Minnesota Nice
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Twin CitiesOver dinner at Tejas in Edina, a ritzy suburb of Minneapolis, my husband had asked jokingly what it would take to open a dollhouse store in the Twin Cities. "Well," I said, "you'd have to put it in a neighborhood like this one. And to make the rent, you'd need to hold a lot of classes, and you'd need to represent the local artisans at the Tom Bishop Show in Chicago. It'd mean a lot of work and creativity at a low profit margin, so I sure don't want to do it."Fortunately, Karen Fernholz did. She's the owner of Little Enchantments, the regional dollhouse miniatures store just blocks from where we were dining. The stock of dollhouse kits slants heavily toward a certain rival brand, but there's a satisfying selection of doors, floors, and other construction equipment. The furniture and accessories selections are outstanding, given the limited space. Local artisans are heavily represented, with some welcome and unusual finds like vintage-style mixers and blenders. This is a shop where I'd like to pay multiple visits over the course of a long project.Next door to Little Enchantments is the Bead Monkey, which is the major bead store in the region. (There's another shop on St. Paul's Grand Avenue.) The metal charm selection is the store's major strength, though there are also numerous oddities that can serve as tables, lamps, picture frames, and wall art. It's unusual that I don't buy anything at a store as good as this one: blame several years of shameless hoarding.The regional scrapbooking store is Archiver's, which has multiple suburban locations, including one at Mall of America. This place is just plain big. An alternate paper source is the Paper Source in Uptown Minneapolis. Paper Source has much less scrapbook paper than Archiver's, but they stock tons of small-patterned art paper and imported gift wrap. Sometimes this paper is more inclined to bubble, but the larger sheets are awfully useful in handling larger rooms.Unusually, I haven't been to a single quilting store; indeed, I've only dimly glimpsed one such store from an oblique angle, and I'm not entirely sure where that happened. The big surprise was the miniatures potential of Mall of America. As well as an Archiver's and a Dollar Tree, the third floor of this mega-whompus mall boasts Al's Farm Toys and more Minnesota-themed gift stores than... well, probably than the rest of the state combined. Dine at Kokomo's Island Cafe and order a Volcano: these come with pipecleaner animals in the stirring sticks.Much less surprising was the Ax Man in St. Paul. They always have weird stuff that can be made into other stuff. I resisted the Barbie-sized pharmacy bottles but bought a lot of "stuff" that has potential as parts for furniture.OutstateYou can go to a lot of antique stores in the Cannon River Valley of southeastern Minnesota -- and if you collect vintage tin litho houses or the plastic furniture of the same era, you should. The two or three largest dealers in Renwal, Marx, and similar furniture seem to have moved their booths to different antique malls, and I didn't take trouble over tracking them down. But we counted eight tin litho houses in a single antique mall, and it wasn't the largest in the region.For dollhouse miniatures, go straight to Stillwater, where you'll visit Kmitsch Girls. This looks like a doll store, but there's a small miniatures section in back. It was the front of the store that interested us more when we visited, though. Right in the doorway was a mint-in-box Greenleaf kit for... wait for it!... a playscale (1:6 or Barbie-sized) house. Since we don't have room for it, it may still be there, and don't think I'm not making soft cooing noises of longing over that one. There are also kits for 1:6 Greenleaf furniture.Gift stores and Christmas ornament stores are thick upon the ground in Stillwater. Since I was feeling woozy, we limited ourselves to Seasons Tique, based on its 20-year track record and particularly lively window display. I bought a half-scale baby grand piano in shiny black for just $3.99 and the ornament had no nasty hanger loop to unscrew and patch. There were three or four other piano options in approximately 1:24. A different person might have preferred the pink poodle taking a bubble bath.
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