not so thoroughly modern mini

one day i'll have a finished room to share

... but today is not that day! instead i wanted to show off this lovely bookcase that i won in a giveaway from Amazing Miniatures. i don't win things very often, but as soon as i laid my eyes upon this, i knew that it would be coming to live with me. you can buy one of your very own in the Amazing Miniatures Etsy Shop. this room will either be a den/library or a spare bedroom. i'm still working on finishing up the baseboards, painting the windows and front door, and the interior window trim. i hope to get the windows and front door installed this week. i plan on knitting a few more pieces, blankets, rugs, and maybe a wall hanging, but i'll need to complete my 1:1 scale xmas knitting before that can happen.

Minimodernistas

the Minimodernistas website is awesome! this could hurt...

and now for something completely different

i'm priming the interior while i wait for the wiring kit to arrive. i'm quite eager to get on with the decorating! i have purchased a few pieces on ebay, including the bed pictured here. on it is my very first handknit mini afghan! it still needs to be blocked and the top edge properly sewn, but i'm pretty pleased with the results. i'm considering making a matching bolster and pillow. once i've perfected the design, i may put something up for sale on Etsy.

vintage Reminiscence bed purchased on ebay

afghan, handknit with Koigu PPPM

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hello!

all my life i've wanted a real dollhouse. as a child, i had crappy tin ones and awful Barbie houses, but never a real one. for years, i've toyed with the idea of decorating a dollhouse, but in my life there's only room for one craft obsession at a time and for more than decade that has been knitting. obsessively learning how to knit, then teaching, writing knitting books, and appearing on the D.I.Y network's show, Knitty Gritty. i'm still knitting and designing, but for some time i have been hungry for a new creative passion. every 6 months or so i would go online and search for dollhouses and find myself overwhelmed by the idea assembling one myself. some people are very good at being at a novice and patiently learning how to do things the right way. i am not one of those people. i'm only comfortable when my knowledge is sufficient to be able to successfully complete a task on my own. for example, knitting was not something that came naturally to me. i was the slowest and worst knitter in the first couple of classes that i took. looking back, i'm sure that my instructors must have been astonished by my sheer cluelessness.  i just couldn't wrap my brain around it, but i persisted, waking up early and staying up late knitting until it clicked. after a couple of months, i "got it" and went on to knit a half dozen or so sweaters over the course of a year. i imagine that i will bring this same obsessive persistence to building my first dollhouse. i've been reading loads of miniatures blogs and will eventually be adding a blogroll of favorites. if you have a blog, please leave it in the comments. also, as i am a complete novice, any and all advice and tips would be appreciated!

last week, i once again found myself feeling the itch so i went online and started looking at dollhouse retailers and eventually ended up on ebay. first i looked at houses and kits, and then furniture. before i knew i had bid on and won these pieces;

the manufacturer is Concord Miniatures. i like that the style is a little bit funky. suddenly i've bought furniture and still no house! i really wanted a house that had already been assembled, but quickly realized that that was way out of my budget. after much deliberation and countless hours trolling the sites of various dollhouse retailers, back to ebay i went.

up next, the fantastic kit i scored for cheap!