Nothing to see here.... move along

Perspicacious readers of this blog may have popped along to the Tower House Dolls website to check out its new home.

If this is the case I must apologise profusely for the lack of said website in any other than a single page capacity. This is due to the fact that we are taking advantage of the opportunity of transferring it from one host to another to completely redesign it.

This make take more than just a few days.

However if anyone has an urgent need for doll kits etc, just drop me an email or leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Normal service will be resumed........at some point.

Tempus Fugit.............

I can hardly believe that yet another week has flown by since my last post.

During the past 7 days I have been camping in the bucolic countryside of East Sussex, had a birthday, several birthday parties, been indulgently over-indulged, got minor sunburn, put on 3 lbs, laughed till I thought I'd have a conniption fit, enjoyed the company of friends and generally had an ace time.

Of course, time and tide wait for no newly 'one year older' woman of a certain age and I have had to hit the ground running since my return on Monday.

Aside from the usual 'chores to do on the return from camping', ie trying to find the bottom of a seemingly bottomless email inbox, catching up with orders, placating a truculent Small Dog who is always grumpy for days post camping etc etc, there was also the rather pressing task of changing our website host, which we've been putting off for some time.

However the renewal is due on Friday so today we took the bull by the horns, put our shoulder to the wheel and bit the bullet in order to get it all sorted.

Miraculously, it has all gone much smoother than either of us could have dared hope. We are with a shiny new hosting company, with 24/7 tech support (which we have already tested and found to be exemplary), saving a small fortune in the process. We now have a wondrous 'back end' with a control panel which has more bells and whistles than you could shake a stick at.

Speaking of which, it's Hastings Jack-in-the-Green Festival on Monday Bank Holiday, when Morris Dancing troupes from around the country will converge on Hastings, along with over 30,000 bikers for the annual May Day Bike Run. Surprisingly the two events seem to co-exist alongside each other in a good-natured symbiotic relationship.



So yet another short working week in prospect.

Heigh ho.......

Multitasking........

Yes, I know it's been a while since my last post but it's been one of those weeks.

Only I could choose the week of major disruption of the world's airlines to produce a flurry of orders all bound for 'forn parts' and which therefore have been stacked up in piles all over the show.

I finally cracked yesterday and took two enormous bags full of carefully packaged orders to the Post Office, where I was nearly lynched by the maddened mob in the queue behind me.

Ditto today.

However I have at last cleared the decks in advance of my birthday camping trip tomorrow.

So yay and hooroo.

The weather forecast is for sunshine all weekend so I'm even anticipating the first camping BBQ of the season. As is Small Dog who has a penchant for Tesco Finest Sausages in all the various permutations of taste and texture.

My birthday's on Friday.

St. George's Day.

Which is a bit of a bummer for a Scot, but I must forbear.

Dongle permitting there may (or may not) be photographic evidence of the frivolities in due course. However the rest of today will be given over to sorting out the van, doing the food shop and generally getting organised for a few days R&R.

Thinking aloud.........

This post is purely by way of organising my thoughts into a coherent pattern, so if you're not interested in the intricacies of craft storage then I'd advise you to just pass on by.

Move along, nothing to see here.

For the rest of you storage junkies I have been mulling over A Plan for the past few months, which I have now decided to put into action.

The recently advertised 'major downsizing' is well underway. I've cleared shelves and shelves of books all over the house and the big storage unit in the workroom is beginning to look echoingly hollow and empty. I'm determined to whittle down the contents of the workroom to the bare bones of what I will need to move forward to a new phase of the business, away from character dollmaking and into the brave new world of tiny toymaking.

Currently I have a foot in both camps as an interim arrangement, but very soon I will be casting off the last of my ties to the shores of miniature dollmaking and setting sail for the wonderland of miniature toys.

See? Allusion and everything.

Anyways, my vision is to have everything work-related fitting into a stylish storage armoire. Initially I was smitten with the Original Scrapbox, as seen here........



However, on reflection, there is much about it I don't like.

• The price. It weighs in at an eye-watering £1000 plus £70 delivery from the UK supplier.

• The size. It's 3 feet wide by 3 feet deep so it sticks out like a sore thumb. Yes it has masses of storage, but much of it wouldn't really be what I need. It's designed for scrapbookers, so the folding trays are quite flimsy and the sizes aren't quite right for my purposes.

• The configuration. Opened right out it measures over 9 feet wide. If I had that much space to play with I would just shelve it and be done with it. OK so you can sort of fold the doors into a U-shape around you as you work but I don't want too feel like I'm sitting in the Black Hole of Calcutta every day.
• The construction. It comes as a flat-pack in about a zillion pieces. This is a time lapse video of a couple putting it together. It took around 10 hours with breaks. He looks like quite a handy chap (if a little long-suffering) and he has all the right tools. I'm no stranger to flat-pack but I'd hazard a guess it should take longer than 10 hours. Not to mention the inevitable time out for bandaging cuts and flesh wounds, relationship counselling and trying to find Small Dog who will have left home with all her wordly goods tied in in a spotted handkerchief.
  

• The construction #2 - Its made of chipboard. Lots and lots of bits of chipboard. Not sure what the inside sections are made from but they look quite thin and flimsy. In the promotional video on the website when the chap sits on the desk the whole thing shakes and shimmies. £1000 is an awful lot of money to pay for something which is made of compressed sawdust and glue and takes over a day to assemble yourself.

So.

In thinking all this through, I decided to see if I could have something similar built, but better, in that it would be to my specifications.

There are some good design points to the Workbox, and it's younger sibling, the Craftbox which is more streamlined but only because it has no storage inside the doors.

I also came across THIS on t'internet, which also has lots of good design ideas to incorporate into the project.....

The ideal would be to take the best bits from all the available options and combine them into one stylish piece of furniture, with a shabby chic facade.

Inside it would be a veritable Alladin's Cave of 'stuff'. Proper-sized cubby holes for stripwood, hooks for hanging tools, shelves for my mini power tools, containers in perfect sizes to hold tiny wee dolls, fabrics, silk ribbons, viscose, paints,.... all my miniature toymaking paraphernalia within arm's reach.

If it's being built from scratch it can incorporate lighting, access holes in the back for integral electric socket strips. The more I think about it, the better it gets.

Now all I have to do is find the woodworking magician to turn my dream into reality. Feelers have already been put out on the Hastings grapevine and suggestions have been rolling in.

And out there in the blogosphere, if any of you have any ideas or suggestions to add to the melting pot do please feel free.

Ex Libris Sandra...........

In the spirit of major downsizing I have made the difficult decision to part with another bookcaseful of my books.

I started selling my collection of a quarter of a century's worth of books last year. Those were the easiest ones to sell as they were primarily purely work based on dolls and dollmaking. However the most recent candidates for finding new homes have been much harder to decide upon, as many of them have an emotional attachment for me.

Nevertheless, I've just finished listing over 70 reference books on Amazon. They cover a wide range of non-fiction subjects from costume history to old doll's houses, related books on architecture, social history, traditional crafts, several on doll/figure sculpting in polymer clay, miniature needlecrafts, miniature furniture and lots more.

Ones I bought from new are still in mint condition. Others which are long out of print, and difficult to find, which I obtained second-hand, are in at least 'good' or 'very good' condition. Several are really quite rare and are priced accordingly.

Most are hardback and consequently expensive to post so I am willing to put aside books for collection in person if that is possible thus saving YOU the expense of shipping and ME the hassle of packaging and posting them. Win-win situation!

You can view the entire current list HERE.

I have been uploading photos of front covers to Amazon, but they seem to be slow to appear in the listings, so if there is any book on which you need further information or photo, just let me know.

Hopefully they will all find good, loving and appreciative homes in due course.

I WANT ONE....!!!

No lover of tiny houses could fail to be smitten by this.......



Allegedly the smallest house in the world you can read all about it HERE...

And for your further delectation there are even some moving pictures



Absolutely gawjuss.

And I soooooo want one.

If you're up for an hour or so of vicarious displacement activity you could do worse than visit the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company website which is chock full of fascinating information and videos.

Of course I would probably need a pantechnicon trailer behind to carry all my 'stuff' but regular readers of this drivel shimmering prose will remember that PP, Small Dog and I are currently engaged in a mammoth downsizing exercise, which is proceeding in fits and starts.
When completed, and we have a newly streamlined, minimalised, pared-down lifestyle, we will then be able to proceed to the next stage of our Two Year Plan.

Moving house.

Eeek!

*pause for the enormity of this statement to fully hit home and for the palpitations to ease*

Yesterday, PP got the bit between her teeth, (possibly as a result of the horse racing frenzy on Saturday) and got stuck into the big wardrobe in the front bedroom. One of the problems with living in a house bigger than you need is that there is a lot of space to keep 'stuff'. We needed overflow wardrobe space in the first year of living here, so loads of clothes got relegated to the big wardrobe in the front bedroom.

And were promptly forgotten about.

Over the intervening 6 years, and zillions of calories later, only a fraction of the clothing actually fits us any longer. I subscribe to the theory that some form of Narnia-style 'back of the wardrobe' virus has infiltrated and shrunk everything by exactly 2 sizes.

Not to mention PP is bereft and distraught because her favourite old bears, who have been living in a sort of bear maisonette in the wardrobe, have got moth and are currently awaiting incarceration in the freezer.

In other news.....

Well you'll have to wait till my next post for the other news as I absolutely must crack on and get some work done.

Don't Push It........!

Went to a lovely party yesterday afternoon, hosted by two of our best friends, on the theme of 'A Day At The Races'. Everyone dressed up and fully entered into the spirit of the thing... there was a virtual Claire Balding, a couple of stable lads, a lady 'owner' and her trainer, several toffs in top hats, several fillies in stunning hats, and even one plucky person in a horse costume (on the hottest day of the year so far!)

We were all given £100 (monopoly money) and could bet on four actual races, running at Aintree yesterday, culminating in the Grand National.

We also all entered a sweepstake on the final race, each betting £1 (real money) and picking a name from the hat at random.

In between chatting, drinking, laughing, drinking, socialising, drinking, eating, laughing etc we all watched the races live on TV. 'Winnings' were paid out after the end of each race, which meant that we could place further bets if desired.

In the second race, I won a princely £15, which I added as an accumulator to my bet for the Grand National.

To be honest, I don't really like horse racing. I don't mind racing on the flat, but steeplechasing seems a bit barbaric. The Grand National course is famous for its huge jumps and some years several horses have to be euthanized after falling and breaking legs. Jockeys are also often injured but they choose to participate so I don't have much sympathy. The horses have no choice.

Anyway.

At the start of the big race, everyone crowded into the sitting room to watch. A room full of 30 or so women is fairly noisy at the best of times but with the excitement of the big race the noise levels were stratospheric and I couldn't hear a word of the TV commentary.

It was only in the final few furlongs that I thought I heard the name of my horse, "Don't Push It" being mentioned, but assumed that he'd fallen or something equally dire. It was only after the race was finished, and everyone was asking who had won, that someone who had obviously been paying much more attention than the rest of us said 'Don't Push It'.

I 'won' £330.

In play money.

If I'd backed it for real, with genuine coin of the realm, I'd now be £330 better off.

Tsk.

Slippery slope Sandra.