Friday is Such a Final Day

Coffee in the Pike Place Coffee mug, "Walking In the Air" from the Snowman by George Winston on iTunes. The week before Christmas comes to an end. Two more orders to get out, odds and sods still left to make, and vacation has already begun--at least for most of the other members of my household. Dave's sister Jan was supposed to come for the weekend and arrive today, but she was flying in from the Midwest and they were due for ice storms today so Air Tran suggested she fly a day early--at no additional charge. Wheee. She got in last night and will attend J's winter assembly at school with us today. Then the J is off until some time in January... right about when I am heading to the Atlanta's Mart for the show there I think. Oh it looms.

But there is no panic, only Christmas joy. Lots and lots and LOTS of Christmas joy... I wonder if Dave put spiked eggnog in my coffee this morning, I am feeling just a bit too relaxed and happy. Today is the last day of open studio and it's a long session--double the usual length and with double the number of people I wanted to have at any one time. It will be fun, and jolly, and other things that end in "olly", of that I'm sure.

Sample pieces of two of Bullseye's new reactive glasses--reactive ice and reactive cloud opal--arrived the day before yesterday and I have already run a test strip for each of them with some of my current reactive glasses--including a small bit of the old dense white I had on hand. As I expected, they do not react to French vanilla, nor do they react to the dense white either as I had thought they might. I didn't fire against the full range of the reactives I have on hand, but of the ones I did fire I was surprised to find they don't react to the 0305 pink either (as French vanilla does).

The reactions I got from the new white were more subtle than they were from the new clear (reactive ice). That is one stunning piece of glass! It looks at first pass just like the 1101 clear--I'll need to remember to check today to see if I can tell the difference at a closer look (like I can between the 1401 clear and the 1101 clear). If not it's going to be fun keeping them separate. Anyway, the jade green and the Egyptian blue really popped against the clear with a solid black line of reaction between the colored and clear glasses. Another interesting point with the new clear--something you don't notice with the other reactive glasses unless you use a base of, say, 1116 turquoise with French vanilla pieces on top (something I have never done)--is that everywhere the glasses touch there is a reaction so from the underside the piece looks like clear and black. When you flip it over it's clear and all the other opal colors. In reacent years I have moved away from production series using reactive glass, but this new clear looks like it's going to make it into the regular rotation in at least frit and maybe more. Wonder when they'll have it out in irid sheets?

Time to get to the studio. I'll daydream about the summer camp plans and BE Con later when I have more free time (kilncasting this year--wonder if I can manage the trip out?).