Pen Friends (and Blog Friends)

Hi blog friends,

It is Mother's Day in New Zealand today. My daughter (and husband) bought me some Lotto tickets and the Blu-Ray of Les Miserables.  I even got breakfast in bed. My husband is also going to cook me a lovely salmon dinner tonight.

Now, however, we are in the midst of chaos. We decided to move things around in our house today. We have moved into our daughter's bedroom, our daughter has moved into ours, I am moving my craft room back into the spare bedroom and my husband is moving his computer gear back into the office. While it isn't exactly a Mother's Day activity I am pleased were are reshuffling things (again) to make the space work for us. It also means I can have a good tidy up and spring clean as we go.

While I was really happy with the little craft room I was in it was a bit too small. I just need to arrange for better lighting in the spare bedroom to make it a good crafting space. Also, my husband is a bit too noisy when playing his computer games to be up in the bedroom area at night.

While I was sorting I came across this lovely old postcard and I wanted to share it with you. With a few word changes it could relate to friendships formed from blogging.

I have kept and loved this postcard since I was a little girl. It was given to me by a lady who lived next door to us while I was growing up and her and her husband were just part of our family. They were very special. The postcard was sent to her by an overseas penfriend. I think the post-date reads 1938.

The author is Wilhelmina Stitch (1888-1936).

It reads:
"It's rather wonderful, I think, when friends are made - by pen and ink. A piece of paper, blue or white! Someone decides that she will write to one whom she has never seen, who lives where she has never been!
A pen becomes a magic wand! Two strangers start to correspond. Not strangers long, but soon good friends (just note how her last letter ends). How pleasant is exchange of views and comment on important news. Oh! one can talk of this and that and have the cosiest type of chat on paper (be it blue or white), providing that one's pen will write!
Two girls who live quite far apart can gladden much each other's heart; can nourish, too, each other's mind with letters sensible and kind. It's truly beautiful I think when friendship springs from pen and ink!"

My Amersham

I'm glad to say my husband, daughter and dolls house arrived home in one piece last night.

This is my mock tudor Amersham doll house. I am really pleased with it. It needs a bit of restoration but it is such a sweet little house. It is hard to date Amersham houses but it would date somewhere between the 1930s and mid 1950s. I think this one is probably post-war but I'm not sure.

This is the house as it came home last night.

This is the house today. I sat up until midnight stripping the paper off the base last night.

 The house with its garage doors open.

 The inside. The garage, bottom left, had floral paper on the walls when it came. 

I quickly stripped that to return it to the garage it is supposed to be.

 There is a little bay upstairs on the door where one or two pieces of furniture could go.

The house will need rewiring for safety. I have started pulling back the layers of old wallpaper to find the original papers underneath. I won't be able to save the old wallpapers but I will know what reproduction papers to look out for to return the house to its former glory. So far I have uncovered two different tulip patterned wallpapers. The upstairs windows have  been replaced with plastic ones so I will need to keep an eye out for vintage replacements which do come along now and then.

The house, while it looks grand, is a smaller scale, 1/16th I think. The height of the house including the base is 18 inches and the width of the base is 26 inches.

Inside the house was a 1970s/1980s Hobbys of London plastic fire place and 1970s Lundby pictures as shown below:

 1970s Lundby pictures.

1970s/1980s plastic Hobbys fire place.

This has now found a home in my 1970s Toyworks house.

It fits neatly under the stairs.
 

I quite like the thought that many decades ago a little girl received this house new and played with it and then in the 1970s another little girl played with it, and it has probably been played with since. It has a history.

Anyway I'd better start getting ready for bed. Work tomorrow. It is now 10.00pm in New Zealand.

Waiting, waiting...

It has been a long day. My husband and daughter drove to Auckland, New Zealand yesterday, about a 6 hour drive from where we live to pick a vintage doll house for me. An early Mother's Day present (Mothers Day in New Zealand is the second Sunday in May). They have picked it up and as I write this my husband and daughter are heading back home, another 6 hour drive, and should be here in a couple of hours. I am just as anxious to get them back safe as I am to see my new (old) house. I will post photos of it tomorrow.

I couldn't put my mind to anything until I knew the house had been picked up and then I managed to put together a little table using the resin experiment I recently blogged about.
http://myrtlemanorminiatures.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/creative-flow.html

This nearly ended in disaster when I tried to squeeze black paint out of a tube and the tube 'exploded'. Black paint on my desk, on me, on my clothes and on the carpet. Not impressed! I finished the table surrounded by black paint and then proceeded to clean up myself and my workroom. Needless to say it dampened the creative spirit and I didn't get any more miniatures done today.

Anyway, here is the table. I used two plastic pizza spacers for the legs (the type you get in a pizza delivery box that stops the lid from sitting on the pizza). I cut one prong off each spacer and then joined them together.

 

Will take some photos of my Amersham house tomorrow and put them on the blog. In the meantime I hope you are having a great weekend.