It begins..........

Well, we're only 5 days into the New Year and the first household catastrophe of 2011 has already befallen us.

Our oven had died.

Not quite such earth-shattering news as Nigel Pargetter falling to his death from the roof of Lower Loxley, but just as upsetting in its own way.

We're fervently hoping that if we've correctly carried out the post mortem, the cause of death will be a failed fan element.  If that is the case, then it will be possible to resurrect it, but only if we can find an exact replacement element for our rather obscure make of oven.  I think it's Italian but its provenance is anybody's guess.  Needless to say the exact make and model of oven is no longer available so we're relying heavily on the resources of the interweb to track down a suitable spare.

Also, having read about the pitfalls of replacing said element, I somehow doubt our ability to do it without having to take the whole thing out of its housing.

A task I would rather not undertake.

Buggrit.

In other news, I have successfully transformed my lovely, neat, tidy workroom into a complete and utter guddle courtesy of sorting through the last of my doll moulds for sale.  Now that they've been evicted from their cupboard, I have to meticulously list and price them so there are little piles of moulds all over the desk and worktop.  Nowhere near the massive 5 boxes full I sold a while back, but enough to disorganise the relative calm I'd managed to maintain since Monday.

So I'm now down to just one shelf in one half of one cupboard, as opposed to all the shelves in all of the cupboards.

Which means that the newly vacated cupboard space can become home to the stuff on the shelves on top of the worktops.

Which in turn means that I can dispense with the bookshelves and reclaim the worktop space in one fell swoop.

I've also started listing more of my book collection on the website, as well as a bargain set of miniature sculpting materials, tools and books.  I'll be adding to the book listings over the coming days, as well as listing items from my own miniature collection which are now surplus to requirements.


On the dolls website, there is also a January Sale, with reductions of up to 50% on selected items to further aid our downsizing effort.


And in amongst all of the above, I've been cracking on with the production of a new kit as well as tinkering with my automaton idea.

I'll never be able to keep up this blistering pace........