Reuben and Melanie explore the Eastern Cape

International travel - that gift and privilege that many of us have been unable to enjoy for 2 years due to the global pandemic. Despite having covid-19 at the beginning of February, a month later, still recovering from its effects, I was fortunate enough to travel to South Africa with my cousin to visit my elderly aunt and see my sister, another cousin and families again. In my hand luggage I carried 4 dolls. Reuben and Melanie, two of our Sasha family, came with all their Shweshwe clothes, though only one outfit each actually got photographed. I had intended dressing them in their Basuto and Xhosa outfits (which I made for the 2017 Sasha Celebration Weekend) while in the Eastern Cape. Joy and Kolisi (two of my Kruselings) came too. But only the Sasha dolls managed to get out and about with me for some photos on a couple of occasions. My energy levels for doll photography was vastly reduced as I recovered from the virus.

While in Cape Town, my cousin and I visited The Waterfront. One of the stalls in the big craft building featured slot together dolls houses made by a local small business. Ikhaya crafts make eco-friendly toys to promote play, I was interested to note that they had two ranges - what looked like a 1:12th scale range (for 7-13cm size dolls) and a Barbie doll size range. The Kruselings are between the two sizes, though possibly some of the Barbie furniture might have suited them, but I didn't have them with me at the time to try them for size. The dolls houses, their furniture and accessories were very well designed and nicely made (laser cut). 

Ikhaya crafts stand at The Waterfront

Ikhaya crafts stand showing some of the dolls house rooms and accessories for sale

Ikhaya crafts outfits for Barbie dolls

Barbie dolls wearing some Ikhaya crafts outfits

My aunt lives in the Eastern Cape Town of Makhanda/Makana (Grahamstown), so after spending two and half days with my sister, cousin and niece in the Karoo at a game reserve (where the warm, dry salty air helped my lungs) then a few days in Cape Town with my sister; my cousin and I flew to Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha), hired a car and drove to Makhanda to stay for several days. 

Makhanda nestles in the hills of the Eastern Cape

Grahamstown / Makhanda Cathedral in the heart of this Eastern Cape town

It was only on our last day there that I did some doll photography. The previous day I had visited the History Building of the Albany Museum as I had vivid memories of discovering its displays, which had included playthings from the past, as a child. Reuben and Melanie came in my bag as I had hoped to photograph them looking at the displays, but photography in the museum was forbidden, so I spent time reading the information and looking but not taking photos. 

The first room had a fascinating display about the last 200 years of the cultural influences on the area, showing the experiences of the indigenous populations and the European immigrants, including the 1820 settlers. During the apartheid era in the 1980s, when I had last visited the museum, the focus had very much been on upholding the legacy of the 1820 settlers and all they had done to build the town. This newer display was more balanced as it revealed additional perspectives on the evolution of the Eastern Cape meeting of peoples and cultures though it looked tired and some of the labelling was hard to read (it needs refreshing, but funds are limited). 

There was also a gallery about the character and story of Makhanda/Makana the Xhosa prophet (1780-1819), a gallery with some of the artefacts and furniture of local families (but far fewer toys and playthings than I remembered seeing in gallery above that space back in the 1980s), an Art gallery upstairs and a fascinating display about Rev James Arthur Calata (1895-1983) who had done much for musical education (he founded a choir and composed music for it) and was also the first black canon at Grahamstown Cathedral. 

As we were leaving Makhanda, Reuben and Melanie had a brief visit to the Monument, which was built to commemorate the 1820 settlers but is also the venue which hosts the famous National Arts Festival events each year. It contains theatres, an atrium, conference facilities and stands on the hill above Rhodes University and the Botanical Gardens. I remember the Monument when it was very new. 

The Monument above Makhanda

Entrance to the Monument

Inside the Monument:
"Nor wild Romance nor Pride allured me here:
Duty and Destiny with equal voice
Constrained my steps: I had no other choice...
Something for Africa to do or say." (Pringle)

Inside the Monument atrium

Commemorative plaque about Nelson Mandela's visit to the Monument in 1996

A replica of a cow given to Nelson Mandela when he visited the Monument in 1996.

The Monument's position provides fabulous views of the town below and this is what Reuben and Melanie saw.

Reuben and Melanie standing on the steps outside the Monument to gaze at the town below

It was quiet on the hill above Makhanda as Reuben and Melanie looked at the town below

Melanie and Reuben in their Shweshwe outfits on the steps beside the Monument above Makhanda

Reuben and Melanie above Makhanda

Our next destination was an AirBnB house on the banks of the Sunday's River. We arrived to enjoy the sunset on the river and I left the following morning for my flight to Cape Town. Melanie and Reuben explored the cactus garden at the back of the house, which had been dramatically lit in the evening and also looked wonderful in the morning light. I was able to photograph the nearly full moon, with its Southern Hemisphere face (much more symmetrical than its Northern Hemisphere face).

The cactus garden at dusk

Just after sunset on the Sunday's River

The cactus garden at night

Moonrise above the Sunday's River

The Sunday's river after sunrise

"Look Melanie, the river is so wide" said Reuben

"I wish we could go out on a boat" sighed Reuben to Melanie as they gazed at the Sunday's river

Sun rising over the Sunday's river

"Look at this amazing cactus Reuben, it is taller than us" exclaimed Melanie

"I cannot even see the top" said Melanie

"This one is more our height, like a cushion, but I wouldn't want to sit on it" said Reuben to Melanie

The top of the very tall cactus

Bird feeding on the cactus flowers in the morning

I took the doll sized Shakespeare Dream Coat I've been making as my contribution to the Susanna Lewis raffle doll prize for the 2022 Sasha Festival to work on while in South Africa, I did manage to do a bit of the embroidery while in SA though not a lot.

I bought some more Shweshwe fabric from my favourite little shop Mnandi Textiles in Observatory, Cape Town. The colours and patterns are such fun, maybe some of the doll family will gain more shweshwe outfits sometime soon, though only once my contribution for the Dolly Jolly raffle and the Shakespeare Dream Coat are complete.

Big and little house moving

Since returning from the SA adventure the dolls and us have had a hectic time because we moved house 2 weeks ago.  Not far, but everything still needed to be packed up and with the amount of stuff we'd accumulated after 18 years in one home (including the addition of 2 daughters, 3 dolls houses, lots of play dolls,  as well as my husband's hobby things) this was a mammoth task in less than a week.  Our former neighbour kindly allowed us to put the dolls houses in her spare bedroom so we didn't have to move them with everything else, but I made sure all the doll family came in our car rather than the large removal van.

Since the move we've been very busy unpacking boxes (we have approximately 2,000 beloved books), flooring the loft, putting up beds and finding places for things in our new home, so it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that we were finally able to go and collect the dolls houses and put them into their new positions.  The Triang has gone in my younger daughter's bedroom, so that her Christmas expanded Polly Pocket collection is able to make the most of it, Mrs Harvey's shop has gone into my elder daughter's bedroom and my unfinished Greenleaf Westville now lives on its special table in our bedroom.  As yet the 2 larger dolls houses are unfurnished, as we've got further decorating to do to the full size house so there is no point unpacking things only to put them away again soon afterwards.  But having the Westville in my bedroom is a constant gentle reminder that I started building that house about 21 years ago and it is about time I finished it!  However for the past couple of nights tiling the full sized bathroom has been my main focus and I'm rather tired tonight, so the Westville will have to wait a bit longer before I can give it my attention.

We've got the TV set up so haven't missed an episode of Dancing on Ice since it started 3 weeks ago, and nor have the play dolls!  What is more there is a new addition with skates to the play doll line up and he belongs to me. I'll keep you guessing though, as I haven't taken photos of him yet.

Welcome, and look forward to the weekend

I'm looking forward to this weekend because it will be:

a) A lot less hectic than last weekend, when we had 3 different events on one day and two the next!
b) My elder daughter and I are spending tomorrow afternoon making miniatures!

I'd so love to go to the Dollshouse Festival at Kensington tomorrow, but for one thing my current bank balance just won't allow such indulgence (train fare and entrance fee before even buying a mini), and secondly I can't justify buying more minis when I haven't made up some kits we bought at Miniatura about 18 months ago.  So we are devoting the afternoon (and possibly the evening as well) to making up kits, doing cut outs from recently purchased miniature magazines and generally giving Mrs Harvey's toy and cake shop a proper clean up in preparation for all those parents coming to buy Christmas toys for their children.  I plan to take lots of photos this weekend of work in progress and I'm looking forward to sharing them with everyone who follows this blog.

With that in mind, I'd like to welcome six more people (wow, I can't believe I've got 37 people following my doll writings):

Mary in Italy specialises in crochet (something I can sort of do as I made a baby blanket once, but am not very good at, as I prefer to knit).  She makes the most amazing crochet flowers - see http://not-only-flowers.blogspot.com/ and www.nonsolofiori.com

Lisette, who lives in the Netherlands, is already getting ready for Advent on her blog http://lisettesminiaturen.blogspot.com/. She, like me, has been passionate about dollshouses all her life.

Daisy, in Brazil, has great variety on her miniatures blog http://miniaturasdaisy.blogspot.com/ with lots of lovely 1/12th scale food, though she has several other blogs too.

Monica, like me, loves sewing, and has a collection of Sasha dolls http://maconstreetstudio.blogspot.com/.  She isn't afraid to give them a repaint to great effect.

Roz & Aidy of Lilyelf miniatures create wonderful individual dolls which you can see at http://lilyelf.blogspot.com/

NikNik lives in Russia and makes all sorts of interesting things including some incredible doll modelling http://niknikm.blogspot.com/. She is the mother of Victoria who has been following my blog for a little while.

Welcome everyone, I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy yours.

My doll display cabinet

With my Westville Greenleaf half-complete dollshouse currently in storage because we are trying to sell our house, I'm in the category of frustrated miniaturist - I can't do much in the way of miniature projects because most of my tools and materials are with the house, and we're trying to keep the human size house tidy for viewings. There are a few things we can do to complete the accessories in my daughter's toy and cake shop, but I can't do anything major.

So I'm showing you my collection of mini dolls and curiosities instead.

Some years ago I realised I needed the equivalent of a printers tray in order to display some of my mini treasures, but a printers tray would not hold many of the dolls because mostly the compartments for the old type letters are too small for miniature dolls. So I kept my eyes peeled around antique and charity shops, and managed to find a little cabinet (probably an old medicine cupboard). It had already been painted to look 'distressed' and has a stencil on the glass in the door. I'm not that keen on the paintwork, I was tempted to strip it down and either repaint or varnish it, but in the interests at the time of needing to give the dolls a home because they were packed in boxes, I decided that project would have to wait. The cabinet was mounted on the bedroom wall, and there it has hung ever since (apart from when we redecorated the room a couple of years ago).

It has three shelves and the dolls are arranged on these shelves. I'm going to concentrate on the residents of one shelf at a time over the next few postings. For the time being all you can see is the outside of the cabinet with a glimpse of the dolls as I realised on taking photos this evening that it will be better to do the photography during the day without needing the flash or having to worry about lamp shadows. My hand carved wooden dolls which featured in the previous post sit on the top shelf surrounded by various friends, but I think I shall start with the bottom shelf.

Handmade dolls, Heidi Ott dolls and smocking

When I was a teenager I was inspired by some tiny peg jointed dolls in a Museum in the town where my aunt still lives. Even though I didn't have the tools or the skills to make really good dolls, I started experimenting with twigs, small pieces of roughly carved wood, and pins. Eventually I succeeded in making a 1/12th scale wooden jointed doll that somehow satisfied me.

I can't recall how I managed to bore the holes through the main body of the doll for the arms and legs, it may have been with a hand drill (I wasn't brave enough to use an electric drill), but I know my woodcarving tools were pressed into service for the shaping of the bodies, and and glue for the feet. The joints were fixed with steel pins and solder so the doll is definitely not of a safe quality for child play (I did use flux for the solder, but cannot vouch for the joints), and I painted her carefully with gloss paint (which I wouldn't use now, as it gives an unnatural shine). But these were the best materials I had to hand at the time.

I was obsessed with creating hair that looked more natural than the traditional painted topknot, so painstakingly stitched different cotton threads into a small piece of material which I glued to her head. As you can see from the photo I even used different colours in her hair to make it more realistic. Then I had great fun making her white bloomers and miniature smocked dress, with the tiniest print material I could find. I was really proud of this dress, and more than 24 years later I'm still pleased with my teenage efforts.


I then made this little doll a younger brother. He has rather a spiky hairstyle, as I didn't want to glue his hair flatter, so he has the appearance of a rather cheeky, naughty little boy. I also sewed his clothes.
Their faces aren't very good - I was still a beginner at that time in painting detail, and some paint has flaked off the side of the girl's face. But they look happy.

These two dolls were my best efforts - although they gained parents and a baby sibling, none of those dolls were anything like as good as these two: the others were rather clunky in style and the joints didn't hold up so well, so I threw them away not so long ago, as they didn't stand the test of time.

About 2 1/2 years ago my elder daughter acquired three Heidi Ott dolls for her dollshouse which we built from a kit. I made clothes for all these dolls, as they had none. The boy wears a knitted sleeveless top over his shirt, and a pair of trousers, all of which I made, and the girl wears a smocked dress. I actually referred to the earlier smocked dress I had created all those years ago to remind myself of what looked effective, and of course wanted to improve as much as possible. All these clothes (even on the wooden dolls) are easy to remove or put on again - the earlier outfits have beads and loops for fastenings, the newer dress has miniature buttons with button holes stitched with blanket stitch. The third Heidi Ott doll is an adult - Mrs Harvey, but more about her in the future.



It is interesting to compare the newer dolls and clothes with the handmade dolls. I'm proud of the fact that I got the scale about right and that my wooden dolls have a unique character and charm of their own, even though they are very rough, and definitely cannot stand up to a child playing with them. I like the fine detail in the faces and hands of the Heidi Ott dolls, and their hair, but rather wish that they didn't look so hunched around the shoulder area with their new clothes on. Their bodies are fabric covered wire armature, and the padding is rather too much for their clothes to hang naturally off their shoulders. So the wooden dolls will go back in the doll display cabinet, whilst the Heidi Ott dolls will return to Harveys toy and cake shop (which I'll blog about soon) before my daughter discovers they have been involved in a photo shoot.

Close ups of inside the Triang House

I realised that the photos I posted of my earliest dollshouse are not very close up. They were taken over 25 years ago with a very simple camera and were the closest I could get without blurring the images. Now that I have a rather better, digital camera, I have tried experimenting with taking close up photos of some of the furniture in situ, though the photos still aren't great but do give some idea.

Bedroom with beds over quilted!

You will see from these photos that the layout of the bedroom has changed a bit. In the earlier photos, there were plenty of little inhabitants of the house, and they all needed beds. The Triang house is very cramped (it was one of my earliest desires to enlarge it, I dreamed of a staircase) and for a family this size, bunk beds were necessary. The earlier photo has reminded me that I actually made a simple bunk out of pieces of wood in my father's garage (where the house had been reassembled by my grandfather some years before), and I now realise why the two remaining beds have so many quilts - because I made quilts for all 3 bunk levels of the rather chunky bed which no longer survives.

In the bedroom, the two beds and the bureau came with the house when my grandparents brought it over, I assume they were the furniture that my mother owned. I adored the bureau as it is lined with red inside the top for the writing desk, and the drawers really come out and in. My sister once found a tiny white feather and we poked this in a bead for the inkstand, to fit the writing desk. The beds and bureau are nicely made of plywood. I bought the wardrobe in an antique shop in Bath during a visit to England in 1985, along with the little bedside table. The jug and bowl were made by fay of Cape Town, there is a similar green one in the sitting room. These items delighted me as a child. Also upstairs is the ancient lead bath, which as you will see from the photos is very scratched, revealing the lead.

The detail of the bath also made it special
to me despite the fact that lead isn't a safe material for a plaything.

In the sitting room are the original chairs that came with the house (re-covered by me), along with the fireplace and coal scuttle, which are made of metal (cast iron I think). These are truly lovely and detailed and I am so relieved we didn't lose them when we were small (though I notice the central bar of the fireplace is broken off), like we did the black plastic (but very elegant) grand piano that my grandparents brought over with a little lamp when the house was rebuilt. They also brought a family of 4 dolls, sadly long since lost. I subsequently bought lots of little plastic baby dolls with sweet faces and moving limbs from the local shop, I've still got these, but they are currently in storage, so I can't photograph them.

The fireplace and coal scuttle - if you can help identify the maker
of these, I'd be very pleased.

The red piano is the treasured replacement for the plastic grand, as my mother visited England without us in 1981 and brought back a collection of items for the dollshouse, including the new standard lamp and the wonderful piano with a lift up lid and smart little stool. The grandfather clock is actually a pencil sharpener cover, but is nicely to scale for this house and seemed to fit the other furniture in this room.

The red piano with the yellow plastic telephone,
and the green jug and bowl by fay.

My earliest dollshouse

My first dollshouse was actually shared with my sister, but somehow it was me who played with it more. It had in fact belonged to my mother when she was a little girl, and my grandfather took it to pieces and brought it overseas to us when I was about 4 years old. I can clearly remember watching him re-assemble it on the workbench in the garage, which had a convenient window overlooking the back garden, so I could tiptoe and peek in to see what my grandfather was doing. My grandparents had brought over some of the original furniture, and some new items for us, some of which inevitably got broken by small girls. My grandfather even took the trouble to run three lightbulbs on wires through the wood floors/ceilings to provide lights in the three rooms of this Triang house, the battery pack was hidden under the base of the house.

The house took a lot of knocks from two little girls and our friends, and after about 10 years of hard play, was sadly a bit worse for wear, even though very loved. So as a teenager, I did my best to restore it, which included giving it a new plywood roof, repapering and repainting. I didn't do a great job, but it was the best my existing skills could manage - I learned a lot in the process, and went on to build three simple dollshouses out of MDF which I sold, restored one that my cousin had played with, and built a smaller house as well which I also later sold.

Some years later when I had moved to the UK, I had the Triang house shipped back - so it travelled 12,000 miles altogether. It is now in my elder daughter's bedroom but is only occasionally played with now, as she has a larger house of her own. Maybe my little one will play with it soon.

The Triang house after I had repainted it. I wouldn't use gloss paint now, paint a horrible black line around the (original) flowers, nor would I use that large patterned wallpaper, but with supplies where the house was at the time very limited, I did the best I could with what was available. I made the little patchwork quilts for the beds - they really are separate squares sewn together.

I have not done anything else to the house since then - Triang houses in original condition are not worth millions, and this house shows its history of being loved and played with, which was the intention for Triang dolls houses.

This is the shell of one of the 3 houses I built to sell, when an older teenager. My dad's factory cut the main pieces to size from a larger sheet I bought, then I chizelled out all the windows and doors, because I didn't have a jigsaw. I did some woodworking classes after I made the dolls houses! I had fiddled around with bits of wood and tools in the garage for years, so had some basic skills.

Here is one of the houses, all painted up (I think this was the first one I made)

This is inside that house.

This is one of the other houses all painted up.

Inside that house