The Hungarican Chick is still kickin'

Yeah. I'm alive. My poor blog, which has been going strong for so long, has been criminally neglected. I'm so focused on my Author stuff, and Feffie's Cottage, I tend to forget that I have this wonderful place where so much of my life and experiences have been shared for so long. (Feffie's Cottage INSTA and Feffie's Cottage ETSY)

My readers have followed me from my infertility through my unexpected pregnancy, to the birth of y beautiful son. Through the loss of 45 pounds (and the subsequent re-gaining of it). Through a tough stage in my marriage, where I experienced infidelity, to the ups and downs of my Regency life. My costuming posts are still my most popular.

I have not given up on the Hungarican Chick. I'm still here, Hungarican-chicking around.

So let's catch up.

I don't have chickens anymore. They brought rats. So that was not okay. Although there was a great plus side to having chickens and that was my rooster, who crowed at all hours of the night, and that in turn affected the ratings of the vacation rental next door, so there was that. But I miss my kippies and their fresh eggs. A lot.

Six years old. Taking his first ski lessons
at Timberline Lodge. Stop growing,
little man.

Alex is now SIX YEARS OLD. Can you believe that? I can't. Every day, I look for the secret rewind button hidden on his little body somewhere, so I can have my baby back again. He's in Kindergarten, and he's using five dollar words--with their own unique pronunciations like: Lidderly, and Use-a-liss. And the best one was last week, he said they were learning the Peasant of Egpyts (the Pledge of Allegiance).

On Valentine's Day, my dog Simon was killed by one of the vacation renter's malamute. He was partially eviscerated and it was devastating.

Hubby is having the hardest time dealing with this loss. This was his dog through and through. We are puppy hunting. Turns out Jack Russell Terriers, particularly shorties, are pretty hard to find around Oregon.

Minatures-wise, progress is slow, but it is happening on my McKinley re-structure & remodel.  I've been working on building my Feffie's Cottage business both on Facebook and on Etsy. Right now my big project is a 'Witchly/Wizardly Workshop Kit, which has a variety of elements, pictured below. The element in progress right now are tiny mortars and pestles, which I have been working on with my new miniature lathe. So here's a little pictorial of stuff:

So my little living room area is heading towards completion. This stage is before I put the flooring in.

Installing the flooring was fun. 

One of the kit prototypes. I made it pretty quickly and pulled the upholstery too tight. That is real leather, something like .5oz weight, which was super-fine. I'll get it better next time. Gotta try it a few times to get it right.

I soldered this little rack to hang pots, pans, herbs, and cured meats from. Kitchen has been coming along slowly as well. 

I made a little iron fence and gate for the front. Still another work in progress. I will be starting on the exterior pretty soon. As soon as I finish converting the victorian roof to the hip roof. I have the right tools now (a 4" table saw, yes, really.)

This is the .5" oz leather. A-frickin'-mazing. Look how prettily it tufts! I wish I hadn't cut it so small or pulle dit so tight, because look how adorable that is.

This is a tiny tub I made. At present it it still bottomless. This was after the first application of the patina chemical.

This is after several chemical applications.

A settee for the parlour.

Miss Huxley, giving it a test.

This is the 'stained glass' window for Miss Huxley's 'witching room'. It will replace the window that's in that room at present. I made this with #6 plastic from a take-out clamshell box and a few coloured sharpies. It shrank down nicely, but it did not shrink completely evenly. So it's not perfectly round. But oh well. It'll do.

The witching room in progress. I drew the rough placement of the new window. The other one will be boarded up and bricked over like it never existed. I made some built-ins for this room. 

Experimenting with copper and solder. Just sold this on etsy. All the linens are hand-stitched.

Some of the Witchly Workshop Kit elements. Most of these are my personal ones for Miss Huxley's supplies.  Jars of eyeballs are a witchly necessity.

A snapshot of what we've got so far. A skull in glass; a geode (real), some bones, a crystal wand, a magic book, an orbiculum (or crystal ball), a jar of eyeballs. There are already more things to be added to this image. 

I had to add this image of the little chess set I got for the price of shipping alone ($2) from Wish. Too fecking cute. It's in the Huxley House library.

These are the additional books and the bottle of poison for the Witchly Kit. There's one more book that I haven't shown yet. Next... the Mortar and Pestle. I will only be selling 4 of these kits.

 I'm still drawing, of course. But since I'm no longer working an office job, my Office Specials are a thing of the past. But the occasion comes of for me to draw. Inktober was fun. I did that.
These are my two favourite from this year.

This is a time-witch, stealing your time. She is inspired by my beloved friend Maryanne Piro, an artist from New England, who did witches and halloween like nobody else. I have not been able to reach her for the past couple of years, so I've been missing her. 

My whale. I think he's cute. He needs to be remade in detail, I think.

I have not really been doing anything with the Oregon Regency Society for a long time. After having heard a lot of nasty things being said about me, I simply got tired of it. It wasn't fun anymore. So I passed the responsibility onto some people who had been critical of my efforts. I was asked recently to take it back, and honestly, I'm not sure I'm 100% ready for that workload again. I've been approaching it as baby steps, but even small amounts of effort seem daunting to me right now. I don't even feel compelled to sew, which is pretty telling.

I miss my girlfriends from this group tho. Like crazy. And have missed them. However, I've found a crew to hang with up here on the mountain, and they've been like an injection of life for me, and have helped keep me from diving into a terrible depression. We call ourselves the Mount Hood Coffee Coven because we can be found pretty reliably in the mornings at the local coffee house (Coffeehouse 26) cackling like a bunch of hens, playing ukulele and just generally loving being around one another on a given weekday morning. It's been a lifeline for me. And I love these women like my sisters.

This is our logo. Yes. We have a logo. And we have matching coffee cups. Because.

Yes, I'm still K-drama obsessed. I watch them rather regularly, probably not quite as avidly as I did last year, but they're still a big part of my life. I have found another favourite actor, his name is So Ji-Sub and he's fucking beautiful and I'm going to stalk him like the 48-year-old chubby mom that I am. Isn't he just noms?

This is So Ji-Sub. He is my next husband.
He is beautiful.

So that's my update. Let's hope it's not an 'annual' one. LOL. Here's a picture of a hedgehog mom carrying her little baby. Because hedgehogs. Please bring your attention to the baby's feet in particular. No reason except... look at the feets!

My She-shed cottage is done (mostly) -- and it's time to play with minis again

I can feel my tank filling these days. Sitting at my desk, exacto-knife in one hand, a ruler in the other. Korean drama streaming on my Surface. I have been able to take down all my paraphernalia from my days as PixieDust Miniatures and to refamiliarize myself with the houses and miniatures I'd devoted so much love and time towards.  One in particular, an old, falling-apart McKinley (Greenleaf's wall-hanging dollhouse), has been one I've wanted to work on literally for decades. It is now hanging in its dilapidated state on my she-shed wall, pieces missing, some of the ply delaminating, but still holding itself together enough that I can work on it.

Back in 2002, I moved to Oregon and with me came my stuff. During that time, I built a tiny custom kitchen for the McKinley house, using the kitchen I built for the Beacon Hill I sold a while ago, as the inspiration. Greenleaf dollhouses, in my view, are really the best dollhouse kits out there. The company has, since I believe at least the 70s, been producing superiorly designed houses. Although the materials aren't quite as clean-cut as other companies' houses, the designs themselves are aesthetically superior in every way.  Mansard roofs with curves, witches' walks, gingerbread, character oozing from every model. 

My very first dollhouse project was a Greenleaf (at least, officially). As a kid, I played with an old seventies style MDF house until it mysteriously vanished. But my first built house was the Glencroft. And it remains amongst my favourites of all the Dollhouses in the line and on the market. It, and another kit are in their boxes in my new storage area, still waiting to be assembled again. 

It took me one and a half nights, late to assemble the house. I finished it for a few weeks after that, and ended up selling it to someone for their niece's birthday. But the love for Greenleaf took off after that, and I assembled and sold the Harrison, the Beacon Hill, and a score of the little ones. I have yet to build a Garfield, although I did have a built one in my possession for a few years. They're huge, the queen-anne style houses. With gables as far as the eye can see.

With Greenleaf, what you do sacrifice for the elegant design, is space. Greenleaf houses have small rooms. And over the years, I've learned that the only way to conquer that problem well, is to apply the built-in. I have since, been a builder of furniture, a carpenter in mini, if you will. And the kitchens have always been my favourite place to design.

First built-ins for a Beacon Hill 

Small kitchens require extra consideration

That McKinley and its custom cabinets took a thrashing being stored in the shed. Squirrels had literally moved in, and had set up a nest in it made of moss and chewed up foam padding. The ply became brittle in spots and parts of the house literally crumbled away. I had purchased the McKinley during a time when the house was discontinued from the Greenleaf line. I got it pre-assembled from a dollhouse shop in Vancouver, Washington in 2002. So as you can imagine, crossing the nation TWICE, and then being stored in an attic with unabated humidity and swings of heat, and then the squatting squirrels, it's a miracle it's still in one piece, (somewhat).

This is what it looks like now.

This is what it's supposed to look like.

Yes. It's missing a lot of bits and pieces, but that's no worry. I will simply roll with what I've got. And I've already got an idea in mind where Im going with it. And I will post progress as I go along.

The first thing I did was pitch the room-eating peripherals. The cabinet in the 'bathroom' and the wasted space for the bedroom's stairway area. I will remove the fireplace, and the stairway, and replace them with streamlined, smaller, better options.

I began, however, by doing my best to restore the kitchen cabinets I'd made back in '03. I repainted, I refinished and glued, trying to save the little pastoral paintings I'd made along the cabinet tops and on the door of the broom closet. I also started building a farmer's sink in the bay window, and I will be customizing windows for the house, with little stained glass transom windows. I will try to document each step as I begin restoring this dollhouse.

So day one, we begin with the kitchen. I've ordered some mini-Moroccan tile for the floor, and am waiting for those to arrive to begin the process of finishing the kitchen. Once I glue in those cabinets, that is. They're just placed there for now. I will finish the kitchen's windows first too.

The exterior, I will be making into the style of a masonry rowhouse in a city. This house was designed as a Victorian row-house. Which is fine, and adorable. I'm actually glad the porch is gone, and I can really have some fun playing with the exterior's textures. I will be doing that as I go along. The roofs on the towers are going away, to be replaced with something more along the lines of a curved conical spire.

The kitchen of the McKinley

Feffie's Cottage will, in the unknown future, offer kits for built-ins, designed to fit specific models of the Greenleaf line. And I have been experimenting.

The kitchen in the McKinely is almost exactly 8" x 8", with the addition of the bay window. It's not a lot of space to work with if you're using pre-manufactured furniture or kits not designed for the space.

I made two cabinets for this kitchen. One focused on cooking with a utility closet with a curved door, and the other designed for baking, with a flour dispenser built-into it and a collection of 16 spice drawers. The cabinets took a beating and even restored they look pretty rough, but they also look cool.

I made the cabinets from basswood mostly. With some balsa for interior pieces. The stove is bricked in real terracotta bricks and the wall tiled in glass. The stove door and top are made of basswood (the door in Fimo) and then painted with iron paint, which to my delight, rusted a little during the long storage. The 'soapstone' counters are made with FIMO/Sculpey. I made the butcher blocks from oak strips, which I laminated together and then cut. NOT EASY. But they came out great, and they display my fancy knife set so well.

The sink is polymer clay. I just placed them in their space for now, until I can fix the missing wall on the bay window, and finish the bay windows, and finally glue the thing back into place. Then, it's time to do flooring, which should be on its way from New England as we speak. They will be in white and pale green to match the pastoral scenes painted on the cabinet tops. Note Mount Hood amongst the rolling pastures. :)

So, that's my first project. It will be the seed for a few of Feffie's Cottage products, including the custom kits and the butcher blocks, of which I will be selling a limited number. Keep checking in.

I know I know, I'm a flake. Sue me. Now let's talk sleeve drafting. And then some.

Yes, I'm alive. Barely. LOL. I'm just trying to recover from a case of bronchitis, nearly pneumonia, which leveled me for this week. I'm on prednisone and antibiotics and slowly feeling something akin to normal tonight.

What brought me out from underneath my damp rock was a question on my most infamous post (the Benefits of a Bib-Front), which still garners countless hits and Pinterest pins nearly eight years after posting it. Always a plus right? Sort of makes me nostalgic for costuming whenever I see the hit counts. After just checking, seems like the old post on stays on the old ORS blog page is also still often-visited. It feels good to know that my efforts are still found useful. I hope to return to these things soon one day. Once my little cottage* is finished and I can breathe a bit. *I'll expound on that in a moment.

The reason for my post is that someone posted a good question. How do I draft sleeves to a Regency bodice?  I tried to answer with just words and it wasn't really working for me trying to explain it without some visual aid. So I uploaded this quick video, very spartan so that it can explain how I do it when I'm cobbling together my various drafted gowns.

If I were smart, I would have made ONE muslin and just used it repeatedly, but I tend to lose my muslins, or I just draft boldly and stupidly onto the fabric itself and then roll with whatever happens. So my advice is, do it in a muslin until it works, and then keep it for future projects. You can add wedges and extensions as you please to whatever basic sleeve pattern you create using my 'technique'.



So that is it. Fairly simple. Center all your measurements on the shoulder mark (top of the sleeve) and it should be a nicely fitted, free-moving sleeve. Add any arc *over* the top of the sleeve, not like how I penciled it, by the way. Seam allowance gives you a little give as needed as well. Wedging in fullness at the top will give you more pouf if that's your cup of tea.

Now, let's talk about THE COTTAGE and its evolution.

Now, everybody who has historically followed this blog knows that I'm a head-case. LOL. I have been stricken with an anxiety disorder that manifested itself on top of a lifelong battle with chronic depression and dysthymia. It has been a huge fucking struggle. I have never bothered to hide it or sugarcoat it, and I will talk about it everywhere I possibly can, because I will not pretend like it's something that I am ashamed of or should be worried might annoy someone to discuss. It is a real problem, and something I have had to take a great deal of pride in accepting. A control freak (who is in essence displaying overt signs of anxiety by desiring to control everything that gives them anxiety) does not like to concede that they have no control over the levels of fear and worry in their own heads.

So I have retreated. I've struggled with a balance of medications, trying to find some measure of normality. But it is a continued battle. I'll have long phases of seemingly normal days and then suddenly have daily panic attacks, some resulting in losing consciousness and striking a great deal of fear in both my husband and sadly, my son, who now has comforting and helping his mother as part of his routine, something no kid should have to do. I found him lying underneath my head once, because I had fallen onto the floor, and he didn't want my head to hit, so he squirmed underneath. This makes me so very sad. But it is my reality now. It has hampered everything I do. And one of the things that once gave me comfort and respite from it, is no longer part of my life. Which is probably a good thing, in the long run, but it means I do not get to see people I became very much attached to over the years.

Oh well.

However, I refuse to go down without fighting. And I don't like the idea that this imbalance of brain chemicals should somehow make me useless. I am a highly creative person, and one that needs many outlets for it, or I will go mad. And my husband knows this, and from the previous post last spring, you can see he cared enough to help me find a place to express it. And he built me my cottage.

It has been slow progress but in the last month, it has sprung forward quite a bit. From being painted up like a lady, to gaining an electrical system with plenty of outlets and light cans, to now being insulated and wall-boarded. The mudding and taping will soon be underway at the beginning of the year, and that will leave only washing up the messy floor, painting, and furnishing it with all my crapola.

Then Feffie's Cottage will be born in earnest. And it will be where I will be vomiting up my creative energy in droves, I hope. From busting out more novels under my Miranda Mayer nom-de-plume to creating more hats and costumes, to returning to miniatures and dollhouses and dollhouse kits, to drawing and making prints and postcards, to fashioning stuffed animals and plushies, to dolls to whatever floats my god damned boat.  And I will sell my shit. Because being an anxious ass doesn't mean that I can't contribute to the household. I will just do it on my terms, without an overarching presence who will set off my anxiety and make me crazy.

I hope you folks will be with me on this journey. However it may end up. You've been reading this blog for god... years now, and I'm still here. Scrabbling along. You were with me from the first office specials, the struggle for pregnancy, the surprise child, the costumes, the drama, the snark. So here I am. Hoping to pick myself up and get back to my Hungarican ways. :) Maybe I'll even post a new recipe or something? I don't want to get ahead of myself. These are no longer the days when I posted my updates on the clock of my job. But maybe this can become part of my job as owner of Feffie's Cottage. Maybe.

I'm still here. Really.

Yes. I’ve been silent for months. Well, in the blogiverse mostly. I’m rarely silent unless I’m sleeping. What have I been doing? Well… I’ve been writing books. I finished one and sent it off for editing. I’ve been working on a collaborative project with author Shéa MacLeod, which is in rewrites stage right now, and I am about two thirds through another novel. I’ve been pouring my creativity into my books. I have been given the unique gift of time; the first time since my little baby was born four years ago (Yes, he turned 4 last Thursday, I can hardly believe it). He has started preschool in earnest, which allows me nine hours a week to sit down at the local café (which is really like the town’s living room, it’s awesome), and to write freely. It’s been a while!

Playing with Friends Annie & baby Maxine

 So I am taking advantage of it. I have my crafty projects (and project-a-palooza) on hold for now. I have a desire to create pretty things with my hands, but I need to finish this novel and get these projects done before the end of the year so I have new releases for Comic-con in February. If you want to know more about these things, or more about the world of my writing, which is done separately from everything else under the nom-de-plume Miranda Mayer, please feel free to like my page on Facebook, or sign up for my newsletter from my website. I don’t email very often, only when I’m about to release something.

His first tournament.

School starts

 Other big news is I have stepped away from the group I founded, the Oregon Regency Society. I did it for a variety of reasons, but what it came down to was that there were constant issues with drama, unkind gossip being flung by people who were supposedly my friends, returned to me by people everyone respects and who were then called liars by said gossips. There was also a problem common to groups like these, and that is people with input but no actual action. There was the old problem of people who take on too much, and then cannot take responsibility for not following through, and who spew blame instead. Bottom line, it just wasn’t fun anymore. I’d been through this kind of thing once before, and I just didn’t have it in me to weather the drama to try and fix what had been poisoned. So I have cast it off the shore into the hands of others, and wish the best for it. As long as the people who have maligned and vilified me continue to be involved, I will not. I might try to play with friends again someday, and I already miss so many people, but for now, I need to just focus my energy on things that are fulfilling to me. Like my child, my creative outlets and well… me. My mental health needs to be important too.

Chilling behind my table at the Rose
City Comic Con. He's pretty deft
with the iPad.

 So I’m here, prepping for the holidays. My son’s paternal grandfather has been struggling with stage 4 cancer. My son has Bronchitis, and so does my husband, and as grandpa’s immune system is compromised by Chemotherapy, we cannot go to their home for Thanksgiving. It’s kind of sad, because my mother-in-law has been really having a rough time dealing with all of this, and to top it off, she has painful arthritis in her hip. I was going to go and help her cook the meal so she wouldn’t be miserable the whole day. But we can’t put Grandpa John in danger. So I will be cooking a small thanksgiving meal for the three of us here at home.

School time.

Waiting to go to class.

 Alex had his fourth birthday party on Saturday. He had a wonderful time, and Stephie made him the most beautiful Paw Patrol cake in history. He was so fixated on the cake, it was hilarious. It’s amazing to think that the child we never expected is now four years old. It’s crazy. It’s too fast! I wish there was a rewind button so I could go through it all again. Even the colic and the teething.

So the holidays approach. I imagine you all have plans for them. I’m excited about Christmas. More than ever since we had Alex, and this year, it’s the first year where he has as much anticipation as a child should have, and I’m excited to put the tree up with him, and to decorate the house. I intend to do it after Thanksgiving, come what may. The earlier the better. Considering how awful this year has been, we need some damned goodwill in this country. Even if there are battles to be fought still.

Class is over!

Feeding the gulls in Astoria.

 Oh! I found a kitten. So we now have another cat. She’s fecking cute. I might be a little allergic to her, but how do you tell your kid, sorry, no cat. So I’ll just manage with it. She’s a brat. So I appreciate that about her. Anyhoo, I will try to be better about snarking, crafting and journaling as I go. I won’t have any new costume posts for a while, I’m afraid. I don’t really have any desire to participate in events right now, so I don’t have any reason to sew new Regency things. But the lark may come where I will want to make a hat or whatever. So who knows? Maybe I’ll arrange a non-related event just so I can play with the people I want to play with. Time will tell.

New BFFs.

My girls started laying. Two were killed by raccoons. Hubby
shored up the enclosure, and my friend Molly gave me a couple
hens to replace my lost ones.

Halloween spookiness.

The kitten (Peppercorn), has claimed Simon as her
personal bed.

My little lion trick-or-treating homes for the first time.

Bratty McKatten

Everything Paw Patrol for his party

Kitty McAssface Von Kattenstein.

Taekwondo

The lovely cake by Just a Dash cakes (aka auntie Steph)

I’m off to forage for Thanksgiving ingredients and such, in spite of my sinus infection. See you on the flip side folks! I’ve missed this.