Can you guess what it is yet?

So.

Now that I've settled in and made the place cosy, perhaps now is the time to reveal the purpose of this new blog.

This time last year I was in the process of selling my Scottish gothic baronial mansion and its contents, collected over decades and now scattered to the four corners of the planet.
Most of my doll's house friends were aghast at my decision to part with it, but I just felt it was time for us to part. It was really much too big for my current abode (being over 12 feet wide) and it was never, ever going to be finished. It also epitomised a period of my life which I didn't want to be reminded of. I had lost heart with it, and although the initial sales of my collection were agonising, as it slowly empied, the house lost its heart too, and ended up as an empty shell.

Happily a friend had fallen in love with it, and its possibilities, so in Spring this year, the house too found a new home, where I know it is loved and appreciated and is being gradually filled with new treasures.

So, for the first time in over 20 years I had no doll's house.
Not one.
Not even a room box.
To put this in context, I will confess that at the height of my mania for miniatures, I had in excess of 17 houses, shops, room boxes, shadow boxes etc, spanning the architecture of over 700 years from mediaeval castle, through Tudor and Elizabethan, Carolean, Jacobean to Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian, up to the 1950's.
So you might appreciate that to suddenly have none at all was a bit of a shock.

However, for the past 6 months a phoenix has been rising from the ashes and I have been considering and planning a new project.
On a much more modest scale.
But I want it to be the best I've ever done..........A Victorian Toy Shop.

You see, I didn't sell quite all of my collection of miniatures. I kept my very favourite pieces, which were all from the playroom and nursery at the top of the house. Dozens and dozens of tiny toys, books and games, many by the very best makers from the past 20 years. They are all carefully packed away in several boxes, awaiting their new home.

So watch this space........