The Big Book of Little Things.......

We had to take Mookie back to the vet today for a check on how his thyroid is doing....We won't know the results of the blood test for a few days, but if I were to guess, I would say that he is doing great. He went from 5 to 6 pounds in a month and is still eating like a pig instead of a cat.

Anyway, as a result, there was a bit of a chunk cut out of the middle of the morning. When he got home he was at first acting like he was mad at the world. A little later he went through the denial stage.....He kept running around the house trying to figure out if the morning trip was real or just a dream. After about an hour, he calmed down and pretty much decided that it never happened. At least he didn't draw blood from the assistant's hand this time.

I decided that, since the morning was mostly a thing of the past, I might as well do something silly for the rest of it. I was trying to think of something to do for the blog. My eyes landed on one of my favorite things. It is a huge notebook full of sketches for projects, furniture and various lists.

I started it over 25 years ago when I was doing mini shows. I keep everything.....Not necessarily neatly and in order, but the notebook keeps getting thicker.

I noticed that some of the drawings on graph paper were no longer on graph paper. The lines are gone! Obviously not archival.

I thought that it might be fun to show you some of the original sketches for projects.

This first one is the sketch for the draped sofa in the Regency room. This room went to the Anaheim NAME show in the early 80s. This was one of the first projects for which I kept sketches. The sofa was a direct copy of a sofa in an antique furniture book. They gave the measurements of the original sofa, so it was pretty easy to draft a pattern for it.

The next one is of the table in the Southwestern Room Box. That one, I cheated on a bit. The table top is the original shape from one in a book on antique furniture from New Mexico, but it was originally a dining table. I scrunched down the legs and made the top smaller..,,,Now it is a coffee table for Eskiaga's house.

I did miniature shows off and on for a while. When I was doing that, I had to do some pieces that were original, but more than one of a kind.

This is a cradle that was pretty basic. I turned it into a series of cradles based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. They were fun to do because each one was different when they were finished. I dug around and found the very last one....I never got around to painting it. I might just have to do it now.

In the same notebook, I kept several inventories that I found at the university library over the years. This particular one was for a general store from between 1800 and 1812. It was an all around fun place to be. It contained a tavern, general store and post office. Get drunk. Buy some paper and a quill pen, write a letter and send it all in the same place. This place even sold marriage licenses.....Hmmmm....Get drunk and get married? I think that this store should have been named Las Vegas General Mercantile....

Some of the more interesting things on this particular inventory are.....Five books. Four dictionaries and one copy of Tom Jones! Tessie would like this store. They had nine shawls, all purple! The next to the last item on the list is kind of scary.....2 dozen scalping knives!

I have an antique cracker crate that is someday going to become this very general store. I want to reproduce everything on the list.

Tessie found plans for one thing that she wants me to make for her. I only made one of them back in the 80s.

It is a kind of San Francisco flower stall. It has three stair step shelves with a red and white awning over the top. She says that she could set it out on the sidewalk in front of the townhouse and make lots of money from the roof garden.

If I do that one, I will put up the plans for it on the blog. By the way, the notebook in question is under the plans for the flower stand...

For now, I am going back and reassure Mookie that he doesn't have to go back to the vet for six months. Traumatic kitty experiences aren't fun. I feel like I have to make it up to him. "Hey Mookie! How about some grilled lobster?"

See you tomorrow.