It's been such a busy summer...

....I'm almost glad it's coming to an end! uh, no not really

This summer there hasn't been much time left over for miniatures between family visiting, get-togethers with friends and those two wonderful workshops that I took and the new friends I made. Then it seemed like I spent most of August recuperating, doing nothing.
So now here I go again...
Several months ago, I traded this castle roombox for a goth Alice in Wonderland.
Yeah, yeah, OK, I know.... another UFO idea! but I had this absolutely fabulous, out-of-this-world idea for a woven basket chair that would be perfect for an Alice teaparty scene. So as per usual I'm gathering all my things together.....!
This month, one of the forum groups that I belong to, needed funds to keep the site alive and I donated this roombox to the causeand another member decided it was a must have, as well. I offered her a few choices such as stone coloring; she chose sandstone but I guess it was a hard decision because now she also wants a second roombox made of grey "granite".
So I guess the busy-ness will continue. The timing couldn't be better and the weather's co-operating beautifully; we've got sunshine and the temperature's not too hot, just perfect for stone carving outside! Much too messy inside.

Count Down til Christmas

Seems strange to think about Christmas when we're still in the throws of summer. Apparently there're only 125 days until the Big Guy comes bearing presents.

I was out doing some yard work today, tidying up after a much needed rainstorm. On either side of our property, we're bordered by very large shrubs with branches that have a tendency of reaching out where they don't belong. I had quite a few that needed cutting off which brings me to the reason of why I mentioned Christmas.
My wayward shrubs produce mini cones. As I cut the branches, I saved all the cones that I saw.Although most of them are green, I'm sure they'll eventually turn brown. Looking just like regular sized pinecones, they're the perfect size for miniature Christmas wreaths.
If there's wreath making in your plans & you'd like some "pine"cones.... mine are free for the asking; or just about free as all I'd ask is for you to pay the postage.
First email gets them. Please include your address so I can figure out shipping.

...if anyone is interested

I have one of each of the baked and unbaked lobsters for sale$15US + shipping.

I also have a couple of calamari prep boards$25 + shipping.

If you're interested please email me. Otherwise they will be listed on eBay this week.
Just got a commission to build a castle roombox. That'll be my third. Yeaahhh!
This was my first:
...and my second

Ludditism

Luddite:

n.
1.Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2.One who opposes technical or technological change.

Hubby and I finally got new phones. Our old ones were only three years old but between the batteries no longer lasting and my grandkids laughing at us for using antique devices, it seemed long overdue.
First came the careful choice about which provider to use ...and the astonishing discovery that in Canada there really isn't much difference between any of them.
Next came the decision of type of phone to get: I wanted an iphone; Ken wanted to support the Canadian manufacturer RIM & get a Blackberry. In the end the sales rep convinced me that I could do just as much with a Blackberry. I picked a Torch; Ken chose the Bold.
Last but most important came the choice of plan. Ken has long been a social butterfly, subscribing to Twitter, Facebook and whatever other social networks are out there. Took me a lot longer & I'm still only on Facebook ...and that because I accessed his Facebook account when Ken was having problems logging in. Once on, I never got out. I can see(read) what family and friends are doing much more readily than I ever could by phone or email.
My plan entitles me to receive emails. I get approximately 100 each day; it used to be mainly jokes at first, then I got into miniatures and started joining Yahoo forums and that's where most of my mail comes from now.
Ken's plan brings all the social networks to his phone.
Neither one of us have any other data plan figuring that if we're anywhere with free wifi we can surf more extensively ....besides I just bought a little 4lb notebook with 4 hour battery usage. This means that for 2 people, we make do with 3 laptops, 1 notebook and our new phones! Life is tough isn't it LOL!

The sales rep assured us that we'd probably spend the evening playing with our new toys; I insisted I'd be much too busy on my laptop. I was wrong!! Not only did I play all that evening but the next day and the one after that.....
I take my phone to bed & when I can't sleep or wake in the night (ADH causes sleep issues), instead of reading a book, I now read emails and check out what the other side of the world is saying on Facebook. I love my phone!
When waiting for my friend to finish shopping, I sit in my car playing on my phone. Once when I was laughing at something I'd read, I looked up to see a man in the car next to me looking rather strangely my way.
I play while standing in a queue.
I play when I arrive too early somewhere. I love my phone!
I've also discovered that the phone camera is almost as good as my actual camera.
Now having said all that, I am still a total newbie. My stepdaughter is moving back to Canada & needs furniture; today I took a picture of some night tables that I thought she might like to have. I could have easily transferred the photo to my laptop and sent her an email but instead I spent the entire afternoon trying to pull all my contacts into my phone ...not easy to do as Blackberries do not like separate address book folders. By late afternoon, I did manage to send my message from my phone with the photo attachment but I also ended up with a gigantic contact list and a new membership to a blackberry forum so that some day my phone contacts can become manageable again. Hmmm, more emails!

Poor Ken! First he discovered that the Blackberry Bold isn't as finger friendly or as see-able as the Torch so the morning after we'd gotten the phones, we exchanged his model for the same as what I had ....while waiting, I played on my phone.
Then for some reason, Ken seemed to become lost with the technology. It took forever to get him to set up his phone message retrieval. I am positive that he'd much prefer to go back to his old phone that does nothing more than send/receive calls. The more his phone is capable of, the less it works for him.
He has the same problem with his computer. Having passed typewriting 101 in high school with flying colors, he's now constantly frustrated that his typing apparently makes the laptop skip and zip off to nether regions. I'm positive that it's more a wonky keypad than his fingers but after a while of being frustrated anyone would begin to doubt themselves. And now comes the added frustration of not being able to use his new phone.

How do the elderly manage in a technologically driven world? It's no wonder I'm hearing so many complaints about kids doing nothing but play games or interacting so much on their networking sites. A friend ended up taking her 12 year old daughter's phone away. By her reckoning, the girl had made 13,000 texts in one week and that during a school week.
Surely it's not that our brains atrophy so much as we age that it becomes harder and harder to learn new things. I think it's more the case of practise makes perfect; either that or become a Luddite which is what I've jokingly started to call Ken.
Oops! Sorry gotta go. My phone's beeping; I think I just got another email ...and we all know how rude it is to ignore those.

Sculpting Aids

Sometimes it's better to work from a photograph than a tutorials. A method that works for one person does not always work for the next person:


Following the tutorial, this is how my lobsters came out:
I thought I'd better take a photo before they get totally smooshed! I see they've already lost a claw each.

These were made using a photograph:
No comparisons as far as I can tell!

Second Workshop, Coaticook Quebec

We left Ontario on the hottest day of the entire month ...so hot in fact that records were broken: 38C / 100.4F with a humidex of 43. The car's air conditioning could barely keep up.
This workshop consisted of the same kits as the first one that I attended so this time, my granddaughter would take it. I merely acted as chauffeur.
Quebec is a lovely province that I've been to several times; one of the differences from Ontario are seeing the houses with their stairs on the outside.
We stopped overnight in Chateauguay and managed to do some clothes shopping the next morning before heading off again.
Of course we couldn't drive past the covered bridges without taking photos.

Even the countryside was greener than what we had left behind. Ontario consisted of strawlike lawns. Not only had we had hotter than normal temperatures but we were undergoing a mini drought as well ...something that Quebec obviously was not.Coaticook, where we were headed, is a village not far from both Montreal and the Vermont border.
This time with only three "students" per class, Natalie and Helena had a much easier time giving individual attention and Dana finally got her long awaited shot of all of us in PJs... We had a marvelous time; the food was delicious and the company exceptional. Mornings and evenings, we sat around the kitchen table; most all of us in front of our laptops. What would people do without those LOL!Our hostess, Louise, has an enormous studio, one that I would love to have. One entire wall was dedicated to doll molds. Unfortunately once again the time went by all too quickly before Jade & I were back on the road.
We had come via Canada, but on our way home we wanted to drive through the US which Jade had not been to. Fortunately at the Vermont border crossing, we were permitted through; although my daughter had gotten a passport for Jade, she neglected to provide me with a letter permitting Jade to travel to the States with me. So we were quite lucky.
For most of Vermont, the Appalachian mountains were shrouded in mist but the rain held off.The fastest route to New York state means taking the ferry at Lake Champlain ...another first time of many for Jade.Once in New York state my GPS decided that we should discover as many single car lanes and rural routes as possible as it navigated us through the Adirondacks.
We stopped overnight in Syracuse where I took advantage of shopping at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately since we only have a Michaels craft store, I tend to overspend. But finally we reached Niagara Falls, which neither of us had explored from the American side. The Falls are roughly divided between Canada and the US with Canadian Horseshoe Falls being the larger of the two.But you can get closer to the Falls on the American side!
We were told that if someone were to fall into the rapids above the falls, they would have only 3 minutes to escape before being swept over. Of the sixteen people known to have gone over only 11 lived; the youngest was a 9 year old boy who accidentally fell in and the oldest (1901) a 63 year old retired school teacher who lied about her age (why?). Several people have even gone over twice! I was quite happy to see it close up but from land.
It really is an awesome spectacle!

We did the Cave of the Winds, which isn't a cave at all but lets you walk right next to one of the smaller Falls. We went on the Maid of the Mist. These boats bring tourists from both sides of the border right to the edge of the Horseshoe Falls.

Then all too quickly the day was done and we headed for home. But not without another lecture from the border crossing guard...

Initial Workshop, Long Island New York

Well I don't know... airports and I don't just go well together!

I arrived with more than a comfortable 2 hour time frame until my actual flight but my first problem came up immediately: I never knew that you couldn't fly into the US without a destination address! Thankfully I at least had my hostess' phone number. By the time I phoned to Long Island and then ....again! went through the process of printing my boarding pass, there was a humongous queue ahead of me (people like me with ADH do not do well in lineups) and followed immediately by a pre-customs clearance line-up, 7 S-bends long.
Since we were having a sales table, I had some of my polymer items with me as carry-on and since I was being honest & declared that I was bringing approximately $100 worth of goods into the US, I had to go through an extra baggage search.
I brought out my items; the customs officer looked at them, looked at me and then down at them again and finally at me once again ...all with a very puzzled expression. Finally she waved me through with the admonition to next time not waste their time & just note I was bringing in "samples"! I should have known; I'm so very used to my friends having a glazed expression on their faces when I mention miniatures! LOL
One last check-in and finally more than an hour after arriving at the airport, I'm finally sitting in the departure lounge. So much for reading my library book that was due in 6 days.
My plane leaves at 10:55. Obviously I didn't notice the boarding time because at 10:15, I decided to take a bathroom break and see if I could get some breakfast. I, like most Ontarians, am addicted to Timmies, a coffee shop located at every street corner. However the airport Timmies was located on the other side of the walkway ...inaccessible to me! I had to make do with a coffee that was definitely past its sell by date. So the fact that I managed to spill almost half before adding the lid to my cup seemed minor.
Back in the lounge, I was just getting settled & pulling my book out when I caught part of an intercom message regarding something about LaGuardia. Naturally curious I questioned a boarding attendant who on seeing my pass, immediately got on her walkie talkie to cancel the call to remove a no-show customer's luggage. Reason: customer had arrived. ME!!!
This is not the first time I have had this sort of thing happen to me. Once in San Torini, needing to take just one more photo, I missed the launch to take me back to my cruise ship that had sailed without me & that was just at the edge of the horizon by the time I got to the harbor. I had to be ferried aboard my ship by a Russian cruiseship launch.
11:05 and we are in the air. It always amazes me when I see Toronto from the air. The city stretches as far as the eye can see; from the ground it never seems quite so large.
By 11:15 we are already crossing the Fingerlakes region of New York state and within an hour, the plane is flying above the Empire State building and Ellis Island, made famous as a historical immigration check point. Then to my delight, the plane made a full U-turn and I got to see the other half of the city: the Brooklyn Bridge and Liberty Island, among others. I'd been to NYC several times before but have never flown in; it's marvelous to have that bird's eye view.
My hostess Fran & her son picked me up and dropped me at their house, leaving immediately again for another airport run ...this time to JFK airport.There would be 14 of us, coming in from France, Mexico, Canada, Belgium, Utah, Maryland, Wisconsin & Florida to name just a few. Amazing when you think how far the internet has brought us!We spent the rest of Friday chatting & getting acquainted.;Since we were such a large group, it was decided that 4 of us would stay overnight with Caroline who lived just an hours drive from Manhattan aka downtown New York City... 15 minutes from Fran's house. Long Island is only 120 miles long with Manhattan at one end and the famous Hamptons at the other end. Until now I had only ever been in Manhattan. It amazed me to be driven within minutes to the beautiful rural country side of Locust Valley in Nassau County.(this is a view from the rear of Caroline's yard.)
Now remember until then I'm just a dumb Canadian hick who thinks of the entire island as being New York city. I was totally flummoxed! Caroline lives in a subdivision where the minimum lot size is 5 acres. Oh my, you should have seen the house!(my bedroom is at the top left)
I could have and actually did get lost between my bedroom and the bathroom. Caroline's ensuite bathroom is larger than my bathroom and 2 bedrooms combined. She calls it living in the woods!! This was the view from my bedroom balcony:
After that the remainder of my stay was anticlimactic but well worth any hassles. Natalie was a wonderful teacher. We did the Halloween Goodies table with her on Saturday and dressed & wigged our witches with Helena on Sunday. Both ladies made everything come together so easily, I could almost imagine that I was a long time doll maker.Can't show you my table as I still haven't finished but (famous last words!!) I will have them done by Halloween!
In between doing our projects the wine flowed over-abundantly and the food would have satisfied a small army! I came home weighing an extra 4 lbs.
Since I wasn't due to depart until mid afternoon on Monday, I got to do a tiny bit of shopping, coming home with a light weight notebook to add to my existing inventory of two already(still) working laptops and a new appreciation that Japanese sushi means more than just California rolls.
Of course where would I be without a final airport saga. My plane sat on the tarmac for over an hour ...most of which time had to be spent sitting in a totally uncomfortable upright seat. But at least my luggage arrived back home with me unlike one of our group who was only flying back to Florida.
When I landed at Pearson International at 8pm, it was like walking into a steam bath. Long Island may have the same temperature as Toronto but they have nowhere near the same humidity!

To Fran and Marvin, a big thank you for opening your home to a bunch of strangers so we could become friends. To Marvin for working your fingers to the bone, being a wonderful chef. To Caroline for taking home four bedless waifs & making them feel extremely comfortable. To Natalie & Helena for your patience & for extending your knowledge.
Of course last but not least, a huge thank you to Dana, of whom I would have liked to have seen more (nudge nudge wink wink) and who organized the entire workshop.

I wouldn't have missed this for the world!