Highcroft Castle - Week Seventeen Part One

I'm not sure whether this post should be called "week sixteen and a half" or "week seventeen part one" as most of what I've done so far this week is to finish off things I started last week. In the kitchen I've added a wooden rail bearing hooks from which to hang the ladles and knives I made from polymer clay last week. I've also arranged the various pots, jars, plates (etc) around the kitchen, securing them in place with Tacky Wax. On the trestle table by the door are a range of dirty plates, cups and cooking bowls waiting to be cleaned in the wash tub. The shelves on the left hand wall have been filled with an assortment of items in pottery and wood. I've left some empty spaces as some of the things that belong on the shelf will be either in use or in need of washing before they go back on the shelf. I've added the mice around the garbage barrel and a few on the main table. One, on the counter next to the barrel, is in a spot of bother as a ginger cat has caught his tail!

If you study the photo, you should see four pieces of pottery with a brown glaze: a kettle hanging over the fireplace, a jug on the main table and two pots on the shelves to the left. These four items made it all the way from Ireland to Australia intact. As soon as I received them I dropped three of them on the very hard tiled floor. The pieces scattered for metres, not helped by the cats who thought they were great fun to skitter about. Eventually, I managed to gather up most of the pieces. The brown pots on the shelves had each lost a handle. The tall two handled jug on the next to top shelf had it's handle broken into two pieces, but a little 5min Araldite fixed this beautifully. The other pot is supposed to have three handles, but after over an hour searching for pieces, I only had part of the handle it lost. If you were to turn this pot around you would find a rather ugly patch of broken pottery, but positioned as it is, the scar is unnoticable. The other item to be smashed was the jug on the table. This was in at least a dozen pieces and again it was 5min Araldite to the rescue. Unless you look closely the cracks are almost invisible (unless you turn the jug around to look at the other side of it where more glaze shipped away). Overall, I was very lucky that they went back together so well.

In the Treasury, I've assembled the weapons for the weapon rack and added them . This is the last 'big' task for the treasury completed. Now I just have to arrange the crowns, jewels and other valuables on the shelves (and perhaps make some stands for the crowns), fix the gate in place and perhaps add a rug to the floor. Oh yes, and cover the white melamine ceiling with something more suitable.

As you can see in the adjacent photo, the two different ribbons I ordered as possible table runners have arrived. One is wider than I thought, the other narrower. I think after spending so many hours looking at different ribbons and measurements my mind had gone numb when I finally placed the order. Now all I have to do is decide which one to actually use. And should I have them running the length of the table as in the photo, or should I have a number of shorter lengths running the width of the table instead?