A ship is safe in a harbour but that is not what ships are for…

(Proverb)

Likewise, fabrics are safe in drawers, boxes, baskets. Yarn is safe in bags under the bed…Wood and paper and a miscellany of miniature projects and accessories are happy enough here, there and everywhere, obscuring every surface of the Makery…

Something must be done!

And perhaps I have finally found a solution. And perhaps not. Time will tell.

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A long time ago, I saw one of the sons of Vita Sackville West speaking, on Youtube, of Virginia Woolf. He says:

She once said to me, “Nothing has really happened until it has been described”, and she meant described in words. “Therefore,” she said, “Write a lot of letters to your family and friends. Keep a diary,” she said. “Don’t let a day pass without recording it whether anything interesting has happened or not. Something interesting happens every day,” she said.

I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly that something interesting does happen every day. I couldn’t fail more abjectly to record it. Despite many attempts, I don’t think I’ve ever kept a diary for so long as a week!

Alas, I am more like the geese that come by on occasion. They arrive with enormous enthusiasm and a lot of noise and have a wonderful time on the pond for a day or two. Then, without any obvious rhyme or reason (but with just as much noise), they fly away to explore somewhere else.

Some of you may recall that my blog used to be called ‘Rainbow Hare Quilts’. Then after obsessively sewing and quilting for a few years, I dropped the ‘Quilts’ and ‘Rainbow Hare’ became more of a yarn blog. I learned to crochet, I knitted lace and colour work and knitted flat and ‘in the round’ and took breaks for making cloth dolls and creatures, fabric illustrations, the odd story, paper mache, miniature projects…Once I take into account family, gardening, day work and all the endless farrago of things I don’t blog about, I’m not surprised that I sometimes feel time to create some kind of life’s work is running against me.

This is not a million miles away from something I sometimes do already. I have a book (that was meant to be a bullet journal) where I make working plans for projects I have already decided to make or record ideas for projects with deadlines and write down/draw patterns as I go if I’m making them up trial and error style etc.

In fact, since looking through it to make this post, I wonder if the new book will be very different.

But I like the fact that it encourages this approach for any passing idea we might feel a sudden inspiration or enthusiasm for because that removes the necessity to tailor a project to fit a deadline or materials to hand and it means that a lack of time for making things needn’t result in all these potential projects being forgotten. Quite often (despite the book above) I come across a piece of fabric or a scrap of paper with a plan for a quilt or doll or I notice something I’ve pinned on pinterest and remember I was intending to make a certain thing but then I became overrun with general life and forgot all about it.

So I’m hoping a ‘Scanner Day Book’ could be an efficient way of both selecting projects for actually making and getting started on them without having to go through all the planning again. If nothing more I will endeavour to work through the new book sequentially and keep up with recording the contents better!

So far, I have only read Refuse to Choose up to the first mention of a ‘Scanner Day Book’ so there might be more involved than I am appreciating at the moment and I think a possible downside could be that making the book might be a distraction from making ‘real’ things but I’m going to give it a try and see it goes.

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Here is the new book and the first page…

I came by all these dolls unexpectedly and was suddenly in possession of them without any plan for their use so I thought this would be an opportunity to try out the ‘Scanner Day Book’ exercise.

Last week I saw a dolls house with some furniture and dolls for sale locally on Ebay. The starting bid was £40 but I assumed there would be a higher reserve and/or lots of people would bid at the last minute. Anyway, I bid £40 without any realistic expectation of winning and planning to give more consideration to whether I would really want to buy something like this now or wait a few years.

These are pictures from the original listing.

I’ve been thinking it would be nice to do up a dolls house for my grandaughter (18 months), two grandchildren expected in June and any future grandchildren to play with but, given the time before that will happen, I was in no rush. And I am also in the middle of several miniature projects, which I haven’t blogged much about, and I thought some of the furniture would come in useful for those (I think it is mostly unsuitable for young children to play with) but I am still very much in the constructions stages so, again, I was in no rush.

When I won with my opening bid, I was very surprised. When I unpacked everything, I was amazed! The dolls house is huge and the photos really don’t do the collection of furniture and accessories justice (and didn’t include a variety of extras the seller threw in). I really think this really is a miniaturist’s equivalent of winning the lottery! When I went to collect it all, I did check with the seller that she was definitely happy to let it go but she said she was wanting to have a clear out and she insisted she just wanted someone else to have the enjoyment of it, which was extraordinarily generous, and I know we will enjoy it for years to come. I will decorate the house and put in some child-friendly furniture and people and I’m sure I can find things to do with the furniture and accessories that are less child-friendly.

But there are too many dolls for the house, even if they are laid by until all the children are old enough for them, and I think it would be a terrible shame to leave them packed away, gathering dust after coming by them so fortuitously.

The Day Book exercise has given me a few ideas to be pondering and, maybe one day, some of these dolls will turn up here in posts of their own :)

I wish you a joyful week!

Janine @ Rainbow Hare