Apologies are due for the fulsome radio silence.
I have been working twelve hour days because it’s only two weeks to Miniatura and, as usual I should have started weeks before I did. I’m sure some conscientious folk start getting ready for the next show as soon as they have arrived home from the previous one. I also know of some card makers who start on Boxing Day for the following Christmas.
It might be all those years of journalism giving me rampant deadline fever. It might be basic procrastination. My cousin Roy used to wrap his Christmas presents on Christmas morning two minutes before he brought them downstairs to give to people. He may have said that he unwrapped his first then went upstairs using the just unwrapped paper to wrap up those he was gifting but I may be making that up.
I have had years where the Christmas shopping was all done by October, and you can do that, but it spoils it. Craft and hobby channels are right now, last day of August, asking if you’ve finished making your Christmas cards. I have bought most of the bits I need to make them but won’t start until November at the earliest.
However unless something has gone horribly wrong the kiln has been on for the last time this show. Two months working, resulting in dozens of new moulds with risky new brand plaster, some of which was not wonderful and a bit unpredictable. Weeks pouring, weeks rubbing down, first go in the kiln to fire to bisque, removal, rearranging, glazing with new glazes, some of which did not go according to plan and will have to be chucked. A second fire of four shelves, most I’ve ever done at once, which took six hours five minutes. A day grit scrubbing with water running up my arms, rubbing off my fingernails with car sanding sponges and finally two days china painting and a final firing today.
And I still don’t know if it has worked. There may be absolutely brand new dolls. There are very small historic dolls, versions of larger ones shrunken to be the right size to be small dolls’ dolls in a dolls house, one set of requests and four absolutely new dolls. I have invented them , sculpted them, moulded them, cleaned them, glazed them, china painted them and I still won’t know if it’s worked until I get them out of the kiln tomorrow and see if the jointing has worked and see if the pieces fit.
I still find this very exciting. If you do too, stay tuned.
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All the details at www.miniatura.co.uk
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