November: a catch up and a new approach

 Hello there. It's been a while, and things have changed since I last blogged.

Most excitingly, Daiso opened its first shop in Canberra in June. I went to the opening (of course) and am now thoroughly enjoying 'just popping in' to pick up one or 2 items as needed, or just to see what's new.

It's pretty small as Daisos go and doesn't stock a number of things I buy regularly, so I guess I'll still continue my pilgrimages to the Wellington store when I'm in New Zealand.

Speaking of which, I was in Wellington in August. While I was there we made use of the residents' workshop to make progress on my projects for The Land of Spare Oom:

I also went on a quest to start my collection of Pratchett Discworld books: I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) 2 of them in the late 80s, and for some reason decided I'd put off reading the rest of them until I was 'stuck in a retirement village'. Earlier this year I remembered that comment, and decided that although not 'stuck', I was spending significant time there each year and so perhaps it was time to start reading the rest of the series.

Which gave us the perfect excuse to start the quest with a round of visits to our favourite second-hand book shops (and other ones we spotted on our way to other places), which resulted in me stumbling across the mother lode

and means my book collection now spans 2 different countries... 😶

And then I returned to Canberra, and a temporary promotion to work on a project for several months, which is sapping my brainspace, as all new jobs tend to do. But it's something we've been wanting to do for years and I'm super excited to be able to work on it (and my voracious offset account is pleased with the extra feeding it's getting).

I celebrated my first boosted paycheck by finally allowing myself to buy some of the Rement Snoopy's art studio and book cafe sets I've been lusting after for a while, and which I found at an acceptable price (and with combined postage), which, when they arrived I admired, then set aside as they had the opposite effect to what I'd hoped. reminding me of how many other minis I had bought with the intent of spurring me back into making, but rather just made me feel overwhelmed and guilty.

Minis did bring me joy when I attended the Canberra premier of Adam Elliot's latest stop-motion film, Memoir of a snail, (which is partly set in Canberra!) with Q&A with him afterwards: and a special guest appearance from the star of the show herself:

Alas they were in a hurry to get to the next venue and event, so I didn't get the chance to meet either of them in 'person'.

But back to the Snoopy pieces. For some months I've been pondering the fact that I've been trying to get myself back into miniatures on a regular basis since I moved here, if not before, with little ongoing success. And that I'm feeling more and more trepidation as I declare a new challenge to try and fix the issue ('May be miniatures!' 'Daily dolls' house December!') A book I was recommended by a colleague as part of my preparation for my temporary promotion contained a phrase that jumped out at me:

'...when the sole energy that motivates us is simply to make life wonderful for others and ourselves, then even hard work has an element of play in it. Correspondingly, an otherwise joyful activity performed out of obligation, duty, fear, guilt or shame will lose its joy and eventually engender resistance.'

And I realised that perhaps my approach to 'forcing myself back into the studio' in the hopes that I'd pick up the mini habit was almost exactly of the opposite of what I needed to succeed.

The realisation coincided with my annual move of my laptop from the dining area, where it lives over winter, back to the studio for the spring, summer and autumn months. And a couple of days later while I was checking my emails I noticed the new Snoopy pieces sitting waiting for my attention. I pulled the pieces that needed to be put together out and onto the desk, thinking "I'll just pop these together after I'm done here so at least I'll feel like I've achieved something".

Which clicked with something that I was reminded of recently by a mentor: The wheel of life. And I decided to try a new approach: every day I'd aim to spend an hour making micro-improvements in 4 areas of my life I wanted to improve: exercise, pain points, clearing the reading piles and creativity.

15 minutes a day doing something creative sounded extremely doable. So, over the past week or so I gave it a crack, and have dubbed it 'quarter hour creativity'.

On Tuesday, I cleared off my work board and made up some Jeffrey and Janice books I'd scaled down to both 1/12 and Lundby scale for a Lundby Facebook group I belong to:

then gently chastised myself for wanting to say "Is that all?"

On Wednesday I cleared some more space then pulled out the frying pan for the mini club project for next year's show and asked myself 'What's one thing that you can do to make progress on this?", then cut out a template to start designing the interior, before getting sidetracked taking a photo of the unsure look the template was giving the frying pan:

On Thursday I battled a case of the 'I shoulds' and focused on the 'I'd like to' instead, and started gluing together a JWT Dollhouses sideboard kit I bought 10 years ago (!) that I had tucked away in my 'I was to make this' pile along with some laser-cut gift tags I picked up years ago that I wanted to try and use for sliding doors on it:

The 'shoulds' returned on Friday, but I shoved them aside (after gluing some more of the sideboard together) and instead I made the Snoopy's book cafe bag, not caring a jot that the wet glue was still showing when I took the photo:

Yesterday I got a bit carried away (and that's OK, too!). First up, I finished the initial design of the club frying pan kitchen:

Then decided to confront my fear of using something, in case it went wrong/ I ended up deciding I wanted to use it for something else, and made a random vintage can of Edmonds baking powder with a can from here, secure in the knowledge that I still had an extra one, and they were cheap toy ones I've had banging round for years:

But that's not all! I glued some more of the sideboard together, then cut down 2 of the gift tags ("I have multiples of each, so can try again if I wreck these ones") and did a dry fit, which suggested that it might just work:

and to celebrate, cracked open the spray paint and sprayed one of the $3.50 white plastic Daiso hospital beds with a rusty spray paint, which was most pleasing:

Finally, this morning I spraypainted a couple of Miniverse ramen bowls I picked up cheaply off Facebook that thought might make interesting light shades:

(in retrospect, perhaps I should have plugged the gaps on the rim before I painted them...)

So, almost a week into the new experiment, I feel like I may have found the solution.

And speaking of finding, I was delighted to stumble across this yesterday while looking for something else:

This is what I was talking about

Behold my $2.40 miniature espresso machine from my Mini Brands Home ball!

I must admit that when I opened the box I let out a little squee...

followed by an amount of hyperventilating as I realised the packaging continued underneath:

I think that was $2.40 well spent. 😁

But wait! There's more!

(I may have not only returned to Kmart today to buy more balls, but infected several people at this afternoon's mini club meeting as I opened them in front of them at show and tell, then passed the contents around the group, including a KitchenAid coffee grinder, which arrived similarly-packaged).

Temptation

 Back in January, when I went in search of Miniverse Lifestyle balls, I joined a Facebook buy, sell and swap group in the hopes of completing my collection faster, and at a lower price than buying the balls retail.

And once I'd completed my collection, I decided to stay on so I'd be alerted if more items were released (which have been, but I'm only interested in a couple of the pieces so am holding off making a decision until I see if they're released in Australia).

Yesterday someone posted in the group about a new home series by a different company, Mini Brands, and based on their photos I was intrigued, especially as someone else posted that they were mainly 1/12 scale.

Some research last night caused me to stare into the fridge and pantry, decide I could sacrifice some of next week's grocery budget, take an early (and long) lunch break today to scoot down the hill to Kmart and buy a couple of the balls to see for myself if the series was as good as it looked.

I bought 3 balls, feeling a bit adrift as there were no cheat sheets that I could find to indicate what was in them, so had to be content with some gentle shaking to make sure they all sounded different.

Surprise number one was that each ball contained 5 sealed bags: as a blind-ball beginner when I started buying Miniverse, I'd assumed that all balls contained just one thing. This made the $12 cost much more palatable as, divided by 5, each mini cost just $2.40.

Surprise number 2 (as I hit my one and only duplicate across all 15 items in 3 balls), was that there seemed to be no rhyme nor reason for what was included in each ball. Again, having started with Miniverse, I'd assumed there was a theme.

Surprise number 3 was how well-made and detailed the items in my balls were for the price. And here I have to confess that I didn't think to take detailed photos while I still had light, especially as several items came in boxes that included the standard custom-designed packaging you see in full-sized appliance boxes: I hope to get to that tomorrow.

And not really a surprise, but a disappointment especially as one of the options was a Poäng chair and footstool, the furniture pieces I got weren't 1/12 scale.

Here's what my 3 balls got me (and how they're described in the accompanying leaflet: I do like that they give you an idea of how often the items might turn up):

Ball 1

Masterchef frying pan (Ultra rare: not bad for the first cab off the rank, and might be useful for next year's club project)

Cupcake pan (common, good scale)

Ice tray with ice (common, good scale)

Shell armchair (rare, feels like 1/24 scale, which pleases a friend I offered it to greatly)

Egg carton (common, good scale).

Ball 2

Small cupboard (luxury, feels like 1/24 scale but I suspect I can use it as desk-top storage)

KitchenAid food processor (ultra rare, looks like it's good scale)

Bar chair (common, 1/24 scale but perhaps I can do something with it?)

Egg carton (common, good scale: my first and only repeat)

Garbage bin (rare, probably 1/24 scale but could work as a small bin in 1/12).

Ball 3

KitchenAid Espresso machine (ultra rare, 1/12 scale and I am swooning over the fact that not only is the packaging showing like it's recycled, the tamper and jug are included in separate packaging when you open the box)

Air diffuser (common, 1/12 scale)

Black and Decker iron (rare, good 1.12 scale)

Makeup stool (ultra rare, definitely 1/24 scale)

Sistema bento lunch box (rare, 1/12 scale and makes my little Kiwi heart happy to see a New Zealand company included in an international product)

My final reaction?

Oh my lord: I wanted to leap back onto Mickey and head back down the hill to buy the rest of the box at Kmart.

Then I had a stern talking to myself about being responsible apparently-old person (according to my work), and having insurance on my scooter which means that I can't take it out more than twice a week on average, and maybe I had beginner's luck, and they might still be there next pay day and then perhaps I could survive on beans and rice for a few weeks, Or months.

Oh dear.

(Also: if you need an earworm)

What's cooking

Just before the Christmas break I was at the Reject Shop stocking up on something (laundry powder? dishwashing liquid? small bags of cashew nuts?) when I spotted the most adorable (and I don't often use that word) little fry pan with a Quant-inspired black and white daisy pattern printed on it.

I was desperate to bring it home but couldn't justify it as I have no need for a little fry pan, mainly because I already have a perfectly excellent Tefal one that I use regularly.

I'd occasionally pine after it (possibly a bit more than I thought, as a friend I was visiting in New Zealand ended up saying "Just buy it already: it's only $14!").

As I suspected would happen, I gradually forgot about it, especially as other exciting acquisitions entered my life.

Until this month's mini club meeting, that is, when the discussion turned to the theme for next year's club show and the idea of creating scenes in fry pans. And I remembered my love for that little black and white daisy fry pan.

A search on the Reject shop website didn't show it as in stock anymore and I resigned myself to it becoming the next swan lamp in my life: a missed opportunity that I'd regret until one day in the future one would pop up in an op shop: in this case probably well after I needed it.

But (and I'm sure by now you know where this is going!) since I took an early mark today to head down to the scooter shop to get my back rack installed (and there's a story for another day, involving a rack from Toto, the Vespa I bought in the late 80s, which followed me from one country to another, then onto Felix, my next Vespa, into the garage and then to a friend, only to return home almost a decade later to be mounted onto Mickey and make me very happy indeed) I took the time to pop into the Reject Shop on the off chance they still had them in stock.

They did.

So I bought one. Slightly terrified that this project will also go the way of several other projects that are downstairs in the workshop, abandoned and crying in the corner.

But I have thoughts: particularly as I'd been discussing with a colleague several weeks ago the idea of creating a miniature cafe called 'Whoopsie Daisy', kind of like Karen's diner, but with circus- and gymnastics-trained wait staff who are constantly seeming to almost drop things, fall over and break things (but recover just in time, of course!).

Perhaps I should scale back a bit and just do a black and white, daisy-themed cafe. Which would be an interesting challenge in such a constrained and oddly-shaped space.

And, if all else fails, I could just add it to my pot drawer on the off chance I need to cook something really really small 😉.

When Finish it off Friday turns into Frustration Friday

I was feeling all smug like before lunch, imagining how happy I'd feel after I completed the dark academia study, taken the necessary pictures and put the contents away, leaving a nice clean work table to start my next project.

Alas, by the time my lunch break ended, the scene looked like this:

Guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow, then.

My poor tired brain is trying to be helpful

You'll recall I mentioned looking for my decanter on Tuesday.

Well, I've had no luck finding it so far (and, alas, the current weather isn't quite up to a scoot down to see James and buy a new one from him: it's times like this that I do miss having a car), and am starting to wonder if it is in fact imagined.

But my poor tired brain is trying ever so hard to be helpful.

First, and fairly easily, it found me this, which I'd made from a Trash to treasure kit given to me back in 2015:

(Which, granted, could work in a pinch if I dig out something suitable for a stopper).

Next try was this lamp shade, in my stash box of clear and white decor accessories:

Which was much closer to what I remembered my decanter looking like, but not it (the fact it's in this box means I must have used it in a scene at some stage but trying to remember which one or when will, I fear, cause my brain to cease up and close down: so no link).

 Then this morning at stupid o'clock it poked me and whispered "I think I know where it is!" (damned brain still hasn't been trained to keep civilised hours).

And so, when I had the chance, I went to investigate. And found this where it told me it'd be, in the box full of the contents of my Triang 55 house:

Which is excellent remembering, but still not what I'm looking for.

I hate it when I lose things. Especially when I'm not actually sure they existed in the first place. Perhaps I need to decide that my academic has been diagnosed with gout and therefore has had to give up drinking so has hidden the decanter away?

A framing frenzy

 My stash drawer reorganisation worked a treat and I was able to place my hands on both my stash of overhead-projector film and my container of small white card scraps within seconds of opening the drawer, which pleased me greatly.

And meant that I could spend my lunchtime framing rather than finding:

I approached the framing a bit differently to how I usually doing it, using washi tape to hold things in place rather than my usual approach of gluing a sheet of thin brown paper bag over the back.

This means that the framing isn't permanent and I can easily swap in a different picture for a future scene that I need the frame for. Hopefully this approach will hold together once I attach them to the wall with Blu Tack...

The butterfly picture missed out on the framing for now, as I spray painted the metal frame black: and alas made a whoopsie which I'll need to correct before I can use it.

But it's too cold to spray paint now, so that'll have to be a job for tomorrow lunchtime.

A productive lunch break

During today's (half-hour) lunchbreak, I not only made and ate lunch (wholegrain noodles with Thai-green-curry tuna and stir fry veges, if you're interested) but also found an extra sheet of the scrapbooking paper I'm using on the walls of the dark academia study, which gives me the option to extend the build further along one wall or add a third wall if I feel the need (although if I add another wall I fear I will be setting myself up to have to create a wall of filled bookcases).

I also sorted through the images I chose yesterday, and through my drawer of empty frames to match up some likely candidates:

Which means next on my list is testing if my stash drawer reorganisation worked well enough for me to quickly place my fingers on my stash of overhead projector sheets to use as glass, and venturing down to the garage to spray paint that silver frame for the butterflies.

Then deciding if my windows (yes, they're staying) need curtains (or if they need to be cut into the wall so I can use them to pull as much light into the scene as possible).

And who lives here? I'm thinking semi-retired academic with wide-ranging interests across the natural world, the arts and history. And a taste for whiskey, once I've found my decanter...

Questions, questions

I finally asked myself my standard 'Who lives here?' question for this scene at lunchtime today, which caused me to wonder and ponder as I sorted through my art stash to find items that that person might chose for their walls, then set them out for further scrutiny and decision making:

I also pulled out some blue items to try, as I mentioned last week,

and found myself trying out some windows (which I last used back in December 2020, with a different background in them).

Which lead me to wonder if it needed a fireplace as well:

Oh dear: I seem to have asked myself more questions than I answered today!

A knitting emergency, with cake

(Alas only miniature)

At mini club a friend arrived with dark grey fingerless gloves on her hands: not knitted, but something that looked more like fabric gardening gloves with the fingers cut off.

"Oh" she said "I hurt my hands and I've been told to keep them warm. But I hate these".

It just so happened that I'd stopped off at Lincraft on the way to club to buy some nicely-discounted machine-washable wool to knit some lounge socks for Mum, so pulled out my purchases and asked if she liked any of the colours, as I'd decided she needed some nice hand-knitted wristwarmers instead.

She picked the variegated, so I cast on last night when I got home (choosing a suitable stitch marker, of course!), and finished them off just after lunch this afternoon.

She lives in the next suburb over but has headed up to Sydney today on a day trip to visit the Sydney miniatures and dolls house fair, so I dropped them into her mail box for her to find when she gets home.

And that, dear reader, is why there were no minis happening around here today.

In a tangle

 Today was mini club. And the workshop was a macrame plant hanger.

'How hard can it be?', I thought.

Much harder than I imagined it would seem, even for someone who remembers the 70s and Golden Hands magazine.

It all seemed easy enough: although I was confronted by the fact that the smaller-scale version only came in red.

Then I was faced with a yarn octopus...

some knotty problems,

and, finally, and hopefully

something that resembles

a plant hanger?

I need to shove a plant pot in it and see if I made the correct number of knots. And process the realisation that my eyes are getting old 😒