Wonderful stuff

These are the only two things I bought for Wentworth Court at Miniatura on 25th September.  That said, the prawn salad is just perfect.  It is a lovely piece of work by Amanda Speak made just for me!  The boot scraper is to add a little more authenticity to the outside of the house.  This might be a bit of a challenge for something that small.  If you want to read more about Amanda and see what else she made me and the other things I bought from the show please visit Le Tout Paris blog.  

The Stafford Show 11th September 2011

Nothing much to write here I'm afraid.  If you want to know how the whole weekend went you'll need my Clavering Blog.  In short the Stafford Show lasted me about six hours and I could probably have done another hour!  I was pleasantly surprised as on the way there I was (mis)remembering it from last year and saying to Ken I'd be done in a couple of hours at the outside as I didn't remember it as being all that interesting.  How wrong I was.  There were over 90 stalls I think and many of them were various original crafts people so plenty to look at even if I couldn't afford to buy their pieces.  Then there was what I think of as the middling ground which is where I consider my self to be - something a bit better than Chinese imports but not museum quality - and there was certainly enough to go at there.  I came away with a few things for Wentworth Court even though I have a two page A4 list of things I still need/want to get.  I'm not sure if this was because I was too much focussed on the new baby (Le Tout Paris)!  If you go to look at the photos in my albums (link on the right) you'll see some wonderful salads and a piece of roast beef.  The detail in these is excellent and the colours are really accurate.  Generally the people who make these things use bright (unblended?) colours which makes them look like toys not miniatures.  This lady makes superb stuff and I shall be going back for more.  If you want to check out her items go to Amanspeak Miniatures.  She also had a very nice carving knife and fork which I bought.  So along with a tube of toothpaste, staffy dogs for the mantelpiece, a roasting tin and cat food dish, that was it for Wentworth.

Links to photos

 I recently decided in all my blogs to add links to individual photo albums in the left hand column.  In a short space of time I've come to realise that's going to be a bit unwieldy as there will be a ridiculously long list very soon; so I've put individual links back into the text of the post.  Don't forget to click on the highlighted text to look at the pictures.  As soon as I can I will remove the links I have on the left and attach them to the appropriate places in the blogs.  I'll just put a link to my main site (containing the individual albums) there instead.  Apologies in advance if that doesn't happen immediately - too many things to do and too little time right now.

Crazy Lady

OK, before making the announcement, let me establish that (a) starting the dolls house craving at 65 is probably a bit loopy any way and (b) I really can't afford it.  So...........


Next weekend we are off on a four hour drive (Bury to Bracknell) to pick up my second doll's house project - a shop.  En route we will be collecting a table to put it on.  Both courtesy of EBay.  If you have the slightest interest in any of this I will be starting yet another Blog to follow its progress.


I am having a big mental debate as to whether to just have a single dolls house blog and run both projects alongside each other.  As I do this more for myself than for others I decided that it would be a bit muddled for me if I wanted to go back and look at stuff about one of the projects in particular: so I'm off to create a new place ready for the birth of La Belle Epoque - an Edwardian, c1900, art nouveau style ladies' dress/hat shop with a ladies' café upstairs.

Word of warning

I am probably stating the obvious here but if, like me, you decide to try to find doll’s house shops on your travels – ring them before you bother to go to them.  We've just been in Cumbria for a week (Alston) and I decided to scout any shops I could find in a twenty mile area around where we were staying.  I found nine and visited three of them before I cottoned on to the notion that maybe ringing them first would have been a good idea.  One had been a carpet shop for eight years; another which would have been the size of three shops (40-44 Cecil Street, Penrith) is now three totally different shops; the third simply wasn't there and someone thought they remembered it being there ‘years ago’.  The internet is totally unreliable for this sort of information as people rarely bother to remove their details when they decamp.

We did however go to the Dolls House Emporium's ‘other site’ at Houghton Hall Garden Centre.  This proved to be a good rainy day venue as we managed to occupy ourselves there for a few hours.  It is a huge building and loads to mooch around.  The DHE section is very small and would only be useful for anyone just starting out but for everyone else there is a terrific little Doll’s House Museum.  You have to pay to go in (£2.99 for wrinklies) but it is worth it.  It is a real mixture of nice but amateur stuff through to entrancing museum pieces so there should be something for everyone.