and straightening windows and frames. I will try to furnish as far as possible with authentic Triang furniture though I shall probably include some Dol-Toi and Barton, both of which were contemporary with Triang at some point in its very long existence.   Shed on the Pond is an excellent website for anyone who wants to know more about the long history of Lines and Triang Houses.   And indeed a lovely blog on dolls houses in general.

Yesterday afternoon I unpacked every piece of Lundby furniture I could find, including that donated to me by a friend just before I left - a very special gift which also included a large mouse family clearly from the same clan as these.   

It was very exciting to realise that an ugly little Georgian house that was standing around looking miserable actually looked far better without the pobbly outside wallpaper; and with its many rooms it is ideally suited to the housing of the extended family of mice - though they will have to make a big leap to get out of the teeny tiny front door!  
 
My sister-in-law, a highly skilled miniaturist, who is arriving next week to lend a creative hand, has suggested some sandalwood furniture to keep away the moth since all the mice are made of the dreaded felt.....

The Lundby furniture took up my entire workspace - it would have made a wonderful picture for WOYWW.  

Shame it was Friday.....

Cue digression:  Much as I enjoyed participating in WOYWW recently I think it will be a rare occurence for me.   Fascinating though it is to visit other blogs, and also to receive visitors to mine, it is very time-consuming and I really need to be focusing on other things at the moment.....

I realise I haven't even mentioned the coming together of the big Walmer dolls house which has been standing around in many parts since we arrived,
the burgeoning department store, the re-creation of the haberdashers, the birth of an Essex pub complete with pargetting - all to come in future posts.   Quite apart from the cursing and swearing that went on yesterday as I tried to reassemble Jenny's flaming Home.   I'd better hasten to Small Worlds now to get on with it....

Lovely to have you following me.   The journey is really getting exciting now so I hope to see you again soon.   Thank you for reading so far.....