Moody Monday

Coffee in the Los Angeles skyline mug, "Into the West" from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack performed by Annie Lenox on iTunes. The tropical depression formerly known as Hurricane Fay spread a cool rainy grey blanket over the weekend in Atlanta. This morning is still cool, still wet, still grey.

Jessie discovered the industrious spider's work on her way out the door this morning and I have not regretted more not having a good manual SLR camera. Digital auto-everything is great for capturing our fast lives, but it is lousy for focusing on the minute details of the bejeweled beauty of the spider's work. Time to dig out the old Olympus and polish it up? Probably not. Just the time-slowing effects of this weather.

The weekend was full of glass. I thought I would finally fire a fuse load on the new shelf in Bettina, but I was able to get everything into Bertha so Bettina was used only for slumping. One anticipated but lamented side effect of the new shelf in combination with Bettina's extra insulation--she's made for high-temp, long casting firings after all--is that cool down from a slump load in her takes even longer than cool down from a fuse load in Bertha. Timing is going to be tricky when I need to get a load a day out of each of them.

One of the pieces I fired this weekend was the first iteration of my idea for a Niche piece. With a postmark deadline of August 30 (Saturday) I'll barely have time for another iteration, but the design needs tweaking. The Beatles are whispering the words of wisdom on iTunes right now and saying "Let It Be", but I think my answer is to futz with it.