"Stop Mocking Me!"

"I've got a new project and you don't!". That was a gloating Zar this morning. That's not like him at all, but once in a while he just has to let it out. Absolute glee!

He invited Tessie over to "watch and learn". Those were his exact words....I have a feeling that, in his present mood, he would slap her hands away if she tried to help.

This seems to be his project. All his.

The first thing Tessie asked was, "Are you going to keep the spy windows in the front? They would be handy when the radio is turned around. You could peek out and see that's going on."

His only answer was, "If I can see out of the holes, others can see in...No spy holes. Privacy is my main concern. Now get away from there!"

While I am working on the rugs, he can help entertain you and keep you busy with this project.

As far as mocking Tessie, no he's not. We did a bit of experimenting with the walls a little while ago.

I pulled out the last scraps of illustration board for the mock ups. That's where the mocking remark came in. She overheard us planning.

First I measured the floor and cut a piece of the illustration board to fit. We have to decide what we are going to do with the triangular braces at the bottom of the walls on both sides. As of now, we are still undecided, so are working around them.

In order to make a back wall, I laid the radio face up on the board and traced around it. I then made a 1/4" allowance for the thickness of the wall. I then went inside of the tracing and cut on that line. It isn't a perfect fit yet, but it gives us a place to start.


As usual, Tessie couldn't keep her nose out of the project. Actually, she had a good suggestion.

She looked the fireplace up and down and said, "That thing sticks out too far. Wasted space. If you cut a hole in the illustration board to fit it into, you will have an extra half a foot or so in depth." She was very business like and professional about the whole thing.

We tried it and she was right. Amazing!

I tried cabinets and bookcases along both walls. Again, it took up too much of the space. The whole area is only 7" by 9" to begin with. When you start filling in even the dead space at the sides, you loose a lot of the room.

Zar wants bookshelves, so the alternative is on either side of the fireplace.

We tried a 2 1/2" bottom cabinet mock up on either side. It looks stunted and short. Zar suggested that we go to the height of the mantle with the closed section and have shelves above that.

Tessie chimed in with, "You have to close it in. We need a place to hide the bug beer and chips."

All of a sudden it is a "we" situation....Methinks that Tessie has plans of her own.

Zar had better be careful. She has a way of getting what she wants...

When I left, Tessie had a pencil behind her left ear and a quad rule note pad in her hand. She was furiously making notes....She was about a third of a way through the pad.

She licked the point of the pencil and said, "OK. Here's the plan. Tomorrow we will fix up the fireplace. I think that it needs a faux marble surround and base. It will have to have fire bricks inside. I can faux the marble and you can lay the brick."

I am going to quietly tip toe away now. There is laundry to be done and rugs to be vacuumed in the real world. They can fend for themselves....Good luck to Zar!

See you tomorrow.

The Score? Zar One...Tessie Still Stitching...

I started playing around with the pattern that I put in yesterday. I decided to see what it looked like in real thread and canvas. I will be changing colors as I go. I did the colors in the pattern in sharp contrasts so that they would be easy to read.

If I did it in the colors that I will probably use, it would be difficult to separate one color from the one next to it, in a lot of instances.

I plan to do a lot of blackwork type stitches over the top of it after I get the basic colors blocked in.

This pattern is going to look better in an informal setting. Maybe even a mid century room.

The one for Tessie's living room is coming along nicely. I work on one end and Tessie sneaks in and works on the other. She tugs a lot and makes it difficult to work.

Don't tell her that I told you. She reversed the ends of the rug for the photo. I did the end that she is so intently working on now. She did the start of a checkerboard pattern on the other end...

When I get a little further along, I will give you a close up of my end and tell you about the procedure.

I am doing the blackwork method on this one too.

Now for the score....

It's official. Zar has scored the new fireplace. He suggested that it would look good in the radio case as a gentleman's study.

It fits the space perfectly. Maybe a bookcase on either side of the fireplace and a couple of wing chairs will have to be built.

I am starting to see visions of what it will look like. I am thinking maybe a parquet floor like the one in the Regency room box. That one has a herringbone pattern in walnut. I did that floor when I first started in minis. It was one of those things that, nobody told me that I couldn't do it with the tools I had, so I forged ahead and did it. Believe it or not, I did it with an Exacto knife, a steel ruler and a big stack of sandpaper! It took a lot of work, but it came out great. I do have to add that I am very happy that I have a Micro Lux saw to use, if I decide to repeat the process!

Tessie is now madly searching for a place to put the German stove. She is afraid that I will actually pull the Clockwork Cottage down and work on the kitchen.

It all started when Eskiaga claimed the kachina doll. Now that Zar has grabbed the fireplace AND the radio cabinet, she is getting really worried. Never mind that I am working on the townhouse night and day....Others are encroaching on her territory!

See you tomorrow.

Rug Tangle....

This is as far as I got yesterday on the rug. I am experimenting as I go. When I put the needle down, Tessie takes over.

I have torn out almost as much as I have put in, stitch wise.I took a break this morning and did one the easy way.

I thought that you might like to play with the pattern.This one is 100, by 70. Only 7,000 stitches....

It will at least give you some idea of how to go about tangling. Take the pattern and play with it. Make it your own with different colors and rearranging the elements. Have fun. That's the important part.

This one is really simple. You can do it on any size fabric. It will look better in cross stitch than in needlepoint. That way all of the lines will connect and make sense.

I might just have to have a go at it myself. I don't even want to think about how many stitches are in the one that I am doing ad lib.

Back to work now.

See you tomorrow.

I Think I Can. I Think I Can. I Think I Can....

OK....First, before we get started on other stuff..... I got a better bargain than I thought yesterday. Remember the stove? I thought it was a 60% discount on a 48 dollar stove....I was wrong. Troy commented that he had been looking at those stoves. Just out of curiosity, I decided to check on the price at HBS....It has been a while since I looked. I was thinking that it was 54.00 the last time I looked. The stove is now priced at a whopping 94.99 plus shipping! So....I guess I got over 80% discount. I am definitely doing a happy dance over that one!

Now about the I think I can thing...Tessie needed a rug for the living room, to go in front of the sofa. I dug through my pile of "starts" and only found one the I thought might work. It didn't.

The style isn't bad, but the colors were way too pale. Back to the drawing board, so to speak.

I started looking at rug "images" on Google. Still nothing....Then the mad six year old artist went to work. Tessie helped.

Between us, we came up with a tangled rug. Why not!?! The permanent ink on the coffee mugs didn't stay on...I need to tangle something else now.

I went and got some #26 congress cloth(mini canvas). In true tangle spirit, I whacked off a piece about the size that I want the rug to be.
I then grabbed a black Pigma permanent .005
pen and went to work. It may not work on mugs, but it is great on canvas. As fine as it is, after you stitch over it, nobody ever sees it.

I didn't count the number of stitches width and length wise. I just drew some lines. I am going to do it as a border rug. The eye will need somewhere to land and I am not going to do the center if I am going to cover it with a coffee table.

I pulled out the last scrap of the sofa/chair fabric and Tessie started pulling colors from my three floss bins. The floss bins will have to be straightened once again.

Anyway, here you see the colors that we are going to use. There may be a few slight changes, but this is the basic pallet.

I will start on one end, with Tessie tugging on the other and repeatedly asking,"Is it done yet? Is it done yet?".

Before she tires of asking, I will probably tire of hearing it. I will shove a cookie in her hand and lock her out of the bedroom... That will hold her for a while. Every time she asks, I will shove another cookie under the door and hopefully she will go away for a while. I need to get started now.

I am going to try to beat her to the punch. "Here Tessie. Have a cookie!"

See you tomorrow.

A Day of Frivolity....

Actually, I probably should call it 24 hours of frivolity. It started yesterday at the Wednesday Witches mini meeting...My friend Sue is downsizing her mini collection. She brought out a tray of about 20 miniature Hopi Kachinas and offered them for sale. I was the lucky one that she passed them to first.

This little guy came home with me. He is hand sculpted and about 1" tall and Eskiaga beat Tessie to claiming him. He goes well in the Southwestern Room Box. Good going Eskiaga!

This morning, I decided that Thursday would be a good day to go to 22 Street Antique Mall and a couple of thrift shops.This is the same place that April found the mod chair that she gave me for my birthday. There is one lady that has had a case with minis in it for quite a while. I always have to check it out when I go there.

Today I hit the jackpot, or what was left of the jackpot. She is closing her booth and had a whopping 60% off of all of the prices.

I had some Christmas money that was burning a hole in my pocket. This was just the place to spend it...

The above fireplace and surround was the first thing that I grabbed. It is a bit tall to go into a regular house, but I have several room boxes that I think would work. I will probably do a bit of fancying up and it definitely could use a good cleaning. I am thinking that faux marble would look good inside and on the base.



Tessie and Zar are already arguing over whom will be the lucky owner.Next, with the discount, both of these pieces together were about eight dollars... I definitely bought these to bash, paint and play with.The last one is the prize! I got this German kitchen stove for 19.00! Most of the time the price on these hovers around 50.00. I purchased one of these a long time ago and when it didn't fit where I wanted to use it, I sold it to a friend. I was always sorry that I did. Now I, or I should say Tessie, have it again.

Incidentally, remember how Tessie jumps on beds to try them out? She sits on stoves to see if they get hot....So far, she is not getting results and wants to take it back. Good! That means I can use it for Zar's Clockwork Cottage! I'll bet you forgot all about that one... I didn't. And if Tessie doesn't behave, I may just drag that one down from the top shelf and replace it with the townhouse. Zar is much easier to please. On the way home, I stopped at one of the thrift stores and found the Liberty Home book. It's English. Liberty was one of my favorite stores when we went to London. Wonderful fabrics. This book has all kinds of ideas for how to use them.

The other one is an "Indian Art" magazine. Lots of neat beadwork and baskets.

My last stop was at the Dollar Tree. See the cups? I saw them a couple of weeks ago, before all of the Tangling. I am thinking that, if they actually work, I could have cups with doodling all over the outside. It doesn't recommend a particular brand of permanent pen. I may have to do a bit of experimenting.

Anyway, I have had more fun than I can stand in one day. Oh! I forgot to tell you. I have reached the half way mark on the tangles for the typesetter's tray. Forty nine down and forty nine to go.

I am going to go kick the Terrible Two out of the cups and do something serious now....Laundry calls.

See you tomorrow.

Taa Daa!!!

I finally figured out what I hated about the townhouse living room. Not enough soft furnishings. Yesterday afternoon, I figured out how to rectify the lack of windows....

Another place to put curtains. The Victorians often curtained doorways. If they could, so could Tessie.

I found some fabric in my stash that went well with the wall color and the fabric on the wicker and went to work.

There are tutorials for curtains elsewhere on the blog, so I won't go into deep detail. I used the "Hundreds of pins!" method of pleating. I prefer that to using a comercial pleater. I don't like pleats that look like a washboard...

If you use this method, especially for the first time, make sure that all of your pins have the heads facing away from the top and bottom of the fabric and are taught.

One pleat at a time. The first pleat has a small piece of wood glued into it to keep the pleats vertical. After that, I start at the bottom of each pleat and work to the top. Each one gets a pin at the bottom, at the middle in line with that one and the top ones fan out. There are a few extra pins in the top half to hold the curved shape.

Then I spray them with unscented extra hold hairspray at least twice, letting the hairspray dry thoroughly between sprays.

In this case, I let them set overnight, so that they would be nice and stiff when I went to take them off.

I decided to make a cornice board from the fabric left over from the sofa and chair.

I drew out the shape on graph paper, cut it out and used it as a pattern for cutting illustration board. Then I built a 1/2" deep, three sided box behind it. I covered and wrapped the box with the fabric, slashing where needed.

This particular cornice will never be seen from the back side, so I didn't bother to line it.

I decided that it needed a bit more fabric between the draperies, so I pleated a shorter piece to cover the top of the archway.

Assembly was the easy part. I glued the draperies and valance in place and then simply glued the cornice over the whole thing.

The tiebacks are simply short pieces of the cornice fabric, with a glued hem at the top and bottom...

Tessie is very happy with the whole arrangement. She can now make a grand entrance into the living room and she can close the drapes to hid the dirty dishes.

It definitely softens the look of the living room. Slowly but surely, I am getting out from under this townhouse. I will feel like a great weight has been lifted when I can call it done. Back to work!

See you tomorrow.

The Color of Jaundice

"Ugh!?! You're joking!.......Please tell me this is a joke!!! I am already starting to feel sick! This is an abomination!" That was Tessie after I painted the first wall of the living room. Over reacting much?

Unfortunately, I had to agree. It looks even yellower to the camera than it does to the naked eye. The wicker seems to fade into the background and the yellow becomes the dominate force in the room....Ick.

After Tessie's reaction, I immediately scrubbed it down and started over.

This time I tried Tessie's favorite Ceramcoat Trail Tan. Since I met her, I seem to go through bottles of that more than any other color....


I have to agree that it definitely shows off the wicker better.

Both walls in the photo are painted the same color. That's one of the things that I don't like about this house. It is very hard to get a photo of the true color. It's like shooting photos in a tunnel. The wall by Tessie is accurate. The other one is the exact same color....Different lighting angle.

When I finished the painting, I moved the furniture over to the other side of the room. I took a couple of photos and......instant gray. Again, it's the screwy lighting. These walls are also trail tan now.

I am going to wait until I have everything finished and then set up some better lighting and take some serious photos.

At least the wall no longer looks blue. Tessie and Zar don't seem to notice that the walls are weird. I am just going to sneak away and let them enjoy the new paint job. Here's hoping it's the last one.

I have a lot to do today in real life as well as mini, so I had better get at it.

See you tomorrow.