Summer Hours!

Coffee in the Chicago skyline mug, "Walking In the Air" by George Winston on iTunes. The kiln load yesterday came out... interesting. I learned something new--or maybe I already knew it and forgot it (I am running into that more and more as I age). What I learned? You should pre-fire your ceramic fiber shelves. They have organic binders in them that can react in interesting ways with, say, Bullseye irid glass. I use a clear irid base on the majority of my Morceaux de Verre pieces and fire it irid side down (so irid against the kiln shelf). In Wednesday's firing the irid changed color all around the edge and pretty much disappeared in the middle (where there was no oxygen) of every piece. Definitely a chemical reaction, and one I have never seen before. I occasionally get a different reaction between Bullseye irid and Thinfire (the ceramic shelf paper distributed by Bullseye), but that's more of a bubbling up, gassing off kind of a reaction which ends up with the underside being pitted. I have never seen a true color change before, and it was impressive!

Today is the official First Day of Summer for us. True, real summer doesn't start for another month, but we here in the south are advanced. Or maybe it's just a by-product of global warming. In any case, Jessie "graduated" from Pre-K yesterday (and got a certificate and everything) and has no school today (summer camp starts Tuesday). Today is also the first day of "summer hours" at CNN/Turner so Dave gets to come home at 3:00 every Friday starting today. What a nice beginning to an already three-day weekend! I might do something commensurate and, oh, take the late afternoon off too! What a radical concept--summer hours in the studio and weekends and holidays off! I'll have to tweak the firing schedule this morning to see if I can swing it and still make my deadlines.

And it's official: I am going to be a regular contributing author to Glass Patterns Magazine starting in the fall issue. Lest ye think it's all about stained glass, do a search of their archives on "fused" and you will see that they have been publishing how-to articles on kiln-formed glass projects since the mid eighties. Now off to ship, fire, and Mom a playdate.