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Some prata house, eh?

My wonderfully supportive sister has just given her feedback on my interpretation of what will be the master plan of her brand spanking Indian dollhouse, called rather unassumingly, the Maharaja’s Palace.

I did the whole 3D imaging on a whim after reading her “Day 6” post. I sent her some JPEGs of what I did, and, according to her, blew her away.

Truth is, I didn’t read that much into her post before I set forth into Onion Dome Hell. She mentionedrequiring 10 rooms; a Durbar Hall, a Sheesh Mahal, 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, a library and a Grand Bath. After going through the post, I had in my mind 10 rooms; 4 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, one library, one living area, one Turkish bath, one Durian Hall, and one shish kebab. One building term we did agree on, though was calling the dome roof an onion. I think that’s as low as my sister will go with me in terms of “low-brow” humour.

My other sister has sworn off reading the Dollhouse Diaries because “she writes like she’s conducting a history lesson. I will go Zzzz…” Such sibling love, as my wife would say.

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By the way, if anyone is in the market for a custom-made dollhouse, let me know. If I get 2 orders or more, I’ll quit my job and go into it full-time for sure.

So my sister’s been going through this new phase in her life, and I inadvertently got pulled into it. It used to be collector’s handbags. Anything with a handle that can be got for under $200 on eBay and can hold no more than five $10 bills, a cellphone and a stick of gum, she’s got. But last week, after a housemate invited her to design the interior of a 1:12 scale 3-storey house, it has become her new obsession; dollhouses. It got so bad, she even started a blog. Okay, hang on. Make that two(!).

This new hobby of hers has taught me two things; one, that I am actually interested in the world of dollhouse and miniature making, and two, I have a passive-aggressive relationship with my sisters that, depending on the sister involved, can be very productive, or very unproductive.

I’ve been talking my eldest sister (the one who has this affliction for the 1:12 scale) through this whole dollhouse issue, and I have to be honest, I started out skeptical. Why would a lawyer suddenly be interested, no, passionately interested, in a frivolous activity such as making and decorating dollhouses? 2 days into our rather rude MSN debates, it slowly dawned on me that this may well be a transition from her bag phase, and looking at what came out of that bag phase, this one might be pretty serious, rather intellectually challenging, and potentially… profitable.

I decided amidst all the arguing about whose blog is funny and whose writing skills sucked, that I would help her out a bit with this new project she was dreaming up. Thinking about it now, I wonder if I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I did tell her if the end-product turns out to be anything near as justified as the enthusiasm, research and effort we’re going to put into it, I might just switch careers.

If you’re interested, her blog is at