medieval flatpack

in which our plucky heroine finishes just under the wire...

For the SCA Miniaturists "cardboard furniture challenge" I decided to make a set of trestles and planks to create a table that can easily be taken apart for transport or storage, as that would be very useful when my tiny friends are on an SCA camping adventure.

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time in the tinyworld:

The trestle table is now completed...

just the trestles, showing how the pieces fit together...

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two planks made from re-used cardboard with printed woodgrain (from the DIY bookshelf included in the "My Miniature Library" kit) and the pieces to create two trestles made from thicker cardboard from the backs of pads. The pieces on the left have had all four layers of paint applied (black gesso, two layers of drybrushed brown paint, and a final layer of dark brown "graining"), while the two triangle pieces on the right still need that final layer of "wood grain"

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Here are some of the historic examples that inspired this project, an actual trestle table and a manuscript image showing a trestle table in use...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case(s)	back yard whacked	x
7	colorful huipil	parking strip edged	x
8	mini flatpack trestles	hanging loop chore coat	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude -  it is a tiny bit cooler than yesterday.

Time of Isolation - Day 862

a mango in the milk box and other miscellany...

in which our plucky heroine is perplexed...

A mango, but no note to accompany it. I am baffled. I am unlikely to eat it, as much as I love mangos, unless I can find out who left it there. It wasn't my good next door neighbors, I asked them... Eating random food gifted/abandoned in semi-public is not a level of desperation I currently live at, and can be dangerous/fatal.

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 24 "all laid out"... my current book collection for the library of Caer Cardboard. All of these have real pages, and almost all have actual content. All the fairy tale books and a number of others were all part of the "My Miniature Library" kit, that was my valentine gift to myself this year... most all of the smaller ones I created from various online images, or original artwork, or collages from found ephemera.

I've rather lost the momentum on the month long "julyminifun" challenge, so am picking and choosing which prompts to follow. This one engaged my imagination. I'd like to get back to making some additional miniature books, to continue to fill the tiny bookcase shelves...

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This morning I did not fall out of bed. Yesterday, I rolled over to turn off the alarm, and fell out of bed. Since the surface of my bed is almost 34" from the floor, it was fortunate I wasn't injured afaik (nothing broken or torn) but was mightily startled and somewhat bruised... It was an arnica sort of day for sure. Good news is that I was so awake I was able to turn on the box fans a full hour earlier than normal, for extra amelioration against the hot yellow daystar. I was careful to make sure there were no alarms set on my phone last night, but woke up before 5AM anyway, and went about setting the fans for the three hours it was cooler outside than indoors. Managed to get the indoor thermometers down to 73. Last nights low was 72F, forecast high 101F and unrelentingly sunny, so by this evening it will be well over 80F inside Acorn Cottage.

It really has been getting hotter, for longer, since I was a youngster:

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I've figured out how to make a bit of a project space in the air conditioned bedroom, which is my afternoon and evening retreat zone. By setting the laptop on the nightstand, and the keyboard on a TV tray table, I can remain in contact with the outer world, or watch cartoons. A little LED light lets me also work on handwork project or tiny art project, (when I am not simply siesta-ing away the worst of the middle of the day) and I've almost completed sewing on the last of the edge binding on the colorful huipil.

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case(s)	back yard whacked	x
7	colorful huipil	parking strip edged	x
8	x	hanging loop chore coat	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - air conditioning and electric power to run it

Time of Isolation - Day 861

it's a scorcher

in which our plucky heroine is much too warm...

...I have been hiding indoors ever since 7 AM yesterday; it got up to 97F in the shade of my front porch, so was surely hotter than that in the sunshine. Today will be hotter*. Wellington thought going outside in the afternoon would be a good idea, and as it had been hours since his last walkies, I took him as far as the front yard, in case of necessity, and I did a micro walk around under the shade of the trees... He decided that going out to the full extent of the extensible leash and laying down in the sun was in order. Ummm nope! ... back indoors despite his complaints about how unreasonable I was being.


* when I checked the weather forecast last night, this is what I saw on one of the three sites I check every day (and I couldn't resist a bit of editorial coloring)... another site had no graphics, embellished or otherwise, but had the unpleasant number of 103F...

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time in the tinyworld:

The little trestles are going to get a wood-grained finish with some drybrush, over the black gesso base. My hope is to have them be friends with the woodgrain cardboard leftover from the flat-pack bookcase that came with the kit of tiny books.

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first world problem, but still a problem nonetheless... As I have almost used up the last of the bulk shampoo bottle purchases I made years ago, I come to find out that the company has gone out of business in the interim, actually quite a while back. I never found something similar in the past, and now, of course, safety precludes going into shops and sniff testing to find a replacement. Online searching tells me I am not alone in missing my "Natures Gate Daily" herbal shampoo, and not alone in feeling like there is no good replacement. Sigh. I wish I wasn't so picky about how things smell, and how they feel/function. (I tried going the "no shampoo at all" route earlier in the pandammit, and that just didn't work for my extra thin hair, even after two months it felt stringy/greasy and looked awful)

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~ creativity challenge ~

stitchy stitch stitch... between napping and a few lukecold showers, progress continues on the colorful huipil project.  What remains is to finish the edges of the sleeves, and the hemline.

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I hadn't realised that that there was a third one of the Miyazaki inspired Oregon videos... this one from October of last year:

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case	back yard whacked	x
7	x	parking strip edged	x
8	x	hanging loop chore coat	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I am so very glad I do not have a wheat allergy. I don't eat bread that often, indeed I store it in the freezer for that very reason, so it won't get moldy. I noticed there were only a few loaf ends left of the challah bread I bought last month. which led to yesterday's innovation. I had cut up the bread ends into cubes, so they could dry out on the counter overnight and be turned into bread crumbs. For some reason I had the idea to use the little cubes for making "french toast" instead. This was wonderful, as the cubes have a lot more surface area, which generated what for me was a better balance between crunchy exterior and tender interior, almost but not exactly like a fritter. I had been craving that sort of mouthfeel, usually only achieved with deep frying, which is so not a cooking technique I do at home, and this was close enough to satisfy. Yum yum yum!

Time of Isolation - Day 857

not exactly colorblocking

in which our plucky heroine waves goodbye to one of the PIGS*...

My sleep/wake cycle is entirely scrambled currently, as I do my best to shift to crepuscular. There is an additional temporary housemate here as little Wellington is having a doggish vacation at Acorn Cottage. I'm doing what I can to play catch up with various chores and projects anyway.

Probably the most pleasing sewing project recently has been getting back to my colorful huipil, a recombination of varied pieces of coordinated vintage rayon, all in the same colorway but different printed designs as the fabric re-used from the tunic I sewed for my college graduation. This will be the third iteration of the original fabric, from tunic to party dress, and now to popover huipil/top...

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time in the tinyworld:

finally made a start on my cardboard furniture project for this months SCA Miniaturists challenge. I decided to make a set of trestles to use as a table when my tiny friends are SCA camping... The completed table will consist of seven pieces, that will fasten together to form two trestles and a tabletop... The sekrit for making smooth rounded cutouts is to use a paper punch! I used a standard size one for the curves at the bottom of the triangular trestle, and a ⅛" punch for the upper trefoil; careful layout of where the circles intersect does an excellent job.

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~ creativity challenge ~

I've been thinking about making one of these sweet embroidered armchairs as a gift for a miniature-loving friend, so I rummaged around to see what felt I had in the resource boxes... more colors than I expected! Now I want to find out what their favorite color is... (I'm going to make one for the Caer Cardboard library as well)

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case	back yard whacked	x
7	x	parking strip edged	x
8	x	hanging loop chore coat	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I really love the bi-weekly zoom meetings with my Stitching Nomads group, which inspires me to keep on making things, or to finish things started ages ago. Finishing the recombinant rayon project gets at least one of the PIGS* out of the sewing space and into my wardrobe.

*PIGS = Projects In Grocery Sacks

Time of Isolation - Day 855

get ready get set

in which our plucky heroine takes time to prepare...

It is going to be HOT next week, with several days of triple digits in the forecast. So pre-cooking meals, and making as many ice cubes as possible ahead of time seems wise. There will be no enameling until the temperature outdoors is lower than human body temperature. I intend to become as crepuscular as possible.

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 21 "a holiday"... a bit early, but my tiny friends are nothing if not fond of Spooky Season. ("Trick or Treat" decorative pennant is made from alphabet noodles)

Day 22 "show me the baby"... this one was rather a stumper, til I remembered the extra tiny Dala horses. I've had them since I was a student, originally found in the Waltham hospital thrift store decades ago. There are two, both an inch tall, one orange and one black, both painted with traditional motifs.

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an assortment of small repairs done: a pillowcase cut down to better fit the pillows, and adding a hanging loop to the center back of the chore jacket. While alas there are no suitable replacement buttons for the porcelain one that fell off my turquoise batik dress, the only thing could think of was to simply sew closed the bottom edge and move that button further up to replace the lost one.

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~ creativity challenge ~

Tomorrow morning is Sewing Nomads meeting, and as of yet I have done no interesting sewing in the last two weeks other than making glasses cases to strew about the cottage. In the interest of having something to share, my intent is to finally make some progress on the recombinant huipil project. So time to sit down with graph paper and plot out which scraps of fabric go where, and how large they each need to be. Once that is done, the rest will be hopefully easy as it is all rectangles and triangles.

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I stopped at the outdoor garden center. I came home with two 6 packs (mixed lettuce, and arugula), and two different types of parsley. Need to get them into dirt and well watered, probably on the front porch to keep an eye on them until the weather moderates. The greens can go into the salad table, the parsley into the big planter with last years parsley, in the hope of it becoming permanent, since it is biennial.

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case	back yard whacked	x
7	x	parking strip edged	x
8	x	hanging loop chore coat	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude -  the scent of line dried summer bedsheets...

Time of Isolation - Day 853

lookout for the heat wave or hold on its coming

in which our plucky heroine considers chickens, and other wishful bits...

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 20 "unfinished"... Caer Cardboard is still very much a work in progress. I do have an overall plan: upper floor for sewing and textile arts, and lower floor for library/sitting room. But for right now it still needs wallpaper and paint and flooring. Eventually there will be two small houses on Tansu Terrace, the other house will have the kitchen and a small bedroom, and the other thing I will eventually build is a ground floor that will contain a second bedroom, a workshop space, and a pantry/storeroom...

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I keep thinking about keeping hens again, which would require building a new chicken house, but which would also preclude needing to mow the back yard. Might be time to revisit the chicken house plans I made years ago, and figure out what pieces of lumber are still needed.Even at todays inflated lumber costs, I could probably get the needed 2 x 2s, and the shaped moulding for the fiberglass roofing, and a few hens, for what it cost to have the neighbor boy cut back my terribly overgrown yard. Not that I begrudge the fee, he worked really hard for a day and a half to cut it back to ground level, and is well worth supporting.

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Today was all about getting the external stitches out from my excision. Aside from getting up at around 6 in order to take the bus there in time, the whole thing went well.  Another two weeks now and I can change the protocol to using lotion instead of vaseline, which will allow me to cut back on the bandaging. I am glad to have discovered how much better paper tape works on my skin. Indeed it occurred to me to put squares of paper tape over the bug bite welts, which functions to turn down the volume on the itchy. Whew.

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I'm not looking forward to the oncoming heat wave, next week is is forecast to be triple digits, with proportionally warmer overnight temperatures in the evening, which means less chance to cool the house down. Wish I had been able to get the awnings for the east and west windows, which would make a difference. Today I am really missing our local swimming pool, as the last time I had this many bites the pool was still open. My body misses the floaty feeling of just drifting in the water. And I guess that my mind is being sort of drifty as well today...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	yard waste bin
6	eyeglass case	back yard wacked	x
7	x	parking strip edged	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - my yard looks excellent, and is no longer the yard of shame on our block. Alan the neighbor boy did a beautiful job, and even edged along the parking strip and the front lawn, so my sidewalk looks tidy. I told him that I had never edged it in all the 17 years I have lived here, which did not surprise him, based on how difficult it was to do.

Time of Isolation - Day 852

tiny book Tuesday and other tidbits

in which our plucky heroine wishes she was less reactive...

I've hired the young neighbor boy to weed whack the front and back yard, the back yard in particular is really in bad shape. While this will allow my arm to continue healing, stirring up the dust and in particular the pollen has my head all itchy/sneezly. If this was not annoying enough, I seem to have encountered some terrible bad bug(s), and now have more than 12 awfully itchy bites around my lower torso and left leg. The bites look like mosquito or spider bites, with 1"+ welts, which means I am in for at least 2 weeks or more of intense itching wherever my body intersects with any clothing. Too bad naked free fall is not an option!

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time in the tinyworld:
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Day 19 “itsy bitsy”…Nandina is holding the smallest doll I ever made, at 35mm tall, (by comparison Nandina is about 14cm tall) I found the tiny doll with other miniatures I’d made decades ago, that my mother saved in the curio cabinet… the tiniest doll was made from polymer clay and glue saturated fabric, with silk fiber hair and painted features. I made her feet rather large in proportion, so that she can actually stand on her own.

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I saw these interesting miniature pieces of  "art pottery" on Instagram, which turned out to be made from dried poppy pods, and remembered seeing some similar botanical bits on my back alley rambles recently. Pods have been acquired and I think will soon become decorative pieces for Caer Cardboard

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~ creativity challenge ~

I just found out about "Tiny Book Tuesday"... and had been wanting to make some "composition books" for my tiny friends. The new printer made it possible to create tiny labels, and the covers are from the linings of security envelopes. Actual size 20mm x 16mm

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	front yard mowed	-
6	eyeglass case	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - that was truly weird. Something in my first attempt at a blog post yesterday removed a chunk of the blog sidebar. Not from the template, but from how it was appearing on the screen. Never did anything like that before.

After a modest panic, I decided to delete that post, et voila the missing sidebar reappeared, from which I deduced that the problem was my post, and not some inherent new weirdness in the platform. This also proves my cleverness in having a mirror blog as backup, so I could harvest a copy of my post.

I then rebuilt the post, one item at a time from my mirror blog, checking after each addition to see where the SNAFU was hiding. While I am not good enough at reading HTML to have parsed what the error was, I was slow and careful enough, to, when the offending section was discovered, to rebuild just that section bit by bit and the problem did not return. I am feeling right chuffed at the moment

Time of Isolation - Day 851

Monday miscellany and music

in which our plucky heroine feels like the queen of incremental progress...

I've been almost keeping up with housey chores, like mopping and laundry and dishes. Since the antler buttons on my horses blouse continue to disintegrate in the laundry, I gave up and replaced them with variegated mother of pearl instead. I found lost things this week : the bag of natural sponges (ideal for texturing faux stonework), and the two 1" tall Dala horses I found in a thrift store decades ago

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snoozing bumblebee 7am
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time in the tinyworld:

Finally moved on to painting the stone conservatory floor. Egg carton cardboard is so very useful for miniatures, it makes stone facade or flooring or terracotta plant pots with equal ease. I used the Ann Wood tutorial instructions for painting and texturing the "stone" and am quite pleased with the outcome. Hmmm now I wonder about using it to make terracotta floor tiles....

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~ creativity challenge ~

with the intent of reducing frustration, it occurred to me that having dedicated space(s) to put my eyeglasses when I take them off will hopefully lead to my no longer have to hunt throughout Acorn Cottage trying to find where I set them down... My idea is to make a number of hanging pockets lined with soft fleece for the likely locations, such as next to the workbench, next to the sewing machine, next to the computer desk etc. I know from experience that for me, when objects have a home, I am good about putting them away when I am done with them. My house keys have a home, my scissors and other cutting tools like paper punches have a home, but up til now my spex never have. This afternoon, in addition, Sister Gigi suggested that when I put said spex into the case, that I leave one earpiece hanging down on the outside, to make it immediately visible that there are glasses inside. All of us together are smarter than all of us one at a time...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	replace blouse buttons	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	-	-
6	eyeglass case	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I woke up in this reality, and not the recurring nightmare world inside my sleeping brain...

Time of Isolation - Day 850

lilac lilies and other surprises

in which our plucky heroine is surprised that another week has been and gone...

So much more I want to be doing, but I seem to be stuck in a cycle of random sleep and wake instead. My to do lists in my bujo are sticking out their tongues and waggling their eyes at me, though I have managed a bare modicum of keeping things together here. Decided it was too hot for running the preserving kettle and put the proto apricot sauce and proto strawberry rhubarb sauce in the freezer for the time being, rather than letting them languish in the fridge taking up most of the cubic. They can be jarred for shelf storage at a more convenient time.

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WTF? For some reason, Instagram has flagged my most recent post (the one with my cute little friends gathered in the sunshine around the picnic table) as containing "monetization and branded content"*??! ... I'm not selling anything on that platform, and just make miniature things for my own amusement, and share photos of vignettes.. I fail to understand what about my personal homemade tinyfolk and their adventures is "branded content" and needs to be labeled as such. It may be time to take a sabbatical from the platform entirely for a while, as I am mightily annoyed.

* as far as I can divine, by actually reading the TOS and Guidelines and whatever other minimal info I can find, "branded content and monetization" means either selling things outright, or posting content that one is being paid (money or in kind) to post as if it is your own. I don't do either or any of these things. As Instagram, like FB, is all part of Meta, there is, of course, no way to contact an actual human, or to challenge the bot placed flag, or even to find out what on earth in my very innocuous post set off an alarm...

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The arm is healing, at least there are no signs of infection. I will have a scar almost 3" long. The excision site is really itchy, which I know means it is healing. I am keeping it slathered with vaseline, and washing once a day with hibicleans 13 stitches on the skin external and I don't know how many on the inside. I am hoping that the arm flesh will eventually smooth out, as right now it is raised lumps at each end, and a divot/dent in the center, which if you think about it, is the exact shape you get when sewing fabric, and make a double ended dart, which is basically what they did with my upper arm. Still is better than having cancer...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	-	recycle bin
5	Kestrel work apron	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude- what a charming treat. My friend Laura stopped by this afternoon unexpectedly (the doorbell rang and woke me from a nap) and brought me a bunch of flowers and a ceramic bowl. I trimmed the flower stems and put them on the computer desk

Time of Isolation - Day 848

Thursday thoughts

in which our plucky heroine breathes a sigh of relief...

The weather is slightly cooler than earlier this week, which is greatly welcome. I took the opportunity to sweep away the cobwebs and spider nests around the front door, as my friend K is going to come by for a porch visit, and I would prefer to have that happen without any arachnid adventures. I always feel a little bad when I remove them, as it is obviously a habitat they like, but there are plenty of other places around the Acorn Cottage environs where they can live undisturbed.

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 14 "on an island"... All the tinyfolk have been out gathering fruit, and are back at the picnic spot with their harvest. It has been so warm that everyone stripped down to just their aprons. Almandine is adjusting the umbrella for maximum shade, while they discuss what sort of preserves they could make for the wintertime pantry, when island life will be just a memory.

My salad table is a sort of a tall island on the front porch, and is ideal for setting up little vignettes to photograph. I will admit that I was rather struggling with how to interpret todays prompt, without even a beach nearby to take photos at, when I shifted to "what do people sometimes do on an island"... one of the things I like about these sorts of online challenges is the way they make me stretch my creativity and imagination

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well, there I was all worried that my sewing machine had developed an obviously *wrong* sound when I stitched in reverse, and thinking oh no, time for a trip to the Very Expensive Technician... and careful observation of when the sound was occurring, and then the almost falling off of the reverse button... which when I screwed it back into place et voila the ticking sound stopped happening! Whew... "tragedy" narrowly averted!

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~ creativity challenge ~

My intention was to make a multipocket work apron for Kestrel, age 4¾. After two different fabric choices from my resource shelves turned out to be not-cotton (ugh, that nasty smell when pressing synthetic blend) as confirmed by burn test, I decided that the green teal corduroy would be sacrificed the best choice. There was barely enough to make a pinafore for me, but plenty for an apron for a little girl who loves pockets! I couldn't resist adding a fun maneki-neko patch on the chest pocket. There are five more pockets closer to the bottom of the apron.

If this ends up fitting her well enough, I will make her one from sturdy twill for use in rougher jobs, like helping her family with the house they are rebuilding. She is growing up a child with a Very Large Skillset! I approve, but then given who her parents are I am not at all surprised. I miss them all, adults and child both, very much indeed, and send my sewing as a proxy of my love, in the way that aunties and nanas have done for years...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	entryway spiderwebs
4	Emilia batik dress	-	-
5	Kestrel work apron	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - Eeeee! Auntie Karen stopped by her local luthier before she came here to visit, and she brought me two discarded cello bridges!! Now I can make a Musical Doll Bed

Time of Isolation - Day 847

better living through technology

in which our plucky heroine makes a start in several directions ...

I am chuffed... Just realised what a big difference having a printer/scanner is going to make in my scribal activity! I've already made some small progress on the long neglected Scythian scroll... I found my initial sketch, which will be helpful, and I realised I could digitally process the image of metalwork that initially inspired me, and use it as a guide for my line art to start on the scroll!

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 12 "all dolled up"... While my tinyfolk are not much for dressing up fancy, little Emilia was wishing hard for something a little more festive than the brown stripey dress, even if it was silk. Since I try and pay attention to things like doll wishes, a rummage through my scrap bin found an almost-tiedye bit of rayon batik, just right for another tiny dress, more fit for dancing along the path at the Oregon Country Fair, rambling with her family on the way to a concert at Main Stage. Who knows, maybe someday, we can all return to that most wonderful of festivals... (and if I ever do, all my tinyfolk will certainly come with me!)

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I spent some time puttering with Photoshop, continuing to figure out how to create miniature graphics. I have some idea of creating tiny faux "composition books" using the patterned linings of security envelopes, which come in a surprisingly wide range of tiny designs. In order for these to evoke the full size ones, they need tiny labels on the covers. Even my child size hands and .005 Micron Pen are too large to suffice. I think, though, that I may have succeeded with the digital effort. Time will tell... Perhaps if I go to bed early, I will correspondingly wake early, and be able to indulge myself with a walk before the heat rises. That would be nice.

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~ creativity challenge ~

I made Emilia a little straw hat, following Ann Woods excellent instructions, since if one is inclined to gallivant around at a summer festival, a sunhat is a necessity. I find that using wood glue instead of white glue gives a very "straw hat" color sans the necessity of mixing in paint. I may have to add a tiny hatband of silk ribbon...

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Yesterday was a sunny day, and today promises has been nothing but more of the same. 90+ in the shade on my front porch today. I've been meaning to do more today, but the heat has sapped my ability to function well. 80F in the middle of the house tonight, save in the bedroom with the AC. (Perhaps a small table in there, and some handwork, would be a good plan) The things that have been accomplished are simple ones: putting away the clean laundry, washing and putting away the dishes. While I haven't yet put all the miniature items away, I was able to make a start at corralling them, which will hopefully in time become storing them in categories. If each day I do a bit more against entropy, I imagine that in time my living space will eventually take on the orderly peacefulness that is one of my dearest hopes.

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia brown dress	Emilia's legs	-
4	Emilia batik dress	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - Yay!! Just had a phone call from Dermatology and the results of my excision are NED, clear margins, and no further treatment needed... (NED = No Evidence of Disease)

Time of Isolation - Day 845

Plaid and patterns and polkadots oh my!

in which our plucky heroine mostly escapes the heat...

It didn't quite reach 100 today, I think the high was 98. I hid indoors from about 9AM onwards, and left the laundry hanging out on the line to sunbleach.

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 11 "pattern and plaid" ...Plaids and dots and florals oh my! The more the merrier!!  From Nandina in a patterned apron, and plaid dress, Kenya in a striped top and plaid apron, the patchwork coverlet made from scraps of all the masks I made back in 2020, the plaid flannel bed blanket, (and not really visible in the photo, but the little bed pillows are made from dotted or striped fabrics)... and various furniture decorative treatments like the eggshell mosaic tabletop, and the canal boat roses painted on the small bed... (that scamp Emilia in her stripey silk dress couldn't resist climbing on the bed to make sure she was in the photo as well) My tinyfolk are quite unafraid of combining patterns.

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Remembering when I was a child, and would go visit my friend Vanessa, who lived a block away on the next street north of us. Their house was always dark, with the curtains drawn everywhere but in the kitchen. I think, now, looking back, that the darkness was to try and help keep the house cool, in those days when even in LA not everyone had air conditioning. Their house was dark, but never gloomy, more like an artist cave and vivid with music. Her mother Louise was the first to take me to hear folk music live, and we would zoom away in her rattley old Volvo with the holes in the floor, to mysterious halls mostly full of grown-ups. I think I met Hoyt Axton once at their house, but to me he was just another mysterious adult. These days, when I keep my own house curtains drawn, I remember Louise, and her offhand generosity that enlarged my world.

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia dress	Emilia's legs	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I was tired and it was hot and my arm hurt, so I took some pain meds and slept the afternoon away.. I am grateful that I have the option to do that.

Time of Isolation - Day 844

botanical bliss

in which our plucky heroine breathes deeply...

Riding my bike early in the morning before the heat rolls over the city is one of my sanity savers. There are currently two of my favorite scented flowers in bloom, the jasmine flowers that make hedges and fencerows a starry treat to pass next to, and the linden trees that are such a surprise for the few short days/week or so that they are in blossom.

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time in the tinyworld:

Day 10 - "pampered pets or plants"...Sequoia, beloved Japanese Akita dog, has decided that the rubber chicken makes a really good dog toy. (also in the photo left foreground is my Euphorbia wulfenni, and on the green bench is the potted orchid, though only the leaves are visible, both made from kits by Georgina Steeds)

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The elastic that held Emilia's limbs to her torso is who knows how old, and her leg joints came apart. Since I have no elastic that thin, I used "button and carpet" thread instead, which seemed to work well enough. I will likely have to replace her arm joint elastic as well. It must be disconcerting to suddenly fall to pieces like that! I also made her a pair of cotton underdrawers, and am faffing about making her a second dress, for variety sake.

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~ creativity challenge ~

The challenge of the month is "cardboard furniture", but what I really want to try making from cardboard is an assortment of miniature storage containers. Things like bushel baskets, and Scandinavian tine boxes, that my tinyfolk can use for food storage and suchlike. Maybe if I add a cardboard trestle table, it will count?

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia dress	Emilia's legs	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I managed to navigate the phone tree necessary to call and talk to my mom today, for the first time since we had to transfer her to memory care. She sounded much as she has for the last year or two, and the good? thing is that she is calmer now than when she was in assisted living. (The sad thing, aside from the constant grief I feel at both her physical distance and her dementia, is that she is still her intelligent self, but without the ability to remember in the short term, and gradually losing her comprehension. Of course she is bored, but the things she can do to be not-bored are ever decreasing.) I do think that she likes getting phone calls, and I will continue that as long as that seems to be the case. Also, it seems that the structured activities in Harbor (the memory care unit) mean that she is not just staying in her room and lying in bed, at least as evidenced by the changes in the list of what and how many things she attended this week.

Time of Isolation - Day 843

Saturday snippets

in which our plucky heroine begins to mend...

While my arm is still Mighty Cranky with having such a big bite taken out, the pain has subsided to more of a bearable dull roar, and I can return to a more creative life again, instead of so dopey from medication that sleep is the only option.

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time in the tinyworld:
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Day 9 "a lucky find" ... One of the things I brought back from my parents apartment was this tiny articulated china doll,  now named Emilia Kaolin. She wasn't part of my youth, and I'm not sure where she came from, but she is quite personable for someone barely over three inches tall. She arrived wrapped in scraps of cloth, so some actual clothing was the immediate necessity. A small dress of striped silk, with the bodice lined with cotton lawn was challenging because of the Very Small Scale stitching needed. I am sure that my tinyfolk will be kind to this new child...

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~ creativity challenge ~

Day 6 "all that glitters"... is sometimes glitter! The effect is quite sparkly. When the LED flickering tea light is turned on, it rather does look like a campfire with glowing coals.

most of the time making this fire pit was multiple layers of waiting for the glue to dry. I gradually built up the rock cylinder to hold the tea light, gradually built up the firewood from bits of scavenged roots, and assembled all the various component parts. (there's a bit more description about the process in my former blog post)

the ingredients for making a mini campfire fire pit for my tinyworld denizens, from a flickering LED tea light, cardboard, some felt, some glitter, some salvaged root pieces, paint, and glue. Oh, and a few dabs of RTV silicone caulk, and flame color sharpie markers...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	wee fruit basket	recombinant reindeer	yard waste bin
2	mini fire pit	shelf for router	excisional flesh
3	Emilia dress	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - removing the pressure bandage and being able to take a shower was a real delight. I can now simply cover the excision with vaseline, gauze, and paper tape, which makes sleeping a lot less fraught

Time of Isolation - Day 842