Of course that does not mean I am not still making and selling kits of the 48 unique buildings that I have designed in previous years. But I did take a break from designing and testing new buildings. I do know that in 2019 I will designing new building kits in a larger size and that my focus will be on selling them as patterns that people can cut for themselves. The machines such as the Silhouette and Cricut are not capable of cutting the Micro Tiny Village buildings. So when/if I design more of that size I will still only be offering them as pre-cut kits.
I am not sure if taking a break in 2018 was only to do with the loss of the detail vision in my eye sight, although that is certainly a big part of it. Or if was to do with a temporary feeling of burnout. It does take several months of design and testing before a new release happens. It was not from lack of ideas for new buildings to make, every year I see hundreds of inspirational examples of old buildings that would be great for a Tiny Village showing up in photographs taken by travelers or in old photos from historic archive collections that get scanned and released online.
But there are other things going on as well. Transitions in where and how I will be living is the big one. I had started renovation a small older motorhome but then found something even better, a tiny, lightweight, vintage fiberglass travel trailer. It was in bad condition when I purchased it, a fixer upper, but it was lightweight which is what is I needed for my 4 cylinder car. Renovating it to make it suit my needs has been coming along very slowly but somewhat steadily for the last 18 months. Slowly because my back is lousy, a lot of days nothing gets done but on none of the days does a lot get done. A familiar tale to an aging population :) If I could put in some of those old high energy weeks I used to have in my 30s it would be done in about 4 more intense labor work weeks.
So here is a photo of the newly painted little red caboose that I tow behind my little red engine. It does have a popup roof section so I can stand fully upright inside of it. I will post some photos of the inside when I get it completed.
As to my eye sight, my right eye is fairly stable, some minor improvement this last 6 months , but to see anything up close I have to move my head like my cross eyed Siamese cat does turning it back and forth to get a view of it from outside of the center of my focal point. Even then the vision of the object is distorted. My left eye is very slowly getting worse, it too has some blurring in the central focal point and some distortion with wavy lines. My eyes working together do some cancellation of the appearance of wavy lines but that does not change the blurry area in the central focal points. I can see to drive just fine, distance vision is not an issue other than the wavy lines, watching TV or working on the computer is not all that bad, I can't read paperback books with small print but I can read E-book versions on my tablet and I can read the newspapers. It is seeing small details up close that is the issue. For instance I can't tell if the dashed lines the machine cuts to create the bends for the wall of the Tiny Village buildings are cut in a straight line. Sometimes the windows and door and the little pieces for the dormers and chimney also look crooked. My friend says they are just fine, that they are cut nice and straight, but unfortunately they will never again look that way to me. I can't see clearly to make a small intricate cut with craft knife or scalpel blade. In terms of the quality of my life this truly is a small problem. It only limits me in a very small way except for when I want to make very small things and then it becomes a bigger problem. I have done all that can be done treatment wise, it can't be fixed with any currently available surgeries, medications or with corrective lenses. So I will adapt what I make and how I make it and that way I still get to be creative.
