The roof is almost done

I forgot to take pictures when I was working on it outdoors, so this photo doesn't really show much. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

The roof isn't exactly the way it's supposed to be because I didn't have room for a higher row of tiles below the top decorations.

In one of the instruction books, there was a little inset showing the roofs with boards below the top decorations, and over the top row of tiles. I wasn't quite sure what this little inset of instructions was for, but it worked for hiding the gap between my top row and the top decoration. I'll try to take photos of that tomorrow. I also was having problems getting some wood strips to stick to the tiles in the valleys of the roof, so today I added some black Fimo to make a flat surface for the strips to stick to. It made a flat platform for the strips, rather than having the strips sticking only to the ridges on the tiles. I'll try to photograph that tomorrow too. To harden the Fimo, I used my heat gun, and ran it up and down the rows of Fimo, heating up the clay and the tiles. I kept alternating the four sections where I added the Fimo, so the heat from the tiles would help to bake it, and it worked. Now the strips are stuck better than before, and it looks neater.

I am now working on painting the tiles a uniform shade of black, and they look much nicer.

Below is a photo I took before the grandchildren came, showing a closeup of how it looked a couple of weeks ago.

It's been very busy Lately

The grandchildren were here for a week and decided they wanted me to build a bunch of miniatures for them. Anyway, I'm still building things for them, and haven't had a chance to do any more work on the Ryokan.

I did get to JoAnn's today though, and bought a ton of interesting brocades which will be nice for pillows, futons and other things in the ryokan. I only get to JoAnn's once or twice a year, so I went wild and bought quarter yards of 30 different bolts of brocades and satins. It took about an hour to cut everything, because they use pinking shears for the brocades, and their pinking shears kept sticking. Luckily for the other customers, they put more girls on the cutting table! :-D

I also was looking at their fairy garden supplies, and saw quite a few things that will work nicely when I get a chance to landscape it. Most of their stuff was real moss and lichen though, so I'm wondering if that will withstand the freezing temperatures this winter, since I won't be able to bring it all home from the shop when we close up.

I'm anxious to get back to work on it, and sort of wish I hadn't been so generous when I promised to build all that furniture for the kids!