Where's Butterfly when you need her?

Oh my goodness - my friends and family will know just how challenging yesterday was for me in Small Worlds.

Starting with the need to be there at 8am because someone from the  Town Council was supposed to be coming to unbolt the mříž over my back door (I still don't know what it would be called in English), it went from bad to worse with all my most hated activities lining up to be tackled. 

In no particular order these are 
1) Waiting for someone to turn up who doesn't....2) Trying to cut a straight line with a pair of scissors.....3)Measuring something and then cutting to fit.....4)Working out the most effective way of using 6 giant acetate sheets to cover dolls houses of all different sizes and shapes.

Whoever came up with the slogan "measure twice and cut once" was living in a dream world.   My slogan would go "measure umpteen times and then find yourself cutting and re-cutting umpteen times plus one".

I have anyway never been able to cut straight but if it's a piece of paper it doesn't really matter too much.   One can always start again from scratch.   If it's a sheet of expensive acetate measuring 84 x 59cm which one has brought over from England especially to cover the dollshouses to protect them from little fingers and the ever-present dust, then it becomes more nerve-wracking.

The first two sheets went swimmingly well because they each covered one house.   With the aid of the table, which I assumed was accurately rectangular, and a long wooden set square thingy (note the professional language) I managed to cut covers for the two biggest houses - the Colonial and the Cape Cod - both to be seen here in Butterfly's blog post about renovating them.

Well, I say swimmingly but that's not entirely true because it was on the Colonial, the very first house that I tackled, that I discovered I could measure as much as I liked beforehand, I was still going to get it wrong over and over again.   I ended up having to do that horrible thing of cutting slivers off to get it right.    I did better on the Cape Cod and actually I was quite proud of my new-found ability to cut in a straight line.   But please don't tell Butterfly or she will refuse to cut anything for me ever again.   

The point at which I needed her desperately, far more urgently than those actors in Stratford she is currently working with, was when I had to do the smaller houses which didn't need a sheet each.   Because then I had to work out the most cost-effective way of using each sheet.   Those who have worked with me over the years know that maths has never been my strong point.   And nor is visualising or reversing shapes.

I spent a long, long time running to and fro, measuring and remeasuring and then adding up lengths and widths and trying to work out the most perfect combinations.   I was delighted with one sheet which was going to cover a two-storey shop called Tyger Tyger (guess what it sells?) and one other house, I forget which now.   I cut the Tyger Tyger part and then spent half an hour struggling to fix it as I had planned, before realising that it was impossible to do it as I had figured.   Despair!   A wasted sheet! 

So more maths and measuring and running about until I was ready to drop.   But it all got done in the end and though I say it myself - the lines are all straight and there is very little wastage.   Just about the right amount in fact to make windows for the Cape Cod and the Essex Pub, seen here waiting to be pargetted.


Earlier in the day the Mayor arrived to have a quick look round before Saturday's official opening - he hadn't been yet - and I was of course balanced precariously right on top of the ladder trying to fit a quart into a pint pot on the already overloaded top shelves.   He has promised to say a few words on Saturday.   
I too shall say a few words, mainly of thanks to all those who have helped in this adventure, but I can't decide whether to risk my "darling Czech" as someone once described it, or call on the help of one of the friends present, many of whom are well-used to coming to my rescue when I need not only to be understood (not usually a problem) but slightly more elegant or accurate in the phrasing.


I promised a glimpse of the Children's Corner so here is a before and some after views of it.   As you can see, it's not very large but it seemed quite wrong to me to have a collection of dolls houses which visiting children were forbidden to touch, without giving them something that they can actually play with...

 







I forgot to mention another hated activity - working with material.   There needs to be a curtain over the sink area and I have spent the past few weeks searching for a pole skinny enough to fit into the hooks I had already bought.   This week I found a pole - and promptly lost the second of the hooks.   (I have been carrying one around with me whilst pole-hunting.)     Looking in every possible pocket, bag, nook and cranny did not produce it so I tried to buy new hooks.   None to be had in the village so I resigned myself to heading into the nearest town to continue the hunt.

In the meantime I measured, with some difficulty, the giant Ikea curtain that needs to be cut down and in fear and trembling took the scissors to it.   Not quite as straight as the acetate but I can diddle with the hem when I come to sew it up.   Oh how I hate sewing!   I hid under the desk at school when they came round asking who would like to take extra sewing on Saturday mornings.   Definitely not me.....

Oh and guess what - as I sat in car outside my house some time later I was moved to look in the pocket of my anorak which was lying in the back, and lo - there was the second hook!  I swear I haven't worn that jacket since I started pole-hunting.......

So today I got the curtain up.   One stitch I did learn before I hid under the desk was tacking which is I'm afraid all I have done with the length.  There are some skilled sewers visiting in August - and it would make a change from patching my much-loved summer dressing gown which they are now refusing to do any more.....

So everything is pretty well ready for Saturday's opening, including the stowing away of all the working materials which some of you will remember we were able to have very luxuriously spread out for the nine weeks we were working on the houses.    Not so any more - everything is neatly tucked away under the remaining worktables and screened off from the Children's Corner.....

This has turned into a much longer post than I had intended but just to finish off here are some promised photos of our "new" window display.   Unfortunately it really can't be taken from outside - all one gets is a photo of me reflected in the glass  - but here's just a glimpse of it from the inside

Thank you once again for following this adventure - I am much looking forward to the official opening on Saturday and my one sadness is that Butterfly can't be here to share in the pleasure of finally opening Small Worlds to the public.   The adventure will go on - there are still many houses to describe and to work on so I hope that you too will continue to enjoy the journey with me.

Can it be Christmas?

Well if you go by the weather at the moment, then possibly it can.....and I must say that it feels a bit like it for me this weekend.

I am in Bonn at the moment, staying with one of my oldest friends, and enjoying the "airlock" between my two very different lives, a village in South Bohemia and what has now become a suburb of north London.   And the reason it feels like Christmas is that not only were there four ebay parcels to open waiting for me here, but that Small Worlds has received two brilliant items on long loan.

First the ebay parcels - whilst "on leave" from Small Worlds I have been amusing myself by trawling both the UK and German ebay sites for dolls house items.   One thing that has emerged from that, other than a few purchases, is further confirmation of what I already knew - what a fantastically lucky find the Essex Dolls House Haul was.   Most of the houses I have seen on ebay are not only very expensive, but also, to my mind, fairly boring and samey.

Three of the six Essex houses are anything but that, and to think that I got all six for the princely sum of £35.55, is simply amazing. 
  

Bep experimenting with thatching methods

Plans are afoot for their imminent reincarnation (you may remember that one is scheduled to become a Ballet School) but they already look good from the outside.   






As far as the Ballet School goes, I am pleased to report that the multi-talented Bep, who was last seen thatching a cottage, spent some of her time in Small Worlds making tiny tutus.....







I bought several dolls house books on UK ebay, and when I got to Bonn there were more ebay parcels waiting - a set of furniture and dolls for the house in the Children's Corner and a couple of other items that had taken my fancy.   
I hesitate to say that I have no idea what to do with the Jester - hesitate because I have little doubt that Andrea will at once come forward with an impossible back-story that I shall feel impelled to illustrate in miniature form!   

But maybe he can join the puppet group that Bep found time to restring (and in some cases to refoot, rehead and rehand....they have been much played with by my grandchildren).    If you are wondering about the white polythene structure on the table, it is a new chimney for the thatched cottage - more of that in another post.

But on to something much more exciting.   Very many years ago - about thirty in fact - I was asked to help locate a suitable dolls house for the younger daughter of the friend with whom I seek refuge each time on my journey across Europe.   (I think I may have been partly responsible for infecting said daughter with the highly contagious dolls house bug. I well remember her enthusiastic participation, at the age of ten or so,  in cake making for our patisserie.)    

I found a suitable house somewhere in London and transported it to Germany in the back of my camper van.   Susanne fell to with a will and sat alongside her father whilst he was enjoying his hobby of making full-sized furniture, working on Mini-Mundus kits to furnish her Greenleaf Pierce house.   Luckily she did not have to make the house up from kit form since I had managed to find a shop display one, already assembled.    Later the family moved to New York where it became very easy indeed for Susanne to continue to pursue her hobby since America is an amazing mecca for miniaturists.

And now I am delighted to say that she has offered me her house, complete with furniture, on long loan to Small Worlds, and I took delivery yesterday.

Although the furniture has suffered a bit from living in a family of four boys, there is nothing that cannot be repaired, and I am delighted to see it all again.

Last night we unpacked the furniture in order to repack into the all-too-familiar shoe boxes (I thought I was done with them!) and tomorrow we will try to get everything into the car.   Theoretically son left the space for a house measuring 35.5x33x25 inches when he loaded the car.

We shall see.....

I was particularly happy to renew my acquaintance with the family and servants of the house, which were made to order by a friend of mine, after the style of Judith James who made the dolls in our big Victorian house.

The Pierce will not appear immediately in Small Worlds since Butterfly has reserved the right to add the Pierce to her list of successful restorations and she won't be back in the Czech Republic until early next year, but in the meantime I shall enjoy its visit in my spare room.  

Thank you Susanne!

Almost more exciting is the other long loan to Small Worlds because it was completely unexpected - and there is so much of it.   Or maybe I should say - so many of them!  

Fourteen small, neatly labelled boxes of the most perfectly preserved lead soldiers......

I had asked Susanne, with her four boys now grown out of the playing-with-soldiers phase, whether they might have some no longer wanted ones to go in the fort in the Children's Corner.   They hadn't, but my friend then announced over supper last night that she had something, though certainly not for children to play with, which could be of interest.  And she then produced the fourteen boxes which had been collected by her brother and passed to her by his widow.  I am overwhelmed by this donation - I knew her brother well and so it is an added joy to be able to have something of his in Small Worlds.   

I have the perfect display shelf for them, though I am a little worried about scale and perspective.  And the regiments will have to take their turn as there won't be enough room for all of them to do battle at once.   But it will be delightful to set them out, turn and turn about.

Thank you Inge!

I have been somewhat daunted to see on the news tonight that there is flooding both in southern Germany and the Czech Republic, some of it directly on my route.   Spare a thought for the people of the very beautiful city of Passau which, sitting as it does on the confluence of three rivers, has been subject to severe flooding throughout its history.

I am crossing my fingers that there will not be a repetition of 2002, when the frontier was closed between the two countries because of the heavy floods.  I hope that my next blogpost will come from Bavorov and will highlight the Children's Corner which still has to be set up before the Official Opening on Saturday 15th June.

Thank you for following this journey - see you again very soon.

The best-laid schemes......

...o' mice an' men, as the Burns quote has it, gang aft agley....

Well, my plans have ganged agley this week, and hence those of the Maximilian Mouse Troupe too, since without me their saga cannot continue to unfold at the moment.   You will remember that the piggies have been left in a very uncomfortable situation..... 

As I write this, I should have been belting along the Autobahn from Bonn to Bavorov but sadly I am stuck in the UK till next Thursday (I hope not beyond that) waiting for a small medical investigation.   In one way it's nice to have gained some unexpected days with nothing planned, and time for the grandchildren, but it's also very frustrating when the official opening of Small Worlds is looming and there are still things to be done.

(Cue digression:  Good heavens, I googled "Images for Bavorov" and what did I find included but some photos of chaos in Small Worlds?   I can think of better photos to attract people to us!)

However there is no help for the enforced delay and so I am passing the time by sorting books (yet again!) and writing this and some magazine articles.   From the October issue I shall be having a small column in DollsHouse and Miniature Scene, telling the same story as in this blog.   My sister-in-law with the skilful sewing fingers, Mette Breminer, already writes for the same magazine, and the September issue will carry a short article about her visit to Small Worlds last month.

The other article I have promised to write is for the on-line magazine of the website Dolls Houses Past and Present - a wonderful resource for collectors and anyone just interested in dollshouses and miniatures.   Well worth trawling.....

In the comments to my last post, Andrea of the fertile imagination, and Noreen, ganged up on me with yet another suggestion of what I might make next - I quote:  How about a tiny museum, filled with people looking at tinier dolls' houses?........Love Andrea's idea of a miniature museum, but wondered if the visitors there might be mice looking at houses with human inhabitants.........OH! Noreen - I love that idea. The watched becoming the watchers...

I don't know how tiny they think my fingers are! I commented that I had already made one teeny, tiny dollshouse, including furniture, and that was quite enough, thank you very much......



Seriously though, I do love it when people make suggestions.   The problem is that in the field of miniatures I am completely unable to resist taking up the challenge, however impossible it may seem.....so watch this space!   But not just yet I think, there is still much to do in Small Worlds before that.

I think we have solved the problem of lighting some of the dollshouses, something which the Open Day

made clear we needed to think about more carefully - more on that when I am back in Bavorov.   I am also taking back with me some acetate sheet which we think will work well to cover those houses which are a bit too accessible to tiny fingers.   Although I have to say we were deeply impressed with how well Czech children behave, looking but not touching.   I am very much looking forward to preparing the Children's Corner as soon as I get back, where they will be able to touch to their hearts' content.

A picture-light post this time but normal service will, I hope, be resumed next week - I'm off to the airport now to collect Butterfly who has been doing her other job in Norway for 3 days.   I can imagine she will head straight upstairs to start crafting as soon as she gets back - her fingers must be twitching!

Thank you for following me on this journey - do please keep the suggestions coming.  I do very much enjoy your comments.

Where has the week gone?

Living in two countries has both good and bad points.   The good are fairly obvious - exposure to two different cultures, the joy and blessing of good friends in both, the delight of learning another language - "possessing a second soul" as the German saying has it. In fact the feeling of being privileged to live two lives within the boundary of one span of years (in my case 71 of them, and sometimes I really feel it, though mostly not I'm pleased to say).

But on the minus side, the shift from one country to the other can be very confusing, particularly if it happens at speed.   That's why I prefer to drive to and fro so that there is space between the two lives.   And I am very fortunate in having the benefit of an "airlock" in the form of the home of one of my very closest and oldest friends who serendiptiously  lives pretty well half way between the Czech Republic and England. She and her husband are amazingly willing to repeatedly allow me (and mine) into the airlock to take a deep breath and move into the other mode.  She has my deep and grateful thanks.

All this is leading up to explaining why I have not yet got round to reporting back on the very first opening of Small Worlds to the public, for which so many of you sent good wishes a couple of weeks ago.   The very evening of the day we opened Butterfly and I headed back towards the UK, spent two nights in our airlock, and arrived back in England last Tuesday night.   Since then I have been trying to fit in many things like doctors' appointments, buying stuff for Small Worlds, preparing for a singing workshop to be led by Andrea (known to readers as a frequent and imaginative comment-leaver on this blog-she's mainly responsible for the mouse saga), and getting my head round the idea that the next time I return, at the beginning of September, it will be to finally pack up our house of forty years and move on.   To as yet pastures unknown.....

So the Open Day faded into the background, though Butterfly and I talked quite a lot about it on the journey.   Because we quite simply had a ball!   

Things start early in the Czech Republic so we were in Small Worlds by a quarter to eight, closely followed by our stalwart friend Jana who has been a tower of strength throughout this entire process.




By about half past eight the first swathe of people had been through, coming across from the Farmers' Market opposite.   One thing we discovered is that we will need an umbrella stand.......

People did strangely seem to come in swathes.   One moment the room would be completely empty and then, quite suddenly, full to bursting.





Particularly pleasing was the fact that some people came, disappeared, and reappeared with other members of their families.

Foolishly, we didn't keep any sort of accurate count but a full room was around 15-20 people and the room certainly filled and emptied at least six times during the four hours we were open, and probably more.

Some came just to see what new thing had appeared in Bavorov but we were delighted at the real level of interest and pleasure that people showed.   Lots of questions, photos taken, and interest in the idea that we would be offering workshops next year......

The big Walmer dolls house, which has pride of place by itself at one end of the room, was a great hit, with people having to take turns to view it properly.

But the undoubted star, for adults and children alike, was the mouse house, which now sits proudly on a smart wooden turntable.   Despite the notices around the room asking people not to touch anything, the mouse house is labelled "You may carefully turn this".   Maximilian and his troupe of amazing performing mice are, of course, much enjoying the attention....

I suspect there will be more Maximilian adventures to come.....








We unveiled our new window display the night before the opening but sadly forgot to take any photos of it.   We finally remembered just as we were leaving for England on the Saturday evening and by then the light was by no means ideal.   Although I should love to post photos of it they are simply not good enough - mostly what you see is Butterfly with the camera, reflected in the window, and a another reflection of our car parked outside ready for the journey.  I promise to take better ones when I return to Small Worlds in just over a week's time and post them then.

In the meantime thank you for continuing to follow me on this particular journey and I do look forward to your comments.   It's so lovely to hear that people are enjoying the blog.

Thank you Butterfly.....

On the eve of the day that we open Small Worlds to the general public for the first time, and our immediate departure for England tomorrow evening, me for ten days and Butterfly for at least 3 months, maybe longer, it seems fitting that I will be directing you to her website, Words and Pictures, for an overview of some of what she has been doing in the past nine weeks.   Without her I would have achieved very little and I owe her huge thanks for her creativity, ability to think outside the box and her staying power!  I shall miss her enormously.  (For those who don't know - she's my daughter.....)

But before I give you the link, first of all a quick mouse update - when we left them they were about to move in, and those pesky pigs were hanging on to the tailgate of the wagon for dear life.  They've now reached the front door and are clearly considering their options.   Maybe they are about to burst into a Christmas Carol?  

Actually, bursting into song might gain them admittance - 


because if you take a peek inside the house then you can see two groups of singers in rehearsal.   Maximilian himself is conducting the teenage boys whose voices have broken...
 

and in the next room Nameless Mouse is tasked with whipping the younger mice into shape.  Butterfly was moved to wonder about the sound-proofing between the two rooms...... 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the house, all is calm, all is bright.   

The servants are bustling around in  the kitchen,

most of the children are waiting for their tea, 

and the babies are amusing themselves upstairs.

And what of the pigs?   Well at least someone has answered the door .......

I seem to have spent much of the past few days fiddling with teeny tiny things - what the Czechs describe as piplačka, a lovely word. 

  For example there are the flowers I have been assembling from the Britains Floral Kits that have been lurking in boxes for many years. Purists should look away now because I confess I have been misusing them and turning lupins and delphiniums into wisteria, and sticking things in vases rather than in flower beds.   

Some of the flower heads are truly tiny as you can see from the tulip head next to the point of a toothpick. 

So when I drop them on the browny-red floor you can imagine that the language is not of the sweetest......

The flowers will feature in the new window we shall reveal tomorrow when we open.  As will something else very piplačky - the model that I started to build about 20 years ago and which Butterfly and I finished earlier today 

                                                                                                                      Imagine our horror when we discovered that we were expected to glue the bonnet down over all that painstaking wiring I assembled so long ago.  We decided to disobey the instructions and leave the car with a removeable bonnet so that in due course a chauffeur can bend over the engine and do some running repairs....

And now prepare to be amazed as you head over to Butterfly, for a look at what she has achieved in the past nine weeks. This post is dedicated to her with my heartfelt thanks and admiration for what she has done - take a look!

Thank you for staying with us on this journey.  It's not over yet so I hope that you will come back for many more blog posts.

Mice on the move - houses too.

Much action in Small Worlds in the past two days.   The mice, having sent in an advance party to choose the soft furnishings for their new home, have arrived in full force to take up residence.   And the houses have all been on the move as well.

First the mice - you may remember this house 

which stripped down to a tasteful brown, revealing the teeny, tiny front door, much smaller than any of the windows.   It has now undergone a complete makeover, which you can catch glimpses of in photos later in the post, though according to Butterfly it still needs another strip of differently coloured bricks part way up to finish it off.   (She painstakingly made a bay window since we were one window short.  There was some swearing when a fifth matching window emerged from a box this afternoon......) 


Once the advance party - clearly consisting of the staff since they are all in some sort of uniform, had chosen the curtains, carpets and bedding, it was time for the main party to arrive, which they did in style, and in something of a rush, as you can see.

They pulled up smartly, right by the new front door (and hiding the bay window - photo to come) and got ready to take possession of their new home.

Inside the servants had been very busy, putting up curtains and blinds and laying down rugs on the newly polished floors.  

I suspect that the two lounging on the sofa in the French Drawing Room are troublesome teenage mice that Maximilian had not wanted to be bothered with on the journey.


Maximilian is of course a very famous mouse, who after retiring from a career in the bull-fighting ring, formed the troupe of performing mice who are about to take up residence here.   You will note he now wears a yellow tailcoat, not a red dressing gown.....

You will undoubtedly be hearing more of this famous troupe of performing mouses - for example, there may be trouble ahead if the hitchhiking pigs, clearly on the run from that pesky wolf, actually succeed in moving in.....

Whilst mouse-moving was going on, Butterfly and I were moving things in the real world, shifting out of workspace mode into a display set-up ready for the Open Day on Saturday.   This, of course, involved a great deal of chaos again, as things from our beautiful working shelves were bundled into fruit boxes whilst we tried to squeeze a quart of tools and paint into a pint pot of space.  Or temporarily into what will become the Children's Corner.....

That was yesterday.

Today the houses, the drawers they were standing on and, in the end, one of the giant ex-BBC cupboards, were all on the move.   Butterfly excelled herself with much "heaving and hoving" as my then-four-year-old granddaughter once described it.   At one point the previously tidy room had barely one house in its original position and surplus drawers all over the place.

But by the end of an exhausting day, everything had found a suitable place

and the big Walmer Victorian dolls house - its redecoration will be fully described in a coming post - has taken up its position by the entrance door, with the large department store-to-be surprisingly ending up in front of the door to the "facilities", as the Czechs neatly describe them.   Fortunately the store is on castors.....Photos of these when everything is tidily in place.

And finally the frog-infested woodland window display has been removed, and the window covered ready for a grand reveal of the new display later in the week.   One of my readers will certainly recognise the house on the poster!

Thank you for following the journey so far - please stay with me for further adventures.......