I really have to consider renaming this blog, although I still love looking at projects I am not doing anything.

Admittedly, the ‘spare’ room is almost full to the brim, which is something of a deterrent. Also I keep getting flash forwards of when I am no longer here, what will the kids do with it all. Will they realise that the bought minis are actually worth money but you have to know where to advertise them.

Recently I read a post which encouraged older folk to clear out to say your kids the emotional trauma after they die. I had a long think about that and came to a different conclusion. Yes you need to clear out accumulated rubbish before you don’t have the energy but not my books or handicrafts that I have enjoyed making and still love. Also won’t they want some memories of their past. So my house won’t be minimalist but I will try to through out more rubbish.

My experience of throwing / giving things away, is that often 6 months later I am looking for them.

So sorry for no miniature photos but hopefully I will get my mojo back. I am making a few miniature baubles this Christmas

A little glimpse of an embroidery.

I haven’t posted since November 2024 and now it is July 2025. A couple of reasons, neither of them happy ones. Last year, almost exactly a year ago, I began to experience back pain which became intractable. Under the new UK regime, post Covid, a telephone consultation with a GP only served to offer more pain killers. How you diagnose back pain without seeing the person I do not know: in fact I now know you don’t. Long story short, a very early morning visit to out of hours doctor, resulted in an emergency consultant diagnosing cancer, after a CT.

So like so many others I became embroiled in the brutal joys of chemotherapy. I won’t give more details except it proved that despite working in support of cancer patients for nearly two decades, I knew nothing!!!!! It is a horrendous experience but I am lucky it exists. Now following radiotherapy I am waiting to hear if the pet scan shows anything left that needs treatment. I am trying hard to remain positive whilst at the back of my mind I play out the scenario of being told there is more to do!! Can I do it all again: I hope so.

Those of you who have been able to stick with this, will be thinking she said two reasons. The other is an abandonment of miniatures, hopefully for the moment. Instead I have adopted handcrafts I can do sitting down, energy is a huge issue. So I have crocheted thousands of hats, lack of hair is another issue, knitted dog blankets and now I am embroidering and reading: anything that takes up minimal energy and yet occupies my mind.

So sorry for pity post but in a way I am hoping no one finds this but it has let me get stuff out.

On a positive note, family, friends and many staff have been amazing and so supportive, it has been both heartening and humbling. And I have been someone who always prayed but the power of prayer on a treatment table is awesome.

Last year a friend invited me to visit her local Scottish women’s Institute group: where craft skills are shared and social activities take place.

It transpired it was a great place to relax, have a laugh and learn new hobbies to try.

Well recently they organised a show and the group( a relatively new one with younger members(not me) wanted to have a go and show the more traditional groups that we were committed to the ethos of the organisation.

They had various categories and one of the ones I entered was to use a piece of tartan to make something.

Yes I entered a mini kilt, all sewn by hand. I am back! I didn’t win anything with it: I got a commended and a highly commended for non miniaturist items, so maybe they aren’t into minis. But I am!

Since then I have added a wee pair of jeans to dress a teenage bedroom.

So in amongst my other crafting, I am back enjoying small projects that don’t take up too much space.

Recently I got a nudge to remind me I had not blogged for quite a while . Truth be told, it has been a number of nudges which had reflected my period of minimal miniature work.

There have of course been lots of reasons, not least health issues, laziness but the biggest has been physical. I have unexpectedly finished the monochrome house ahead of schedule and I am not sure what to do now.

The room I store most houses in is basically full up. I already have something in almost every room in the house and if I value my marriage ( and I do) I need to dial it down. This has caused me to lose some of my mojo so I am just ticking over in the home that my enthusiasm will return.

There is a good side to this as I no longer feel the desperate need to keep busy to stave off anxiety that was so common after Covid. Now I try to meditate each day, even do it is only to prepare for sleep.

So things might have been a bit quiet lately but hopefully it is a temporary halt not a finish.

This is the much sought after Lundby car, which ranges from £20 to ridiculously high sums.

Since I have a garage ,I have always wanted one but my bank balance isn’t that high. I like a bargain. So when one came up with only one seat, I bagged it. Purists wanted the complete package.

In my naivety, I thought I could easily get another seat: not so. Eventually I tracked one down in Sweden, I am in UK and for the first time I did an international transaction, a bit more complicate. I knew it was a different colour, but I bought it anyway. What to do? Simple, I painted them both! So now I have a complete car.

You will have guessed I am not a purist: as I keep saying this hobby is for me.

I haven’t been doing much lately and my sleep and anxiety are suffering. I plan to start to put that right tomorrow.

Life is good and I need to spend more time emphasising the positives and not the what if’s. Hells teeth, I am getting on in years so I do not know when the ‘ I don’t give a cuss’ of old age is going to kick in. Soon I hope .

I work in two different scales, either 1/12, which I prefer: the maths is so much easier for someone schooled in inches and feet. But I also have a Lundby house, 1/18 scale which exercises my brain to keep the scale right.1For the uninitiated, 1 inch equals 18 inches in the real world.

So with this in mind, I recently acquired a lovely pram, in reasonable condition and all I had to do ,was make bedding. This I did, happily sewing away watching TV and when finished I took it back to my workshop. The following day I could not find it anywhere and although my room can be untidy, it had to be somewhere. Eventually a number of days later I found it under a table, minus half a wheel!!! It had rolled out of the house, which is on a shelf and perfected a nosedive to the floor.

Again with my new found acceptance of the status quo( God bless mediation and mindfulness) I searched the room more than once. I reached out to the lovely Facebook dolls house members and got so much sympathy and support . Next day I emailed a maker of 1/18 but they couldn’t supply a spare wheel.

On the next day as I walked out of the workshop, resigned to cutting a piece of clear plastic to fit ,when I saw the tiny piece of a wheel!!! It fitted perfectly and now it is almost as good as new.

So I was ridiculously pleased to have 4 wheels, which still turn and I had not got the loss out of proportion as a problem.

It might seem big headed of me but as I reflect on how I reacted recently, to a u turn, I am genuinely proud of myself.

Let me explain, I was revisiting a small sofa and chair set that I had recovered in a material that I loved. Sadly the material frayed very easily and it was a nightmare to manage. I decided to change the way I was covering them but ended up with a clunky amateurish look. I tried to convince myself it was good enough and put it on a shelf until I finished the rest of the room. Yesterday, I had a good look at it and I hated it! I stripped all the cloth off and it felt so good. I didn’t feel any sense of failure, quite the opposite I felt elated that I wasn’t settling for second best. I have no idea at the moment what I am going to do but the one thing I have in spades is time. I will wait, find another fabric or maybe not do it at all

Others may have reached this level of maturity at a younger age but hey everyone has to ride their own way in their own time.

I have always been amused by top flight footballers, athletes etc who are benched by physical aches and pains. I know that is mean because they do practise very hard and must put their bodies under a lot of pressure. As a much less fit person than I used to be ,I have no right to judge.

However, for months now, after a minor incident, I have tendinitis in my shoulder: That has meant unbelievable pain and restricted movement and worse still any repetitive movement means increased pain. Although the pain is no longer literally breath taking: sometimes I have not been able to breathe when I made a sudden movement, it still disturbs my sleep and restricts my hobbies.

Why am I sharing this on my blog, because I miss doing something with my hands. A few days ago, I was celebrating no painkillers for days and only a slight discomfort at night so I cut some board to make mini books for a Christmas decoration. I know it is January but when the muse hits I like to go with it.

Now the ache is back, I don’t want to go back to the pain meds but I am so bored. BORED BORED BORED. Should I give in and take some so I can ‘work’ or should I listen to my shoulder which is obviously majorly pissed off at me.

In case you haven’t guessed, I am trying to make a Christmas tree from books, inside a glass bauble.

I can’t believe that I haven’t written here since the beginning of the year!

It isn’t that I have stopped working on miniatures but it has slowed a bit. The frenetic level of work seems to have slowed to a more reasonable but patchy pace. Partly this has been because I am rapidly running out of space and when I finish this house I may not be able to take on another. So there is a battle going on in my head between the joy of dressing the house and the impact that might have on my future!

Looking back over the Covid years, my natural inclination to worry developed into a more deep seated anxiety. The constant feeling of doom engendered by the government led media rolling out deaths like a war memorial had a much greater effect on me than I realised. I developed an underlying anxiety about everything and everyone. My go to thoughts were always the worst case scenario and although during the crisis my miniatures kept my anxiety at bay, it only worked when I was absorbed in them. I have read that those of us who are used to anxiety are actually good in a crisis, who knew it was a strength. But it is when the crisis ends that we feel the impact and it becomes generalised.

Thankfully, gradually I am addressing these thoughts and challenging them but it isn’t an easy fix. So I am not cured but life isn’t quite so bumpy. But my miniatures still give me pleasure instead of being there to block out the bad stuff.

So to hang with ‘finishing this house, time to move things around and make space for something! Probably not a house, maybe a shelf unit to display individual items

2024 is going to be about what makes me happy and working to keep the runaway express train down to a country pace local steam train.🚂

I am struggling to understand the difference between posts and pages on this blog, so am republishing an earlier page.

This blog is about making miniatures but over the last few months I have indulged myself by making scenes from Christie books that I have loved for years

I have also realised that it isn’t just the therapeutic benefit of making teeny tiny things that give me joy, it is all the mental planning that I do. I can spend ages lost in thought solving how to make something: occasionally discarding two or three ideas before getting it right.

I often do more than one thing at a time. Most nights I watch TV crocheting or knitting! It isn’t just a distraction activity, I get enormous satisfaction from accomplishing something every day. It doesn’t have to be a complete project but even solving a part of a process makes me feel ten feet tall.

It has been such fun to combine two hobbies and all for my enjoyment. The only problem is that I am running out of space to house my projects.

But what a great problem to have .