Sailor Bill

No longer shirtless

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No longer climbing over the balustrade as I’ve taken so long to get him sorted, he got fed-up and has managed to clamber up to sit on Red Bedroom roof. Probably leave him there but he needs  tools and possibly a snack in that leather box

Where is he?

He’s there on the left in this view of back roof areas. His shorter Heidi Ott friend is standing bottom centre and we can just see the fellow seated on the roof ridge centrally at the top of the photo.  The other two workers, the bearded boss and the young apprentice in the green hat, are just out of shot round on the flat roof area to the right.

Missing a couple of storerooms?

Another job that time forgot

Stocking up the corridor space

Narrow, cool corridor between scullery and dairy and giving access to buttery

storing candlesticks and ladles, herbs, buckets and brooms

sweet meats and cakes, greens, candles and candle mould.

Dairy

Draining cloths drying, ladle and small strainer hanging with one cheese on shelf above. Butter-churn – the jobs never end do they?

Cheeses stored and maturing on the back shelves.

There’s hooks over in the corner on which there should be herbs hanging. Must get around to that and put a couple more bowls on the side shelf too.

New curds dripping into gigantic bowl

catching the whey

And I didn’t forget entirely

Stock fish now hanging in dry goods store (from Mini Things)

and a little washing going on indoors in the over-crowded scullery

A missing ‘peekaboo’

Small loft for the small boys. A peek through the end window into the low space. Am working on adding a dormer to left in this image on the front slope facing the great hall. Give them a bit of head room somewhere.

Other missing pieces

Seem to be doing forgotten jobs in order to avoid one particular ‘forgotten’ job.

I wonder why?

I give in.  Back to the builder standing around in his trousers.

 

Never put off … what you’ve already forgotten to do

meanwhile “quack”

Thought you might like this egg cup ‘scene’ – looking a bit put upon?

Back to the point

Forgot: 1

NB:  if you turn on the lights in the ‘house’ always fully check at the end that you’ve turned them off – really off.

Many hours later …

 

Forgot: 2

It would be good if the added blocks of the house – great hall extension, or porch, street or storerooms block – could be linked by action or activity of the figures using them.  Most are in place and the great hall ones are already chosen but still not done and dusted and I couldn’t figure out why — until today when I started on them.

Ready and hauling away whilst leaning on a rake

The rope is a loop that slips off his shoulder so that the block of building he’s standing on can be removed with him in place rather than leaving him dangling down the side of the main building from the end of the rope

Really trying to put some muscle into it here. That, by the way is not a flat cap but a flat hat for the carrying of roof tiles on his head should he require to do so

What he’s hauling on and where at the back of the house

View of all four of the workmen in action so far. There’s still a load of tree bits to go on some of that roof.
One day.

I do find the very lovely Heidi Ott dolls are far better at millipede impressions than other dolls when it comes to stitching and gluing clothes on.

Whatever am I on about!?

Have you ever added permanent clothing to a small doll?  I don’t know how you go about it but I use a mix of pre-stitching or gluing of items or parts without the doll and building other parts of the clothes on the doll directly.

One doll hopefully has two arms, two legs and one head.  That makes five appendages that you can get your thread wrapped around or can glue to the wrong bits of cloth.  Pipe cleaner limbed dolls can do this and occasionally the limbs can fall off but overall they are generally more willing to be moved out of the field of needle and glue fire than the Ott strongly made ladies and gents.

The two figures from the roof that need attention should have been done today but I only got the one done and in place.  Very stubborn article that he was.

Any mini-ing tomorrow will involve wrestling his friend into some clothes, I suspect.  So far he’s got pants.  Well, it’s a start.

 

Two hard working young boys need a place to sleep

The second loft sleeping space is for Robert Smyth general house labourer aged 10 years (at present dealing with logs and a large dog in the great hall) and Kit Punt aged 11 years, also general labourer around the Hall but at the moment is in the porch about to knock the hat off a quarrelsome beggar using the handle of his besom broom.

A storage chest

As usual am building bits around and about at the same time whilst the items dry and they all involve this loft space. Their bit of it is also a general storage area for spare items.  It needs the odd chest to store some of the older, small equipment out of the storerooms down below and a corner to push in a spare palliasse or two.

Going for cheap, cheerful and speedy

The chest doesn’t need to open, it just needs to sit there taking up space and look mildly interesting, so I’ve gone for a really cheapskate construction from a cardboard box.  (I bought a bundle of boxes quite some time ago with thoughts of dressing them as really very small mini scenes but haven’t so far got round to it.)

Recipe:

• take one cardboard box of roughly suitable size in at least one of its dimensions in this case it’s the width (approximately 3”)

(top left) The box with its lid is far too big but its width is OK without (top right) .
(second row)) The depth needs reducing so chopped it more or less in half from back to front
(bottom photo) and then used a piece of the excess inserted to add another face to the construction and strengthen the shape

• clad in whatever is lying around that might be suitable – peel off back 1:12 wood flooring is what I’ve got

This is wood flooring with a peel off backing and it has some of the stickiest glue I’ve ever come across on it

Cardboard box with front face clad

• add hinges, catches, strapping if wish – using some more painted paper as iron bits and florist’s wire to indicate some sort of catch

There’s a pile of off-cuts from the painted paper used when making faux lead for the roof valleys and they mostly have some useable bits on them so they’ll be used for hinges and iron strapping. The paper is stuff that comes in parcels and I’m loath to throw it away.

If the flooring is used for the lid it’s possibly going to look too thin. If it’s stuck to a piece of cardboard then the edge showing a double thickness will annoy me.
The compromise is trying a piece of 2 mm card (example on left of photo ) and see if it can be coloured and patterned to blend a little with the wood planking (example on the right of photo).
I’ve used pastels and surgical spirit and added the dots and dashes with a ball-point pen

It’s built with one face open (that is it doesn’t have six sides).  It could be useful to have an open face for concealing something such as wiring but so far I don’t think there’s anything more to be hidden up in this area but you never know, so five sided it remains.

The back is open for hiding things

and the usual florist’s wire is in place for bits of a catch.

Outcome

Not very finished at the edges where the cladding corner edges meet but I think I can live with it and the lid still looks ‘hairy’ in a comparison with the smooth wood, but so it goes.

Other coloured card today

Was looking to make a worn wooden door

but think I may have a door that looks like it needs repainting

There is also a doorway at one end (non-opening) to hint at loft space beyond for more items to be kept – presumably someone in the household is sure these things will come in handy someday.