"Bowling Night"

"Bowling Night." For my dad. His Monday night team just won the league championship for this past year, but I didn't know that at the time or I'd have him wearing his new lapel pin in this scene!

In case you're wondering, we chose to leave the tiny, less-than-half-inch-tall figures (at this scale a half an inch is a six-foot—approximately two meters—tall person!) without faces or hairdos, feeling that at this size it would look either garish or invisible. At least with my micro skills.

I can't possibly list all the design elements without boring you, but almost every single thing you see is hand crafted. I'm most proud of the things that were most insanely difficult, of course—the drums, constructed as close to how real ones are made as possible, with tiny drumsticks that are actually lacquered sewing thread because nothing else looked realistic in this scale; the pool table, topped off by a long "stained glass" hanging lamp with itty-bitty fluorescent bulbs; the quilting rack, which swivels just as a real one would to allow the seated quilter to get close to the section she is working on; the bowling alley's screen which through some clever design tricks almost looks as if it's lit up to show the bowlers' scores; the sweet acoustic guitar my niece is playing, which is finished quite beautifully on both sides and with care, can really slide in and out of her arms; and of course, all the little carved-wood figures, deeply involved in their activities, which required my magnifying reading glasses AND a 7x magnifying glass to see what I was doing as I carved all their minuscule arms and legs.

Much harder than expected. Little did we know how tricky my daughter's sketches would be to bring to life.

Very rewarding, especially when we gave them away.