Born to shop

Today I spent several lovely hours at Miniatura, one of the UK's biggest dollshouse and miniatures fairs.  It has a really nice range of traders and craftspeople, from the expensive elite down to the pile-em-high-sell-it-cheap. If you ever visit the UK, try to time your visit to coincide with one of their two shows each year, held at the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham.  It is accessible by public transport, and some years I have made the trip by train.  But this year I was spoiled as DH drove me up, and dozed patiently in the car park while I shopped.  He came inside to join me for a nice lunch, then went back out to wait until I was done.  What a great hubbie!  He's even stopped asking me how much I spent, although that is the result of 20 years of training so don't despair if you haven't got to that stage yet with your DH.

I enjoyed seeing all the marvelous things on sale, particularly the European traders from France, The Netherlands etc.  I was mainly looking for 1/24th scale accessories for the Fairfield, but as usual it was 1/12th scale which predominated.  There was a small amount of 1:24, but 1:48 seems to be picking up speed here in the UK and I think there was actually more of that scale than of 1:24 this year.

I work in all scales, so I did rather well finding things for some of my other houses as well.  I found some good things for my Willowcrest quilting and knitting shop, but I will blog those on the Willowcrest blog along with a few strays purchased for other houses.

I also want to say 'Welcome' to the new followers that have joined us.  Although you are coming in towards the end of the project, you can start right back at the beginning and follow the journey from cardboard box full of plywood right through to the furnished house.  (You don't have to read it all, you can just look at the pictures...  :)  )

I know what you really want to see is what I bought, so here you are:

• The knitted afghan, teddy bear pillow, fairy doll, and teddy bear are for the little girl's room. 
• The silk cushions are hopefully going to look nice on the kitchen window seat, which is also the destination for the two liquor bottles. The pillows were only .50p so hardly worth making my own.
• The bird feeding table is for the garden and I am planning to improve on the basic kit.
• The knitting bag will probably go in the living room.

The tiny fairy doll and teddy are so cute.  The teddy is actually a very small 1:12th scale bear, but I think he is small enough to be a large 1:24th scale bear.  They are both from Sally Reader Miniatures who had lots of cute toys in both scales.

The very reasonably priced kits for the knitting bag and the bird feeding table, and I think also the knitted afghan, are from Model Village Miniatures.  I used several of their excellent and cheap kits in my house, for example some of the boy's room furniture.  A previous commenter noted that they didn't seem to have a website.  I checked with them today, and they said they do mail order but don't have a website as they 'don't do computers'.  They are willing to mail abroad and have a mail order catalogue, so here are their contact details and Sally Reader Miniatures.

A very nice day and I will enjoy putting things into the house.  I probably won't get time to make up the kits for a while, as work is extremely busy and I am trying to hit some deadlines before we go off on our big holiday to New England in October.

On that topic - can any American readers recommend dollshouse shops I should visit in New England?  We are doing the usual circuit around Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mass., and Rhode Island and we are in a hire car so have some flexibility on where we go.