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What are you up to today? This week?


heidiiiii

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Well, I haven't been on the forum very much - but had to check in and see what's going on!  I know I've been gone too long when I have to re-enter my login information!  

I have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger for the last several months, after buying the Diminutive Details miniature business. Had a very successful Portland Miniature Show a few weeks ago and am still trying to get everything put away and sorted properly. Still learning the fine points of running my new laser cutter - which is very exciting! And since I don't have a van, or an SUV - just a little Buick - I am rethinking the display system. Must get things more consolidated, smaller packaging, easier setup, etc. Really looking forward to the next Seattle Miniature Show (March 2019) and I'm signing up for one in Boise Idaho (April 2019)!   My boss (with the trade / home shows) sent me a tentative schedule for the next six months and I had to respond that I will not be available for some of them. :) 

AND - we just met with a realtor this afternoon!  We are going to attempt to move again, heading for Nebraska.  I know, it sounds crazy to leave beautiful Washington (ocean, rivers, lakes, forests, mountains, mild climate) for the Midwest (hot, humid, tornadoes, hot, flat, dry, hot - no complaints about the snow as that part I will love)  - but that's where the kids are!  As our grandchildren get bigger, it is getting harder to get all of us together anymore. It was easier when they were all little. But since my grandbabies are my MOST FAVORITE miniatures - we will move if we can.  We have a different realtor this time, and after meeting with her this afternoon we are very favorably impressed!   And, for my business, it will be more centrally located for some of the bigger Miniature Shows.

My mother is still with us - 95 years old now. But her health is not improving (Stage 4 Kidney Disease) and she is rapidly regressing with dementia.  DH and I cannot leave the house together anymore - one has to stay with her. I think the move to NE will be good for her because more family will be nearby to help out. She has 2 sisters left (3 bothers gone) and while she still remembers her sisters, every once in awhile she asks me if they had any children, and if so, how many?   So sad to see her going downhill. She's always been my best friend, my confidante, my sounding board - and now I never even discussed with her the plans for my new business venture.  :(   

Well - supper's almost done - gotta run! 

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I’m sorry Jeannine, it’s so unfair and cruel fate when creative people can’t create. Like telling the sun not to shine. I hope these issues can get solved here if not there. 

Its almost Halloween, how about some ghost stories to entertain us all and take us away from our problems? 

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46 minutes ago, NellBell said:

Congrats CJ on your new business venture . Hopefully one day I'll see you at a show .

Thanks, Nell. So far I'm only doing shows in the Northwest - but hoping to expand before too long. By moving to NE we'll have more family available to "babysit" my mother. :) 

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Been away for a while, or just visiting quickly. Been a bit busy as I went as a dealer to the show in Stockholm last weekend and with regular work being a bit more hectic than usual....

I see that  I have a bit catching up to do :) , and look forward to Reading around. Meanwhile a question as I want to find a vase similar to this one but I just can't find it in searches so were wondering if it has a certain name or brand or....large.IMG_2014.JPG.235b3d9252b1ffa3aff95

 

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1 hour ago, Anna said:

I see that  I have a bit catching up to do :) , and look forward to Reading around. Meanwhile a question as I want to find a vase similar to this one but I just can't find it in searches so were wondering if it has a certain name or brand or...

.large.IMG_2014.JPG.235b3d9252b1ffa3aff95

 

Try Googling Delft tulip vase. Are you looking for a miniature or full size vase?

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Just now, KathieB said:

Try Googling Delft tulip vase. Are you looking for a miniature or full size vase?

Thank you Kathie, am looking for the mini version as I have signed up for a tulip making class in January so wanted something different to display those in. 

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5 minutes ago, Anna said:

Thank you Kathie, am looking for the mini version as I have signed up for a tulip making class in January so wanted something different to display those in. 

Hmmm. :hmm: I Googled miniature Delft tulip vase and got a lot of great pictures, but the smallest ones seem to be 16 cm/ 6 inches tall. 

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40 minutes ago, KathieB said:

Hmmm. :hmm: I Googled miniature Delft tulip vase and got a lot of great pictures, but the smallest ones seem to be 16 cm/ 6 inches tall. 

Me too, but the vase i have in the picture is a mini one as that is the picture for the work shop i am going to do in January. Thought at first it was a Reuter one but Nope, not the Limoge either so am going through pagrs and pages of vases on EBay..ä 

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Thanks to you all, it is a very hard when you just know you are on the slippery slope and I have nothing to fight back with.

Susie, yes please for the info.

My other choice is to fly to the Uk and try for the Nuffiield.

I did look at the Mayo for Canadians page today and that gave me some info. I guess the next step is to ring them but it is a little scary, so far from home.I am going to get more info though and I guess that is the start of a journey. .Waiting 18 months for just a consultation seems ridiculous for someone my age

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1 hour ago, Anna said:

Me too, but the vase i have in the picture is a mini one as that is the picture for the work shop i am going to do in January. Thought at first it was a Reuter one but Nope, not the Limoge either so am going through pagrs and pages of vases on EBay..ä 

Can you contact the person who will be teaching the workshop and ask where the one in the picture came from?

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1 hour ago, Thimble Hall said:

Waiting 18 months for just a consultation seems ridiculous for someone my age

This goes someplace beyond ridiculous, Jeannine. I hope you're able to sort out this challenge quickly.

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2 hours ago, KathieB said:

Can you contact the person who will be teaching the workshop and ask where the one in the picture came from?

I tried that but She got it as a gift from someone. 

I Will keep scouting as I have a vague memory of seeing something like this somewhere.... 

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22 hours ago, Thimble Hall said:

Thanks to you all, it is a very hard when you just know you are on the slippery slope and I have nothing to fight back with.

I did look at the Mayo for Canadians page today and that gave me some info. I guess the next step is to ring them but it is a little scary, so far from home.I am going to get more info though and I guess that is the start of a journey. .Waiting 18 months for just a consultation seems ridiculous for someone my age

Really sorry to hear this Jeannine.  Must be so incredibly frustrating for you!  When something is affecting quality of life like that they should put you into an emergency category.  I hope you find help soon!

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Thanks all. it is an odd situation. The specialists office  I have been referred to doesn't take phone calls, all contact is via e mail . I was sent a questionnaire to fill in and part of it was to describe how the problem is affecting me, I was honest and explained just how it was and I compared it to just a year ago. The waiting time to see the surgeon is said to be "up to 18 months". They then make their list accordingly, it is by need not by date so I am hopeful I will not have to wait the full time.  I have found there is a company here in Canada who will find a hospital and surgeon for someone waiting on a long list, it could be anywhere in Canada or the US. I have contacted them and am waiting to hear. I guess they get a fee for finding the spot . They claim to find someone within weeks...

I have my work table clear now and plan to try to move forward with something one little bit at a time, from my recliner to my desk chair as I can.

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I have my fingers crossed for you, Jeannine.  The hubs & I both had physicals within the past couple of weeks and he has the beginnings of a family hereditary ailment we have been preparing for, so he is about twenty-five or thirty years older than the other family members who had it.  We are also dealing with the fallout from one of the family members going off the rails.  Nothing is ever simple, is it?  I also recently learned the cardiologist who replaced my pacer has gone,about a month before the practice bothered to let me know...

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Wow. So much going on since I've been gone!  

I am in the final throws of my mother's move to the retirement home.  We did the physical move Oct.9- any free weekends and evenings since have been filled with clearing out her house, selling items online and working to UNPACK her stuff in the new apartment. Since moving she has had one medical emergency, but is feeling better and has said that she does like her new place.  This past weekend we did another big move: we rented a truck, loaded up all of the furniture that each of our families had laid claim to and then proceeded to drive to each of our houses and unload our treasures.  It was a long day!  We ended up at my oldest daughter's house to eat pizza and play games....well, the kids played games: Gamma and Gampa watched our cutie pie granddaughter, Junia! :clap:  Tonight my brother and nephew come to take out the last two pieces of furniture and the girls and I will load up the stuff to go to Goodwill and do a final cleaning.....and then we are DONE! :cucumber:  

…..ok, so we still have some items that need to go to my mom's place and some more unpacking to do for her....plus the messing around I have to do in order to get those family heirloom pieces to fit into my house.....so, whatever. :doh: LOL

Anywho- looking forward to FINALLY getting back to doing some minis!  This weekend is the Philadelphia Miniaturia, so after almost 3 months of ridiculous amounts of work while trying to recover from knee surgery....I am gonna treat myself to something special.  :D

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Holly, I am sorry to hear of your troubles too, you are indeed right nothing is ever simple. I have tried many times to try and decide which of the  countries I am familiar with has the best medical service. Here we pay a monthly fee  to the provincial care plan, it is mandatory and is based  on income but never very high, this means we never have to worry about hospital bills , treatment costs etc but we have long waiting lists..  In the UK one pays a coverall fee in your wage which covers everything from unemployment insurance to the medical. It is very thorough. The payments stop at 60 even if one doesn't retire but the coverage is for life My sister has several professionals coming daily to keep her at home, no charge for them , none for prescriptions for children or the over 60s,, none for  hospital care, wheelchairs, stair lifts. piped oxygen or bathroom remodeling, she has it all , all free and she is not low income, but absolutely no choice of Drs, you get a GP who is in your postal area. . Then the little I know about the US is different again. It would seem all have some benefits and some disappointments..In the UK I could go private and I could go to the same specialist  that I could get through the system but again long lists as every private patient bumps the list, at least  here  a Dr has to be private or regular but can't be both/

I should stop whining and be satisfied with what I have in life, I have been blessed, just not with a good back LOL.

I have 4 part built houses around me, I need to focus on one, a small one and get myself moving again.

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Hey, CJ, there's a lady in Belfair that says she knows you. Her name is Lynn and she has some beautiful, beautiful, beautiful dollhouses. I bought a Heritage from her thinking to give it away when it was finished, but I like it so much I think I'll keep it for myself. She was very nice and I hope she joins us here on the forum.

 

On 10/26/2018, 7:52:55, WyckedWood said:

I’m sorry Jeannine, it’s so unfair and cruel fate when creative people can’t create. Like telling the sun not to shine. I hope these issues can get solved here if not there. 

Its almost Halloween, how about some ghost stories to entertain us all and take us away from our problems? 

Ghost stories, huh? OK, tell me if I've posted this one before(I have lots of ghost stories):

 

 

 

  • 22 December, 2006
  • SOURCE: Flight International
  • BY: Guy Norris
  • Los Angeles

 

 

"I didn't keep a diary in 1993, so I will never know how close I came to witnessing the events that reportedly happened just a few miles away on 13 June that year. It was Sunday morning and I was at home in Orange County, California, while most of my Flight International colleagues were in Paris covering the air show.

What I, and the rest of the world, did not yet know was that Donald "Deke" Slayton, one of the original Mercury "Seven" astronauts and a true test pioneer of The Right Stuff fame, had just died at his home 2,225km (1,200nm) away in Houston, Texas. Slayton, who succumbed to a brain tumour, died at 03:22 local time, with his wife Bobbie and daughter Stacey at his bedside.

Although one of the select group picked to be the USA's first astronauts, Slayton was at first prevented from going into space by a heart problem, and it was not until he was cleared for flight in the 1970s that he finally made it into orbit as the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz project. Having celebrated his 51st birthday four months before the docking mission with the Soviet cosmonauts, he was then the oldest man to fly into space.

Back on Earth, Slayton later led the Shuttle approach and landing test programme before retiring from NASA in 1982. But retirement could not keep this ex-astronaut, Second World War bomber pilot and test pilot out of the air for long, and he developed an enthusiasm for the adrenalin-charged world of Formula One air racing. His chosen mount was a bright red, Art Williams-built 19ft (5.8m)-span monoplane dubbed "Stinger", with a 100hp (75kW) Continental 0-200 piston and the number "21" on the fuselage in black. Formerly flown to 18 US racing victories - including two national championships - by ace racer John Paul Jones, the Stinger was finally donated in the early 1990s by Slayton to an air racing museum in Nevada, never to fly again... or was it?

Orange County's John Wayne airport - at the centre of this strange tale - is tightly ringed by urban development and is one of the most noise-sensitive airfields anywhere in the world. Surrounded by a battery of 10 noise-monitoring stations (NMS), the airport's noise abatement office maintains a careful curfew that prevents any airliners from taking off before 07:00 Mondays to Saturdays, and 08:00 on Sundays. These same hours also mark the noise limitations for business and general aviation aircraft, which can operate for periods into the night as long as certain noise levels are not exceeded.

At 07:57 on 13 June 1993, while the curfew was still in place and commercial airliners were waiting impatiently for take-off clearance, a small red racing aircraft apparently took off, performed "various flight manoeuvres" according to reports, and immediately triggered the sensitive noise-monitoring systems into action.

NMS1, 0.75km from the runway localiser, recorded 90.4dBA, against a limit of 86.8dBA. NMS2, south of the departure path from runways 19 left and right, spiked at 90.9dBA (versus 86.9dBA) and NMS3, 1.3km away, registered 3.5dBA beyond the limit. The aircraft was then seen to continue in a slow climb to the west, outbound, and out of sight over the nearby Pacific.

Mystery aircraft

It is unclear whether air traffic control tried to make voice contact with the mystery aircraft, but what is known is that several witnesses reported the noisy, high-speed fixed-propeller aircraft to the airport's Noise Abatement Office. All reports, presumably linking the clearly visible "21" identifier with the unusual lines of the F1 racer, identified it as the US Federal Aviation Administration-registered N21X.

A notice of violation of the airport's General Aviation Noise Ordnances Section 2-1-30 was sent by certified mail on 28 June 1993 to the Houston address of the aircraft's registered owner, Donald Slayton. Here it was picked up by Slayton's astonished widow, who read: "As an initial violation, this letter is intended as a warning, to seek your voluntary compliance with the Noise Ordinance - absent any additional violation, no further referral of this matter will be made."

Bobbie Slayton told the FAA that not only had her husband died about five and a half hours (including local time differences between Texas and California) before the alleged incident, but that N21X was, at the time, stored in a museum several hundred miles away. Edward Maloney, who received the aircraft into his museum collection from Slayton all those years ago, says: "We've never flown it at all since Deke gave it to us. He was the last one ever to fly it." Contrary to other reports, Maloney says the engine has never been removed from the aircraft which, in the mid-1990s, was relocated to his Planes Of Fame museum in Chino, California, where it resides to this day.

Although Maloney believes the ghost flight incident is "someone having pipedreams", there appears to be more than the usual circumstantial evidence often attributed to paranormal occurrences. Kay Bender, executive director of the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum in Sparta, Wisconsin - close to the farm where Slayton was born in 1924 - provided Flight International with a copy of the violation notice and says: "We have never questioned its authenticity." Although a few enquiries about the incident crop up from time to time, Bender says most visitors are interested in the stories about Slayton's proven lifetime achievements in space and in the air.

Beyond that, JWA's Noise Abatement Office changed its record-keeping process in the late 1990s and enquiries to the control tower revealed that, in common with most FAA sites, the strips recording movements from and to the airport are stored for only six months. So, like so many other apparent sightings and unusual events, Slayton's reported final flight remains a tantalising enigma.

Unusual timing

But if it was a prank, and someone risked the ire of the FAA to fake Slayton's aircraft, the timing was "highly unusual", says Loyd Auerbach, the San Francisco-based director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations. "Surely, the best time to pull something like this would have been while Slayton was still alive. At the time we know that only Bobbie, their daughter and the doctor knew he was dead." The Formula One type aircraft is also highly unusual at John Wayne, where most of the resident high-performance sports aircraft are well known and easily recognised."

 
 



 

 
 

 

 

 

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Kelly, I bought my Beacon Hill and what I call the Big Porch Mystery House from Lynn.  I notice from the google map you posted that your new land lot is not too far from her place.

I am just starting to get back working on the McKinley.  Last of our lighting arrived in the mail today.

Earlier this month, I did take a short trip to London with husband.  Daughter and two grandsons met us there from Germany.  Husband and one grandson attended the Seahawks football game at Wembley Stadium.  Disappointed that Windsor Castle was closed to tourists (Princess Eugenia's wedding).  Husband and I did go to V&A Museum of Childhood to see the dollhouses (and toys).  We went in the morning and it was busy with groups of children.  Also, reflections make it difficult to take good pictures of the dollhouses.

Came home with souvenir that will go in the McKinley -- a pen that makes a most suitable mannequin for Olive Oyl.  I would have loved to bring these food chains back to the states:  Pret Manger, Leon and Zizzi (pizza).   

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Ghost stories.

Many years ago I had just moved into a new area where I knew no-one. I attended the local church with my sons  on the first Sunday. During the ministers sermon, my small son then about 5 years old kept nudging me and pointing. I of course kept shushing him. When the service finished and as I was leaving ,the minister came to say hello to me.  We exchanged a few words then he  asked if he could speak to my son, I of course said yes. He told my son he had seen him trying to get my attention and mentioned him pointing. He asked why. My son explained that the lady who was dusting should sit down while the minister was speaking and she was rude. The minister asked my son what she looked like and he answered, she was real old and thin in a long dress with a white scarf and a white hat, she had a cloth in her hand and a flower. He asked my other sons what they had seen and they said they had not seen anything..

The minister then offered us tea in his home in the manse where he could better  introduce us to his family.  While his children were playing with mine , he showed me some pictures and printed articles, some quite old. They were about the church cleaner from  more than two centuries back. She had died in the church while working. There were many accounts of people who had claimed to see her cleaning  or fixing the flowers in the church during worship. There was a sketch of a very old thin lady wearing a dark long dress,  an apron  and  she was wearing a white cotton bonnet and had a wide collar on her gown.. Many of the more recent sightings were during WW2 when the church was badly damaged but kept open despite holes in the roof and a lot of debris.

Now I never believed in ghosts but neither I nor the minister could come up with a logical reason for what my son had seen. We decided not to tell  him about  the lady and he never saw her again, but he remembered the story . He mentioned seeing her many years later when he was a grown man and when  I confessed the rest of the story  he laughed and said he had figured out he had seen a ghost but didn't want to scare me.

Believe it or not, this is a true story and I have kept an open mind.

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