A very Merry Mid Summer (or Mid Winter) to you :)

I feel I have been a long time away and there are many reasons for that. Probably the most interesting, has been the making of the lighthouse – not least that it has overtaken the Makery to to the point that it is next to impossible for me to make anything else.

The lighthouse making was on my leap list in May and my reason for making a lighthouse at all was that I have some Granny Square stories awaiting illustration. Also, that it is always good to have a project to ponder and plan about during the long times when actual making is not possible. And I planned to cobble something together with cardboard and paper mache and perhaps that would have resulted in something spectacular or perhaps it would have been a disaster. Either way it would have been a lot a cheaper and I suspect a lot quicker than the kit I found on sale and was lured into to buying by a special offer and the sudden conviction that it would much simpler than always inventing the wheel. The kit, in case you are tempted, is the New England Lighthouse Kit by Real Good Toys and I bought it from a UK dolls House seller. I’ve seen a few looking great on pinterest and if you have some experience and expertise in such things, you will probably find it manageable but, I would suggest, it it not the most ideal project for the absolute beginner of the fain hearted.

My father, who is a design engineer and very wise, always says that whatever you do, you learn something – even if it’s just not to do it again. I have learned, as a life long re-inventor of wheels, not to buy a kit again.

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The kit seemed fairly straightforward. Paint all the pieces that were not to be glued, stick the body of the house together with masking tape, glue the grooves, position the floors fold it round and Bob’s your uncle! It suggested this is easier with two people so I enlisted a reluctant Mr RH, followed every instruction to the exact letter. And everything kept falling to pieces and nothing would stick – largely because the floors just didn’t fit into the grooves. In the end, after washing out all the glue twice, son  # 3, who is a builder and has lots of carpentry experience glued the grooves, whacked the floors in with a hammer and nailed them for me and set it to dry with a bungee strap.

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Unfortunately, he went to the extreme of abandoning the instructions to the point that the walls ended up in the wrong order and the hole for the stairs was at the front…but no matter.

I decided on the only place the stairs could now go and, with considerable difficultly in the confined space, I cut (and sanded) a new hole for the stairs and made a piece the right size to fill the hole in the front and glued it in and filled it and sanded and painted it and re-painted it. And every stage had to wait to dry and it all took forever and eventually it started to look sort of ok.

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Since then I have been using (a LOT) of super glue. In the pictures above, the top is balanced to give an impression of what it will look like in the end. I continue to tell myself that it will all come right in the end and that it’s going to be amazing once it’s finished but in the meantime, it is a challenge. Hereafter, I shall be sticking to sewing and wool…

I hope that you are having more luck with whatever you are making.

Janine @ Rainbow Hare