Melany Kahn of Festival of Miniatures

Hello, Melanie.

How are you? I'm so good, Laura.

I'm so happy to be with you.

I'm so excited to finally talk to you.

I have been amazed by what you've been able to accomplish.

And I always start with the question, did you like tiny things when you were little? Were you into miniatures? I mean, of all of your guests, has anybody ever said no?

Of course.

Yes, I think all miniaturists liked tiny things as a tiny person.

And I remember being little, little and always being attracted to miniature furniture.

My first love was Barbie.

I liked Barbies.

So I had a huge Barbie collection and I made elaborate stories with my Barbies.

And it was my first introduction probably to family storytelling narrative, you know, ken and barbie are in a fight you know

that was mine too i mean yeah that i built with like books and stuff in the floor of my room i mean it's such a magical magical time so you like the miniature thing you like so barbie small things did something like pull you back as an adult to make this to kick off this whole thing this is like pre-festival adventures like what what was it for you that just lit the spark well i

I think some of your listeners might relate to the fact that when you love miniatures, they seem to be everywhere.

Where you go traveling, you see you're in a thrift shop, you're in an antique store, and somehow you're just drawn to that miniature refrigerator in the corner filled with all the miniature food.

And nobody else in the store sees it, but you do.

And you just can't get away from them.

And you start realizing that they're very ubiquitous.

They're everywhere.

And when you're drawn to them, you find them everywhere.

So it makes, you know, going to the beach and finding little seashells and tiny glass bits and all those things very magical or going in the woods and seeing small fungi or building miniature fairy houses.

I never lost that desire to interact with tiny worlds, ever.

And as a grown-up, I rekindled it, essentially.

Did you get lucky and have people around you that were into it as well? Or did you get people into it?