Simply Curious

 December was always my favorite mail sorting time of year at work, because of all the beautiful and unique cards that came in, often from all over the world.

Pile o' card ornaments

 It was fun, but a lot of work.  I'm thinking a die cut machine is in order for future projects.  Fortunately it was busy work so I could just settle down in front of the TV and do a few at a time.  I punched a hole in the top and threaded some thin gold cord through to act as hangers.  The ornaments were small enough to fit in the smaller envelopes and very easy to mail.  I'm hoping my recipients think these are pretty enough to hang on their tree next year!

I just realized I forgot to make one for MY tree.  I guess I should go get on that!

Surprisingly, I found what I needed for the cabinet doors at Michael's.

They might not be as badly designed as ovens, but miniature microwaves available for sale were pretty sad.  I found one that might possibly have worked, and it was black and had a cord, which can be an exciting detail, but not for a hanging microwave.

This was pretty easy, since I didn't attempt to make it open.  Firstly an online image search for 'range microwave' until I found a design I liked and felt I could imitate.  I made a box of out illustration board, with an interior wall just inside the microwave door.  (I'm thinking about sticking in a 'glass' turning tray inside.)  The entire front s one piece with a window cut out and lines created with embossing tools.  I carved a handle out of balsa, although I could have gotten away with just the inline push button on the bottom right, but after carving the two handles for the oven I was feeling pretty confident about it.  I used posterboard to add some 3D detailing to the front.

I'm enjoying the detailing, but it gets complicated.  The top bit of the microwave gets venting, which I need to figure out how to do, and also buttons and the display on the right side, which obviously I haven't even attempted on the oven!  Plus I'm aware that there's more venting or SOMETHING on the bottom, for which I need a fine mesh.

But just looking at this unfinished picture pleases me.  I have a realistic looking microwave!  The original one was a plastic kit that was so old it came with a wood paneling sticker for around the sides.  I peeled it off finally, but it didn't help.

I have the feeling the kitchen's going to be my favorite room.

After painting the doors, I decided to try a little antiquing.  Wipe on, wipe off FAST, and hope you got all the crevices highlighted. Messy, very messy.

Slowly getting my doors and cabinets painted.  I'll do several thin coats and some careful sanding, and probably a little decorative antiquing before applying a sealant.

While waiting for the paint to dry I tested door pulls.  I just want something simple, so went with things I had around the house.  A ball head pin, a sewing pin, and a map pin.  Ball pin (about 2mm) was too small, but the map pin (4mm) was too big.  I also feel like the sewing pin is a little too small, too, so I need to find something round and holeless about 3mm in size.  I think I'll need about 2 dozen.  That's a lot of hardware!  I'm kind of glad I don't need hinges, too!

(Don't worry, I have a piece of wax paper over my cutting mat!)

Short post, just to show you I'm still keeping things simple and still working.

I realize I've mentioned my first dollhouse, but never really written about it on my blog.  Allow me to give you a tour, because I'm procrastinating from the Willowcrest already.  I apologize for the bad photos, because I had to dig through very old hard copies taken with a cheap film camera a very long time ago.


Firstly, this is my great-grandfather, Jacob Knupp.  I wrote a little about him here.  Carpenter, contractor, fantastic workshop, enjoyed making miniatures, some of which his daughter sold at craft fairs.  And he made dollhouses for me and my sister.  He also made full scale furniture.  I have a curio table of his sitting in my living room!

I don't think I have any pictures of my sister's dollhouse, but hers was bookshelf shaped, at least four stories tall, and white.  Big rooms. The front door had a lock, basically a hook on a swivel that swung around and connected on a brad.  It had come furnished with furniture made by Mom and various relatives.  When we played in it I got relegated to the upper floors, she got to sit on the floor to reach her designated stories.

Then, maybe when I was about six, Gran drove out to our new house one day in his big blue truck, with a less tall but much wider dollhouse.  I can remember seeing it in the back of the truck when he arrived.  It was . . . different.   He had gotten creative.

Front

Front.  I had a carpet runner on the stairs at one point.

Back. A very old view, but not the oldest!  I originally had yellow floral  contact paper covering the kitchen walls.

Emptied out and planning a renovation.  There is only one interior door, opening from the front hall to the blue dining room.

Empty view of the back.  I think the tiny room in the upstairs middle was supposed to be a bathroom, but it barely held the tub.  I was also fascinated with wall murals.

The attic floor is removable, allowing access and a good view of the floor plan upstairs.

Apparently the kitchen shelves went through a lot of changes!

Gran made the bed, my grandmother made the mattress and pillow.   I made the quilt!

Would you believe that floor is paper?

Originally this was all shelving, but I got creative one day and made it look like a hutch.

The poor thing is showings its age and abuse after 30 years.  I wanted so badly to make it more to scale and electrify it, but since it was built by a man used to building full size houses, it's very difficult to tear out the thick molding without causing some damage.  I'm also finding it hard to figure out wiring, since the house turns around.  Perhaps in a few more years the battery operated lights will be good enough that I can add them without including wiring.

I've been ignoring the Willowcrest all summer and most of the Fall, and kind of dreading all the work I still need to do.  It's time to get back to it.  So today, I finally sat down and started work on the kitchen cabinets.

I took a piece of posterboard, held it up against the wall, and drew cabinet outlines of what I thought would work best on the wall with the lower cabinets and appliances. Then I took the final shape and cut out two pieces, plus one inch wide strips for the sides.  I decided that these would be faux cabinets, so the doors won't open.  I don't really want people reaching in and pulling on things, and I have enough organizational dilemmas in my life without trying to figure out which cabinet would hold the weird shaped bowls the best in one inch scale!   Right now they're not even glued on, just up there with a little Dollhouse wax to see if I like it when in place.  I think it'll do, so tomorrow I will start making trim for the doors, plus drawer fronts for the bottom cabinets.  Little steps!

Speaking of the bottom cabinets, I am not happy with them.  I used matte board to do the fronts, and it just doesn't look right or take paint right.  I'm going to have to redo them.

I also plan to make a new refrigerator (unopenable) and a mounted microwave.  (The one currently holding up the upper cabinets is just not big enough for the space above the oven.)  I also need to figure out the faucet for the sink.  I bought a set, but they were ridiculously small.

I acquired a recipe a while back that was allegedly the salsa from The Tortilla Factory in Herndon, VA.

Problem is, I can't QUITE get it right.  Last time I thought it was because I switched ground red pepper and crushed red pepper flakes.  You don't want a tablespoon of ground red pepper (cayenne) in anything!  I managed to subdue it with a lot of brown sugar.

This time, I had several pounds of tomatoes from my garden, nearly enough to make this recipe, so I thought I'd try again.  I had to buy a few tomatoes to get enough.

To follow the recipe, I had to acquire 29 ounces of crushed tomatoes, which, of course, I had to look up how to do.


 First I had to remove the skins.  You do this by cutting a shallow X in the side opposite the stem, dropping them in boiling water for a short period (I waited until I could see the skin around the X start to pull away) and then drop them in ice water.  The skin pulls off easily.

Yes, that IS another old wooden rocker in the background. Brian's grandfather made it.

 I'd just like to say that this is a frustrating, painful, awkward process best suited to someone much more anal retentive and OCD than I.  The chair frame will never be even, which means your weaving will never come out neatly in the middle, and if you mess up early on, you won't know until it's far too late to fix it.  The weaving slows down quite a bit at the end as you try to feed yards of damp rolled up paper through a progressively smaller hole while the rush kinks and twists up on you horribly.  It will probably take me three or four more chairs before I get competent at this.  I saw some cute fabric woven chair seats on Pinterest, so it's quite likely that I will NOT use fiber rush as my next seat medium if I ever bring home an orphaned seatless chair again.

Pinterest, my inspiration for pretty much everything, these days, showed me these projects one day.



The kittens, they got to me.  I loved it, but it seemed like an awful lot of cuteness and work for something that would soon rot.  I couldn't bear to watch the kittens rot!  The AllYou pumpkin looked fake, somehow, so I decided to use fake pumpkins for this project. The problem was I couldn't find any fake mini pumpkins that looked right.

Then I remembered my mother had made pumpkins out of fabric.  She showed me her pattern when I was visiting, but it was so simple I figured I didn't really NEED one, and someone was bound to have posted fabric pumpkin tutorials online.  Oh yes, I found lots.  There seemed to be two basic patterns, one just a rectangle, the other a set of at least 6 curved strips of fabric that was wider in the center than at the ends.

Sew News has a great pumpkin tutorial for the rectangle.

Quill Cottage has a great pumpkin tutorial for the sectioned pieces.

I went with the rectangular pattern because: I'm lazy, I wasn't sure what size pumpkin would work for this project, and after studying the instructions, it seemed like I would be doing the same thing to the pumpkin no matter what pattern I used.

I found a cheap foam pumpkin at Walmart that seemed to be the right size, and begged some leftover Halloween colored fabrics from my mother.  I didn't want them to be TOO Halloween flavored because I was afraid that would detract from the kitten shape.

Finished kitten hogging the limelight.

underside of a kitten.  Making the 'divisions' in the pumpkin left a deep hole on both sides!

Then I sat and made up a bunch of pumpkin kittens.  I used a 5"x10" rectangle, and that size produced a pretty good kitten head that would fit in the pumpkin.  For the eyes, I used black felt (buttons would have worked, too.)  I made the stems by cutting narrow strips and rolling them up tight and gluing in place. I used heavy duty button thread for the whiskers.  I figured out where I wanted to place the nose, then sewed on the whiskers so that the knot would be hidden by the nose when I glued it on.



I also used polyfill stuffing for the interior.  One of the sites suggested using plastic bags, which I thought was a great idea, but I had a really hard time getting my needle through the plastic.

. . . feed us.

You can see the plastic bags I stuffed into the pumpkin to fill up the space.  I was thinking that hay would be cute to hide that, but then I thought it would be too much like Easter grass and it would get EVERYWHERE.  Now I'm thinking a square of burlap would work, and I might try that.

My problem is I don't like the pumpkin.  It's not big enough for ALL the kittens, and obviously I can't eliminate two of them! I need it to be wider, not taller, and I haven't seen any fake pumpkins like that.  It's also obviously foam and I've got little foam balls clinging everywhere.  Maybe a cauldron?  I'm afraid the darker kittens will disappear in that.  Maybe a basket with Halloween fabric/ribbon?  I'll have to experiment.  And take pictures.

UPDATE 10/19/2014

I tried a few more settings to see what would happen.

I am never going to get a good photo of this tree.