A beach required

Instead of snow, which is coming down from heavens currently, we demand a beautiful, sunny day! And a beach to go for a swim.

Actually, it might be advisable not to swim, considering that there is a Chianti bottle in the bag!

The instructions for the bag will be published in next Mignonette magazine. Also, there are five kits that will be sold on the coming dolls' house fairs (Tampere, Model Expo, Lahti....).

But, please, let there be sun!

Snow, what a wonderful background!

I started yesterday to work on Home of Miss Valkonen. Totally absorberd into her world, and now I can't do anything else. A slight problem on the personal level as I should be producing little books for the Seinäjoki fair, but there are still two days and nights before I have to leave the house:-)

But let me introduce you to Miss Valkonen, a first grade teacher from a small town in Finland. The town is not unlike Rauma, Naatali, Porvoo or Loviisa, but I let you pick your favorite for her location.

Her house is built of wood with groundwork of big stones. I have nearly ruined the house by painting the first round with spray paint: it means that acryl colours don't stick that well... And even though I made some tests before the first  round of painting, the colour was just horrible. Luckily I found a better colour from Kuopio, even though it also required some white to be mixed. But even so, the house become quite dark, perhaps it is this winter time.

The kit was bought from Tampere fair last year, so I count the house "New". It was nearly free, only 25 euros from Gepetto. The only challenge is that the house is some 29 cm high and the base is 12 cm times  12 cm. This means that the scale is somewhere around 1:30...Which means that everything needs to be built by my very own hands.

But now to the interior decoration...

From Russia with love

I was forbidden by my husband to travel to Russia on December 6th, but I guess this is a workaround. No, actually the bag à la Courier of Tsar required a winter jacket. I had admired this one on Dolls' House Magazine some years ago, and now it was time to try the instructions out.

After copying the patterns, I tried it out on kitchen paper. The sleeves were quite long,but otherwise it seemed to fit.

The suede leather I was using proved to be very tricky to sew. I used an A4-paper underneath and silk paper on top, and that was a way to machine sew it. But sewing the sleeves in place by hand took twice as much as time as everything else.

The lining fabric did not like "Fray Check", so I took my favourite tool: coffee stirrer and applied a tiny amount of PVA glue around the edges. Not very pretty, but better than Fray Check. As I started applying the glue, I remembered a trick used earlier. It would have been easier if I could find a wide container where to mix water and glue, and just dip the edges into mixture. But as I was only to handle four pieces of lining I decided it was not worth while to find the suitable container, mix the stuff, dip and clean up...Especially clean up.

As I did not follow the instructions, the collar is glued to the jacket instead of sewing. But notice that there are three rows of chunky chenille instead of two which makes the collar more furry. And notice the gold thread used in buttons.

But I'm bit worried for the lady as she is wandering in the snow without proper shoes. And her hat is still to be completed...

Stress generated by myself

I was having lunch with my friend just before Christmas, and she was really interested in if I want to go back to office and work my nine-to-five (or it was actually seven-to-three:-). No way, I answered. She was a bit unbelieving as she knew how passionate I was about my work (yes, there were times when it was enjoyable...).

The discussion went on, lingered a bit and ended up to my Christmas calender. It was a moment of realisation for my friend: "No, you really don't need to go back to office, you are most able to generate the stress all by yourself!"

This story fits today nicely, as I woke up wondering what on earth I have promised: to teach a workshop on "Kotiseminaari" ( an online happening) about a bag AND to provide instructions for FOUR bags to magazine of  Nukkeyhdistys. All, of course, on dolls' house scale.

And it should be obvious to the reader that the bags do not exist, except to some extent, in my head. The deadline for the first two bags is only in next week, so plenty of time left...

This is an old photo from spring 2012, but it has some bags in it

Results of the Christmas Calender

For December, I concentrated on filling the Christmas calender at kallis-nukkekoti.joulukalenterit.fi, so here are the results:

Quite impressive, don't you think? It is amazing what a deadline can do to your productivity. Even though I had to admit that sometimes it also affects quality of the end result... But the best thing is that now I have a good conscience to start new projects as there is only some 24 cross stitch carpets and pillows to make for  the next Christmas calender ...

Quick update on what has happened

I have been quiet for quite many months now, the excuse being the book, of course.
But the Finnish book is now out and available. I have decided to find a publisher for the English translation, so it may take a while...

Now I'm concetrating on finishing the started projects on a Christmas calendar.

Guess what?

I was planning on making a photo guess competition about this one, as this one is really a misfortunate thing. But I decided not to tease you, so I reveal that it is the first version of chandelier to lady's dressing room at Hôtel Jadis. Really material to the book "Ei menny niin ku Strömsössä" (have you seen the book two? It is hilarious!! And the group is in Facebook too!)

It looked really nice, until I decided that I try to adjust it a bit. Well, you should follow the rule "if it is not broken, don't fix it" because now it is only a photo guess work material to be discarded after writing. Luckily it was also a bit big, more like 1:24 chandelier.

But working with metal is really hard, so I really wait for Larissa's book. At least she promised on the phone to reveal all her secrets in the coming book. But unluckily we have to wait for it a bit longer....

Hôtel Jadis is progressing well, the exterior is finished, and I have started to work on the interior decoration. I decided to finish the back of the house first to get something ready quickly (?), and I think only things that are missing now is one chair (Robin Betterley's kit), another chair is missing covering and the unlucky chandelier. The library books need to be glued to shelves and perhaps, just perhaps, I build library stairs....Just in case they want to read the books at the upper most shelf.