Rationalising the wheeled cases.

Posted on 8th October 2024 by admin

Sounds like something that might be written sideways on a file box in a solicitor’s office, doesn’t it?

It’s much less glamorous than that and not half as exciting.  It’s still just me, trying to get ready for the next show ahead of time in order to have time for writing.

As usual when I have use of time carefully planned from the minute I open my eyes, it all went pear shaped.  Wonky pear at that, the kind that gets left in the box at the supermarket as it has a bent end, a thumb print in the middle and a soft bit at the base.

Do you recall the OH saturating the kitchen with soup a few postings ago?  It took some days to spot all the places where the soup had run down from the ceiling.  The latest, which was into the twin socket beside the hob only became apparent when the OH decided to blend the latest lot of soup and got a little coil of smoke coming from the socket but no electricity.

After a couple of days of ringing electricians who do not answer their phone, despite their advertisements assuring the reader of prompt attention, the OH decided to go it alone.  I had by then remembered the phone number of the regular electrician.  I do this thing because I do not outsource my thinking to a smart phone. I prefer to do it myself.  I know this is quaint and leads to behaviour such as waking in the night to shout out a telephone number.  Providing I have a little notebook by the bed, all is well.

The OH had sent for a new twin socket and turned off all the electricity just as I was on the computer banking app.  I therefore, having briefly discovered that we are solvent, this month, providing there are no crises, descended to witness the virtuoso electrical competence but was, alas, disappointed.  After the fetching of three different sets of screwdrivers and a good deal of hammering and swearing from the OH.  For lo!  The new socket didn’t work either.  Annoyed and flailing like an eel on a sofa, he knocked off an empty glass jar which had previously contained passata, now incorporated into soup.  The glass jar shattered into  more fragments than a millefiori stained glass window. Half an hour later we were still finding bits.  To cries of ‘Why are you sweeping with that broom? You don’t need that!  I’ve got a dustpan!’  and fresh crunching, I swept the floor and found most of it.  You never think of glass as being well-travelled, but it is.

So that was the afternoon when I was going to rationalise the cases.

I’ll have another go tomorrow, after I have rung some proper electricians, remembering that the most important tool for the usual householder to possess, is not three screwdriver sets but a fat wallet.  I would make the electrician a cup of tea in the hope of a smaller bill, if I only had a working socket.

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Getting ready.

Posted on 29th September 2024 by admin

The OH is off on a singles holiday in Spain, though as he’s doing a video call or two every day, it’s not as much of a holiday for me as I envisaged.  My block of stone I have not sculpted much this cold, rainy so-called summer was sinking into the lawn at a perilous angle.  Two strong men from next door came round and moved it a bit to firmer ground, for which I was grateful.  The OH, however, opined that it was in the wrong place and should have been round the other side of the shed.  Trying to control something that happened two hours ago from another country seems like an excellent definition of futility to me.

I have been watching television in my own lounge.  Normally what gets watched in there is dramas about people killing each other, submarines and cowboy films, so I don’t go in there often.  Now I am watching quite a bit of what I like with my feet up.

In between I am getting ready for the next show.  I want to do it all and put it away.  Right now I’m designing a new stand.  I almost had it ready for the last show but it was all stuck together with Blu-tak.  I have done a redesign in which the boxes (the garage and Slight Versailles,) stack on top of each other, on a shoe box.  The pile of boxes is backed by a stand which is an adapted picture frame.  I wanted them to have a cardboard slice at the back of each box that would slip over the picture frame card and eliminate the use of anything sticky at the show.  It took three goes to perfect it (given that it’s all bits of cardboard.)  I have an unshakeable belief in the use of old shoe boxes.  Beefed up with bits of card, covered glamorously, I can make almost any display I want to with old shoe boxes.

Having a wardrobe full of old shoe boxes is the only downside.  The upside is that with a bit of card, paper and glue I have a new display for next to nothing.

I have also rationalised my sock drawer, cooked from scratch twice, caught up with the gardening, been food shopping to the nice out of town M&S and put four wheeled cases, ready to go, for the next show, replete with lots of new, made, product boxes in the cupboard.

It’s amazing what you can do with an OH in a different country completely.  Who knows what I will do tomorrow?

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Loss of a friend.

Posted on 23rd September 2024 by admin

My goodness this is difficult.

I rang my friend every week, or, more, often, she rang me.  We both have landlines, though she was up to date and had a smart phone too.  She actually budgeted to be able to ring me.  I think that’s amazing.

I didn’t ring her the weekend before Miniatura weekend because I was busy and she didn’t ring me, I thought because she knew I’d be busy.  What she was actually doing was suffering from a burst appendix, which developed into peritonitis.  A condition which can be rescued by surgery and antibiotics but only if you get hold of a doctor soon enough.

I keep thinking of things to tell Lynne next phone call.

I should be still tidying up from Miniatura and putting all the wheeled cases back in the cupboard ready for next time.

All I want to do is sleep, it’s very strange.

I’m also in the middle of swapping summer clothes for winter clothes, which I have to do because once the summer clothes are put away I have room to put the cases away.

Which all seems pointless.

I am so glad my friend got up the courage to come to the show eighteen months ago, on a coach, and stay for a week.

The OH is off on his singles holiday tomorrow.  I shall be interested to see how I am alone.  Perhaps it is practice for years to come.

I don’t usually watch breakfast television but I did a bit today while I was on my exercise bike.  They were worrying about processed foods and how they could damage your health.  No one was worrying about getting run over by a bus, or a burst appendix.  The OH started stammering as a three year old when both his grandparents were run over by a bus at once.  I was saved from a bad appendix aged eight, when, delivering Christmas gifts, and poorly as usual, my uncle knew to press mcburney’s point.  I was taken home and put to bed and knew than if I just turned over I could be through the wallpaper and somewhere else.  Surgery in a rush on Christmas Eve saved my life, then, but the adhesions from it imperilled my life two years ago.

Does all of this mean that when your number is up, your number is up?  Should you live a wild and carefree life?  Do you remember that the longest lived French lady gave up smoking cigarettes in her nineties but took it up again at a hundred and five and then lived another fourteen years?  Should you try to enjoy every day, even the post-surgical ones, of which I have had plenty lately.

If we are all here to learn, which I do believe, what is the loss of a friend teaching me?  If it is to value your friends, I already did.  Should I have made time to ring her instead of putting my head in my work?  Would I have been able to save her if I did?  When she had Covid she just coped on her own, maybe she thought she had that again.  Should you become hyper-vigilant about every health issue?

Right now all I have are questions.

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Same hall.

Posted on 13th September 2024 by admin

Whatever I said about a different hall in the last post, please ignore.  I have just set up in the usual hall and so has everyone else but the layout is sideways to accommodate the restaurant facilities.

What I did learn this evening is that there is a special table which has got all the 100th show offers on it, including mine (but only if I remember to put something there in the morning).  You can go and see who is doing special things and what they are and make a beeline before they run out.

I have had a quick look round the hall.  It is amazing.  Go and see the fab book nook that John Dowsett has made for me, on his table, you could even have a play with my house before I do.

I am giving away a huge box already subdivided and with a closure that just needs a miniaturist with a craft knife and ambition.

And I am giving away 100 slices of birthday cake and 100 plates, just buy something.  I have put out glazed, china painted perfume bottles on the ornaments display, they cost £1 and will last hundreds of years like everything else porcelain.

See you there!  (In the hall the signs are pointing to.  It’ll say: Miniatura this way.  Or something similar.  If it says: Launderette, you’re in the wrong place completely.)

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Autumn Miniatura.

Posted on 13th September 2024 by admin

My car is all loaded and I’m ready to go this afternoon and set my table up.  I’ve got three hours to do it this evening and two tomorrow.  I have redesigned the stand incorporating what I hope are safer backs to lean the doll boxes on.  For many years I’ve been propping them up on some metal folding easels inherited from my father’s antique shop.  Whilst great for supporting one picture, they were never very good for a pile of doll boxes precariously stuck on with Blu-tack, with the gaps in the back filled in with metal rulers all tacked on too.  One sneeze…

So this time there are solid wooden easels supported on big boxes that raise quite a lot of the display up to eye level.  I’m hoping to have a little void space at the front for shoppers to interview dolls on.  (This is not very likely, but I’ll try.)

We are in a different hall.  This time we are in Hall 1 at Stoneleigh showground.  There is a restaurant actually in the hall.  I have been there as a visitor, it is a wide, shallow hall, in theory less easy to get lost in, or for the person you came with to wander off and get lost.  In practice it will be the same as usual, if you want companions to stay anywhere near you, you should tie the elastic to their ankle before you let them wander off.

I am on stand K1.  I will be taking the stuff that is in the car.

What got left this time were the dolls’ dolls, including the much requested Tudor dolls.  I am going to offer these as dressed dolls or kits and ran out of time for designing the kits.  New things that will be there are a new 12th scale glass eyed man, a new 12th scale glass eyed child and a new 24th scale lady.  There are just two new internally jointed six part, under one inch 24th scale babies.  Stringing the five that came all the way through the processes took a whole 24 hour day and a lot of language. There are men in a garage in 24th, there is a brand new 12th scale articulated horse to paint yourself, and the cats.  There is a whole box of cats to be 24th house residents, dressed and un and that don’t need doll stands because they have tails.

All the usual boxes are chock full, I feel confident in saying there is massive choice.  I have also a little box of woven carpets, bought a million years ago when  I fleetingly thought I might turn out to be a dealer, there are not many, at ancient prices.

AND, of course, every shopper buying something from me will get their free gift to celebrate the 100th Miniatura.

Even though we are in a different hall, it is right next to the other hall, everything will be signposted and the visitor car park is still free as air and right next to the hall.  The venue staff are lovely, Miniatura staff are always lovely, so please ask if you need any help.

I’ll see you there!

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A sad loss.

Posted on 8th September 2024 by admin

I am so sad to tell you of the death of Lynne Medhurst.  She was found dead at her house on Friday.

Without Lynne there would be no website here. 

I was exhibiting at possibly my second Miniatura when a little figure, wearing a beret at a jaunty angle, came up to my table and began looking at the dolls.  Just behind me a voice said ‘This is someone you have to help.’  I thought my husband had spoken but he had not.

The girl in the beret said ‘I’m the editor of Dolls House World magazine and I’m taking this doll kit to review.’

I said, ‘Ok.’

Thus began a friendship of what has turned out to be some thirty years.

Lynne reviewed the doll kit saying she had made it easily with the assistance of ‘the hand of a friend.’  The friend in question was her husband, who, I learned later, had an incurable brain tumour.  He died shortly afterwards.  By then I was writing for the magazine, which Lynne asked me to do on the strength of the instructions in the doll kit.

The magazine is why I abandoned my stand and ran round the hall interviewing miniaturists.  The interviews gave me something to write about for six months until the next Miniatura, when I repeated the feat.  One show I interviewed twenty six artists, two of them in languages I did not speak.

Because I had discovered that Lynne was editing for a pittance while caring for her dying husband, when I rang, if she was not immediately available I used to say ‘Tell her not to worry, it’s just Jane.’  She then called my column, in which I sent up the hobby, Just Jane. For years I wondered why.

It was reporting for the magazine, which had a six month lead-in, to cause miniaturist artisans to ask me if there was a better way of getting the stuff they were making for the show, and often only finished days before, publicised. They wondered if there were a faster way of telling visitors about their latest oeuvre.  So began JaneLaverick.com so that just a few days before Miniatura, artists could email me and I could tell visitors, who could then rush to the artisan they were collecting and miss nothing.

This website has enabled me to talk to miniaturists, to help carers of demented people, to show you what I’m doing and to be satisfyingly silly in writing.  It would not be here without Lynne.

Two years ago in the autumn the miniverse lost John Hodgson (who Lynne admired beyond measure), Lawrence St Leger, and the great Terry Curran, whose miniature pots appeared in a coffee table book of great (full scale) potters of the twentieth century.  Because of Lynne and the magazine, I talked to them all, collected them all and loved them all.

Most of all I loved Lynne.  She overcame terrible difficulties in life.  She had a terrible upbringing with parents who were not always on the right side of the law, but was herself straight as a die and honest as the day is long.  All alone, after the death of her husband, she paid off her mortgage and brought up two children, often living through the winter on porridge.

She was brave, she was true, she was a cracking writer, she was only in her sixties.  She had many difficulties but never built up resentment about her life, instead she put her head in a dolls house,  shrank life to manageable proportions and helped and celebrated others who wanted to do the same.

If you are going to Miniatura this coming weekend and you wish to celebrate the lives of Lynne, Lawrence, John and Terry, enjoy every moment of the show.  Love every second, love every miniaturist and be glad of a show for miniaturists by miniaturists.

Life is difficult, we are here to learn, but I have been privileged to know so many people who turned difficulty into enduring art, wonderful writing, world class wood carving, pottery, metal work and every skill that can be imagined.

I rang Lynne or she rang me every weekend for years.  Suddenly I have a couple of hours spare every weekend for the foreseeable future.

Love every friend, there are never enough.

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Platelets on the brain.

Posted on 31st August 2024 by admin

I have no idea if there is such a thing, but if there is, I’ve got it.

Last time you caught up with me I was just going to make the boxes for my gift with purchase.

Days ago.

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This is what I was dealing with.  On the left the 12th scale plates, on the right the 24th scale plates.

There are enough for the first 100 shoppers on Saturday and enough for the first 100 on Sunday, in your chosen scale.  Which means that there have to be spares.  Whilst a 24th scale cake slice and plate would not be too awful in a 12th scale house, a 48th scale plate and cake would be lost.  Equally if you put a 12th scale plate and cake in your small 48th house, you’d be in Land Of The Giants territory.

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Here are some of the 24th scale plates on the left and the 48th on the right.

See any you fancy?

I made two hundred boxes and a few spares, which took two days.

Then I spread out all the plates on the dining table and all of the cakes and what I hoped was 400 tiny finger seal bags, which are 25mm square.

Opening 400 tiny bags with my fingernails was going to hurt but I ran out of bags after only 150 boxes.  I have sent for more.

Every plate was tried with several slices of cake because it would be very annoying if your slice of cake didn’t fit on your plate. Having made each match, each part was put in a finger seal bag, so they won’t fall on the floor  and get lost in the show, and you can break your mystery box open with impunity.

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These are the 24th plates.

Do any catch your eye?

When the bags arrive tomorrow I shall finish the job.  What is certain is that if you buy something from me at the show you will have a slice of birthday cake and a plate to put it on that fits, and that shows you were there at the 100th event.

There will never be another 100th Miniatura, which my fingernails are quite glad about.

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All information about the show is at www.miniatura.co.uk

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The 100th Miniatura.

Posted on 27th August 2024 by admin

Is really something to celebrate.

I have been to most of them.  I started as a visitor in the Eighties, when the show was at the cricket ground.  Some of the exhibitors were in a hall, others were on banked seating areas.  These included Glasscraft, Geordies like myself,  and possibly only the second glass workers in the hobby.  They were standing on the steps and behaving like market traders, shouting their wares.

‘Glassware, get your lovely glassware here.  Bowls and glasses, get your lovely bowls (pet.)’  There was a commotion as  a very alert lady rushed past me (I was further down the steps) to tell the glassblowers off.  ‘I know it’s a show,’ she said, ‘but it’s not that sort of show.’

‘Eeh well sorry.’

I rushed over once she’d gone (it was, of course, Muriel Hopwood, show founder) to see what they had.  First time out in Birmingham and goodness they were good.  There was a lot of glassware in the North East because of a manufacturer of kitchen glass ware that had a big factory and trained apprentices.  These Geordies did what a lot of miniaturists were doing at the start of the hobby, they saw a new market and miniaturised skills they already had, to great effect.

Miniatura has continued to encourage very good craftsmen and women, politely, over a hundred shows.

The hundredth show does not mean that Miniatura has been going with Muriel and now Andy, her son, as show organiser, for fifty years.  For some time there was a Scottish Miniatura, as well as the two in Birmingham.  By then I was an exhibitor and, attending the show, stayed with an auntie of the OH, who lived in Dumbarton.  It was a chance for the S&H to meet a great auntie, and she was great and we had a great time.  Short of cash, as we were, the show helped with a holiday and definitely paid for a slap-up meal at the Lodge on Loch Lomond.

Some of the best craftsmen in the country have been attracted to the way the show has nurtured them.  The motto of the show ‘For miniaturists by miniaturists’ has never deviated.  Fees for exhibiting are modest, entry fees to the show for visitors are modest.  The venue has never crammed extra people in who just want to make money, there has always been room for wheelchair users to move easily.

The short of show it is, is a show that cares more about people than about making money.  I wrote for magazines in the hobby for about fifteen years and in the course of doing so interviewed many exhibitors.  I never found anyone with anything less than fulsome praise for the show, the way they had been looked after, and the information and help they had been given.  When the show was at the NEC, the NEC started to charge (a lot) for car parking for visitors.  Miniatura paid these fees because they didn’t want their visitors to waste their money in the car park, they wanted their visitors to keep their saved-up pocket money for the things they wanted to collect.

It is a remarkable show.

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To celebrate the one hundredth Miniatura I am giving a free gift with purchase to the first one hundred visitors who buy something from me on the Saturday and the first one hundred visitors who buy something from me on Sunday.

None of the prices of my wares have changed, some have been the same for thirty one years, and I will make sure there are plenty of items at very reasonable prices so everyone who wishes to do so will get the free gift.  The gift is a glazed, hand painted porcelain plate and a slice of porcelain birthday cake with a candle.  The gift will come in a box in three scales so you can choose your scale 12th, 24th or 48th to go in your house.  I have yet to make the sealed boxes but here in the picture are some of the plates and cakes.  I will randomise the selection so no one will get your combination of cake and plate.  There are three different types of cake, one has lemon icing, one has pink icing and one is chocolate cake. The cakes and plates are only for this show, I will never offer them for sale, the only way you can get them is to be at the 100th Miniatura and buy something from me. 

Miniatura has been described as a collector’s paradise, I hope my free gift entirely fits with the spirit of the show.  If you notice whole cakes in the picture above there might be a reason for that and, if you collected one of the leaflets that were on my table last show, you’ll know what it is.

I am not the only exhibitor doing something special.  The exhibitors love the show as much as the visitors do.  With only two and a bit weeks to go you can almost feel the love, head down, busy.

It’s going to be amazing.  The show is open 10 till 4, all the details are at www.miniatura.co.uk

See you there!

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A light coating of soup.

Posted on 26th August 2024 by admin

I did remark some posts ago about the disappearance of time as soon as the Min is but a few weeks hence.  Three currently.

Do scroll down if you visit weekly, or even, weakly, this is the third post in the last two days because stuff keeps happening.

I had forgotten how difficult eye setting can be. I have a small tin of eyes left, having bought all there was, when my brilliant behind the Iron Curtain eye maker died.  The search for a substitute continues, currently several years old.  Therefore every eye is precious.  As you saw a few posts ago, three heads split in the kiln.  Today out of the heads that were left, which had been china painted, only five could be fitted with any eyes.

Fitting is hard on the eyes, especially mine.  Eyes are temporarily placed in the eye sockets, which have been lined with sticky wax.  Going through the tin to find the eyes, finding a hand made pair that is a fit for each hand made socket, lining the eye interior with wax, placing the eyeball with tweezers and rotating the shiny, slippery eyes with metal tweezers so they both look in the same direction, takes about an hour an eye.  If all goes well.  As the eyes are squished into the sockets the wax squeezes out until you cannot tell your pupil from your iris, at the drop of a feather they will spin until they are looking into the head and the only way to see if they are at all equal is to use the sun or shine a torch from behind the head, through the eyeball.  This being a bank holiday there is a dearth of sun, so I spent five hours shining a torch in my own eyes.

After I had trickled the plaster into the heads I was ready for a rest and some tea.

The OH was being martyred and ignored.  Possibly one caused the other, so he determined, it being a bank holiday and funds being low, to cook himself some soup.

He put the kettle on, prepared his veg and then put the pressure cooker on the hob, and left the kitchen for a nice sit down.

Light blue touch paper and retire.

Bang!  Or, possibly, BANG!!.

Yes the pressure cooker helpfully exploded giving the kitchen a light coating of soup.

Having established that the OH was still in one piece, I stayed out of the kitchen, hoping for my little break from work, which was definitely the triumph of hope over experience.

It was, apparently, my fault for not adding kitchen roll to the shopping list that the half a roll that mopped the floor did not have a companion to substitute for the empty carboard roll.

I had also, annoyingly, hid the fourth floor mop pad (in the sun room, dry, off the washing line.)

And it was definitely my fault that the ancient steam floor mop, retrieved from the garage, and demonstrated, took half an hour to get slightly warm, having died, apparently.

After the ninety ninth swear, shout and explosion from the kitchen, I gave in, and walked round the corner to the garage to get kitchen roll.

Then I emptied the warm water from the dead steam mop.  Then I washed the floor.  Then I put all the towels, mop heads and so on in the washing machine, made a fresh pot of tea, hung the mop heads on the line and then

And then it was time to go back to work.

Nothing like a restful bank holiday.

It really was.

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Cats.

Posted on 26th August 2024 by admin

Cats, cats, I have done cats
Some of the cats have got little hats

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So far, eventually some will be dressed.
Some will wear more, others much less.
Some will come furry, as made by Jane
Some will be stripey, some rather plain.
Some two inches tall, others shorter than that
Though furry-ish, each is a porcelain cat.
As twenty-fourth residents, they’ll be for sale
They do not need a doll stand as each has a tail.
Internally jointed and eager to please,
I love little cats, which is why I’ve done these.

More pics when they are dressed.

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www.miniatura.co.uk

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