Failure, Failure... Er, Learning Experience

From Sunday:
Coffee in the New York skyline mug, "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers covered by my spouse on Guitar Hero II in the background... I love the weekend. In addition to getting ready for the photo shoot next week I am also preparing work to have it shot by another photographer for marketing uses (postcard, web, wholesalecrafts.com, etc.). I hoped to have several new cloudstone pieces ready and I am being DENIED.

Part of the problem is that I am experimenting at the same time I am trying to produce. Friday I tried firing on a sheet of stainless steel on my shelf. Glass sticks badly to metal if it is not prepped so I sandblasted the steel, heated it in the kiln and applied a lot of kiln wash to it. Applying the kiln wash was a pain. the metal was initially too hot and the water in the kiln wash vaporized off and didn't seem to leave much of a residue behind. I started using the spray gun and airbrushing it on, but I went through propellant like corn through a force-fed duck. So I tried brushing it on, and I thought I had applied enough. Well, maybe I had applied enough, but much of it had run off the edge of the shelf or gone who knows where because the glass stuck to the metal in the firing. It wasn't stuck when I opened the kiln at the end, but it was sheared and shattered. Impressive.

Now it's Monday:
Coffee in the Washington D.C. mug (forever Barbara), "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen on iTunes. Today is soooo packed! I have left filing the annual sales tax report with the states of Illinois and Georgia until today--the final due date for Illinois. I have a commission to re-do (she needs teh darker color more in the middle of the piece to cover her wall outlets...) and 12 pieces to ship to the Art Institute. I must cut and fuse a full load of interim-stage projects and then cut some more. Hargrove, the exhibition services company for the Buyer's Market, has a Wednesday deadline for ordering booth services (electricity, display, carpeting, etc.) and I am thinking of changing my display AGAIN. (Hard walls, like I had in Chicago. They worked well.) Tomorrow is my appointment with my local photographer for shooting my work... Ack! Ack! Ack!

This is the week of the penultimate big push on the book. All the photography will be done, all the project re-dos will be done and re-written. (Speaking of which, the wall sconce has turned out surprisingly well!) All that will be left for me is writing the intro and acknowledgements and the copyediting. Of course I decided yesterday to redo a project not scheduled for re-do because I didn't have anything in PURPLE, and to use the red, yellow and green Cloudstone for the screen project instead of the soft apricot and cranberry. I know my editor is going to be apoplectic, but I am not writing a book by committee. They are my projects and I will decide what works best for my book. Period. Clearly I am still frosted by being told (twice!) what the review committee wants me to make and what's not acceptable (I can't find the reference right now, but I was told way back in the beginning that "barrettes" are so, not cool, and they don't want a barrette project in the book).

So now to work. Taxes first, I think.