Complicated....

 

Castle Construction... 

As I am Sure you know, Dear Readers, I Love my Castle, even though it is not much more than half finished! I spend a great deal of time pondering the challenging parts that hinder completion, and one of the longest pondered is the steps to the Castle entrance. Ancient Castle builders did not want it to be easy to enter, (it was a fortress, after all!) so they made the steps narrow and steep, and sometimes just used a ladder that could be pulled inside from above. The entrance was rarely on the first floor (ground floor to you foreigners) but usually at the second floor level (you folks not from the USA would call this the first floor), and while it might have a fancier elegant door frame, there was no grand entrance the way later palaces would have. This is the model my Castle has for it's entrance, and I built the basic door and steps a long long time ago! But the steps have never been attached and fall down all the time. And the fact that they stick out on the outside of the Tower with no base to sit on makes them vulnerable to damage if they are not attached strongly enough to the main structure. The method of that strong attachment is the challenging part!

Here you can see the beginnings of the process of

 trying to design a sturdy stair-base unit

 to attach to the side of the Tower.

I had started on this way back in the Spring before I hurt my arm....

and I am finally getting back to work on it!

 

The idea is to build a framework attached to a separate narrow base

 which the stairs sit upon, and the framework screws into the Tower walls. 

 

 

This also creates a nice box in the bottom right corner

 that can house the electrical outlets for this part of the castle.

So far, the pieces you can see are temporary just to help get an idea of space.

 

And because this is squeezed into a really tight corner in my workroom,

 I decided I would need to turn the whole Tower so I could get better access.

 

As you can see, this side of the Tower has been left unpainted....

all the wiring needs to travel down this wall to the electrical box.

And all the windows still need their trims... 

and the stairs need to be finally constructed!

Here you can see the basic parts. 

The stairs are a glued together unit but not attached.

The landing outside the main door has been there 

(slightly uneven) for ages.

I am adding the base strip and the tall wall on the right

 which will form a "buttress" to the Tower.

Here I am testing sturdier vertical frame sections

 which will screw into the wall from inside the stables.

Figuring out which piece attaches to what

 and in what order is part of the complications!

I want this "extension" on the side of the Castle to be very sturdy!

 

 Here you can see I have cut part of the outer wall to the stairs.

This will all be "stonework" and arches over the entry to the Stables.

I have also cut the "door panel" for the "Electrical box" 

which will be hidden in the right corner.

There will be Hinges!

But that will be later.

First we need to actually construct this frame work.

 

It starts with drilling the screw-holes for the vertical post attachment,

after very very careful measurement (and testing again and again)

from the underside of the new narrow base plate.

 The screws need to be countersunk because they will sit under the base.

Here you can see I am screwing the pieces one at a time

 and testing the fit at the Castle wall to make sure

 it sits square and flush with the wall. 

(The wall is uneven in places!)

At this stage I am screwing together without glue.

Meanwhile I had marked where the vertical frame sits along the wall 

(The flash is too bright to see the pencil well)

This is so I could drill the holes for the attachment

 from the outside so they are positioned correctly.

Here you can see from the inside of the Stables 

where the screw holes have been countersunk.

This will be filled and repainted after the construction is complete.

Because I drilled first from the outside,

 I could be sure the holes are located exactly right.

 

But before I get carried away, Dear Readers,

 and start screwing this together,

 I need to assess the rest of the "buttress structure!

It rises on the right corner to above the door level,

 and needs to be able to "channel a whole lot 

of electrical wires down to the wires box!

 

As you can see from this shot, the "landing" by the door

 doesn't even go as far as the decorative framework.

 This will need to be extended.

And there will need to be another wall....

Here I am trying to hold the test wall in place

 and photograph at the same time!

The wires have room to channel through this buttress

 down to the outlet strip (still not shown).

 

Here I have screwed this wall in place (I will add glue later).

I have also extended the landing.... 

it needs one more piece glued in to reach the wall.

Here I am testing the look of the buttress... 

it will have a steeply slanted roof

 the better to hide all those wires!

And then I needed to test the screws for the vertical framework.... 

that go in from inside the Stable...

(Unbelievably challenging to reach in there with the screwdriver!)

The diagonal row of three screws at the front

 will go into the stairs themselves... later!

All that work, and this section is now screwed in place (temporarily!).

I gave it a good hefting test and it is very sturdy! Yay!

 

Still a long way to go, Dear Readers,

but, Oh my goodness it's progress at last

with this Complicated Castle Construction!

Little Progress....

 

Trims, Blossoms & Borders....

Well, Dear Readers, I really have not got a lot to show you this week, but I have been chipping away at the usual myriad projects. The Gypsy Wagon bed chamber doors, for instance, needed the trims for the door on the side facing the main compartment. I dug around and found the piece of trim I had already stained quite a while ago (years!) just waiting to be cut, fitted and glued in place! You can see above, that the side pieces need to have their undersides cut away where they fit over the hinges (oh, look at all those glorious hinges!) so they can glue securely to the wall surface. It does not matter that this covers the screws on one side... if the doors ever need to be removed (why would that ever happen?) they can be unscrewed from the other side instead.

It did not take very long to carve away the undersides for the hinges. 

It took only slightly longer to fit the sections for the arched top.

I know my sections are not even or "properly" mitered....

It is easier for me to just measure cut and trim....

(and who but me is going to notice this uneven spacing?)

 

The doors still need their "air holes" drilled... 

but I left that for another day while the glue was drying.

As for the Rhododendron Blossom assembly line...

I am still not getting it very organized!

I have made quite a few "clusters", 

and even more blossoms...

 

I am making the blossoms in batches of ten. 

It seems an ideal amount for a cluster

 (I counted when the bush was blooming!)

And I have made seventeen "batches" so far.... 

and started the eighteenth!

 

Here the stamen clusters are glued and the blossoms cut and shaped.

Next they get painted and assembled.

 

But I have only glued together ten batches into "clusters".

And I am way, way behind on making the leaves. 

I really think I need to make a batch of leaves for every cluster.

This is totally different from the process of making the lilacs!

I need to get the leaf making and attaching figured out!

But still, seventeen blossom clusters is not too bad

 for a couple of months occasional work! 

And I know it has been ages, Dear Readers,

 since I showed you any progress on the petit-point carpet...

 

Here you can see I have made quite a bit of progress stitching the outer borders. 

(I think you have to look back to February to see the last update!)

 

It is very slow going!

But you can see, Dear Readers,

 there is a Little Progress

 in some of my many projects!

Gypsy Wagon Details....

 

And More Rhododendron Blossoms...

I don't Know about you, Dear Readers, but Time has been playing tricks on me lately! It seems like only yesterday that I had painted the inside of the Gypsy Wagon Barn addition and got side-tracked with the sleeping nook with the rabbits and roses. I had several unfinished parts of the Barn that needed to be completed once the paint was dry, and I worked on them the very next day. That was almost two weeks ago! But before I show you those details, I wanted to remind you of who lives in this little traveling barn; the goats of course! They are still waiting for me to add the straw bedding and some hay to munch on. The nanny's name is "Jingles", and her kid is "Jester". (Thank you, Birgit for sending him many (but who's counting....) years ago!) The parts of the Barn that I worked on were the chicken coop doors, and the "pannier" cages. 

The chicken coop boxes needed to have a mesh screen added to the openings.

I dug in my supplies and found some already "prepared" scraps

 from way back when I was working on the Tree House windows!

They were already painted and the rectangular scraps

 were exactly the right size once cut in half!

 

 All I had to do was apply glue and let it dry!

Here they have all been glued. 

Once they were dry I decided it needed

 an extra "frame" on the inside for strength.

I decided cardboard would do the trick and cut the openings.

I painted them before cutting them all the way apart.

And glued them to the inside of the windows.

As for the "pannier" cages....

 I forgot to take any progress pictures of the attachment process! 

(It was difficult and fidgety!)

These "cages" had been constructed ages ago...

 and they have been  falling off every time the wagon is moved... 

it is a miracle that they are intact!

The "problem" that slowed my completion 

 was that the holes for the bars at the bottom

 needed to be made larger.

 And the drill doesn't fit in close enough to reach all the holes!

The ones at the edge by the walls couldn't be enlarged.

And I had to align one bar at a time into it's hole....

they kept popping back out!

 Tweezers helped me to push them in... 

their alignment was not exact in the first place

 so they needed to be bent a little....

Bit by bit I got them in the holes... 

but then I needed to get glue in there too!

If you look carefully at the first picture

 you can see a line of glue along the base...

applied with a toothpick!

Whew!

And there were two of them to do!

It took a lot of patience and persistence!

But I got them attached!

And the little "doors" still work perfectly!

And yes, somewhere, the bunnies who will live in them are hiding...

And as for the Rhododendron blossoms, Dear Readers,

 I have been working on them "intermittently".

I have not been able to make a good "sequence rhythm"

 to the construction process,

 in part because I am not happy with

 my methods of joining the florets to the stem!

I am trying to get the minimum length

 of the floret stem needed to attach it,

 and not add too much bulk to the cluster

 where it joins the stem.

Here you can see how they get very "thick" as a bunch.

The problem is exacerbated by the addition of the leaves... 

which need to spiral out right below the blossom cluster.

Here are the first three clusters grouped together

 the way they will be on the shrub...

 they will be densely packed together.

But in this picture you can't really see the ugly mess

 that is the stems attachment below the blossoms.

And at the moment I am Way behind on making the leaves....

 which need at least 8- 10 leaves per blossom cluster.

Here are some of the still not assembled blossoms....

And I am not sure whether I should use

 regular paper rather than card stock for the leaves....

Decisions... decisions...!

The one thing I am sure about, Dear Readers,

 is that I think the blossoms look wonderful in the cluster!

So even though Time is getting away from me, 

You can see I got a tiny bit done on the Gypsy Wagon

 and the Rhododendron blossoms!