A Post of Links!

The week winds to a close. The following is for Christie:

Coffee in the blah, blah, blah, blah.... To much to do, too little time, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Voila! There's my post! ;-)

There IS too much to do, there may NOT be enough time, but such is life and I am very glad for it. Coffee WAS a mocha at Kavarna. Tomorrow is the first day of the Johnathon Schmuck glass roll-up workshop hosted through Glass Inspirations and co-located at Siyeh Glass. Tomorrow is also Day 2 of Opaline-a-Palooza, Day 1 of the East Lake Farmer's Market (where Siyeh Glass will have a table every Saturday for the summer), and (in the evening) the Waldorf School of Atlanta's auction. Wheeee!

It is also a stupendously beautiful Friday. I am going to celebrate by taking J to get her hair cut this afternoon--mother-daughter time is a GOOD thing.

Part of what made the day so beautiful for me was reading Ellen Abbott's birthday post on her blog. Happy 60th Ellen Artist Woman Amazing Being!!!

Is It Monday Again Already?

I wait for the slabs I fused yesterday to cool enough to cut so I can get them into the pick-up kiln for this afternoon's roll-ups. We're out of coffee so it's truly a dreary wait. Over the weekend I finished the summer camp brochure, fused and slumped three orders, and did three roll-ups (for the first time since January) with Lee. Today I stare down the barrel of three ad copy layouts--Profitable Glass for my writing for them, Creative Loafing print AND Creative Loafing on-line. I also have to get my order into Bullseye today as soon as Judy finishes the inventory, ship two orders and do three more roll-ups. It's gonna be a full one.

Materials inventory. It is SUCH a pain to manage! I am determined to get the POS system finished for the supplies and classes part of the studio so I can slap barcode labels (not the expensive ones I bought for the department store, just internally generated ones) on everything and use a scanner to track inventory. Of course technology is only as good/useful as your persistence and dedication in using it, but I am highly motivated by the sheer volume of glass I now have. I used to have about a third of Bullseye's glass colors in sheet, 90% of the transparent frit in 5 lb jars and 5% in 1 lb jars, 90% of the opal frit in 1 lb jars and 5% in 5 lb jars. I also stocked 30-60 sheets of clear irid at any given time. Now I shoot for 100% of the sheet, 100% of the frit in 1 lb jars, 100% of the rods and stringer (I'm not there yet on the stringer and I forgot to put it on the inventory sheet for Judy to count *groan*), and the same quantities of 5 lb frit I had before.

Lucky for me the POS program I got (Checkout) automatically creates barcode labels for all your products, lets you print as many of each label as you need, and hooks up easily to a variety of barcode scanners (we still have one floating around here somewhere from the delicious library project...). I just need another eight hours in a day. Heck, I'd settle for four. Two even!

Those slabs ought to be cool enough now, back to the studio.

Saturday Hours

Oh I am tired this morning. I should make some coffee, but it's too much effort. It's a relatively late morning and the rest of the house still snores abed. Ernie and I though, well, we're up. I'm up because I need to get a load of roll-up pieces in the pick-up kiln to do this afternoon, Ernie's up because he sleeps in my spot on the couch and I had to shift him over to sit down and post. (When he's sleepy and you scratch under his chin, he closes his eyes and sticks out his tongue while he purrs.)

If I have to get a roll-up load in, why am I sitting on the couch and posting? I am waiting for kilns and the glass in them to cool down. I made the slabs for rolling up yesterday and when I looked in on them this morning, they were still at 196 degrees. Likewise for the annealer in the hotshop (also serving as the current pick-up kiln till the new pick-up kiln is finished this week). Lee had a Date Night last night and the pieces from it were still at 194 degrees after I prepped the kiln shelves for the roll-ups and opened the kiln with the slabs.

So I post and resist the lure of the bed upstairs. It was a long, intense week and I am pooped. Unfortunately, it's not over. Now that the studio (glass resource center) is open on Saturdays, my week ends on Saturday instead of Friday. Does that mean, you might ask, that I am going to take Mondays off? Sadly, no. While the retail part of the studio will be closed, I will use the time to catch up on finances, paperwork, webwork, and making the pieces for orders. I don't see a six-day schedule working indefinitely, but for now...

Now back to the studio to see if glass is cool enough to unload so I can get the roll-ups in.

Girl Scouts in the Studio Garden

Cooling Coffee in the Denver skyline mug (why can't I get to it while it's hot these days?), "Oops!...I Did It Again" by Richard Thompson on iTunes. Yesterday was a Good Day. The brownies (little girl scouts) came to the studio to help me plant the front garden (in payment for the Valentine's plates they made here back in February). It rained in the morning, then it stopped and they came and planted, then it REALLY rained--and watered in all the new plants. I love it when a plan comes together! Now I just need to make a sign "plantings by Siyeh Glass and Brownie Troop 29438".

Today I need to run up Olympic Kilns to get some kiln shelves and to look at their kilns for casting kiln ideas. Looking at expanding the hotshop next year and adding an area for a couple of big casting kilns... Oh the dreams on a sunny, cool, pollen-free day!

Achingly ACRE

Cold coffee in the New Orleans skyline mug, "Taking My Business Elsewhere" by Richard Thompson for music. Two-fold reason for the Richard Thompson choice: Tonight he is playing at the Variety Playhouse with Loudon Wainwright and I am going! That's the happy reason. The not-so-happy reason is that I am beginning prep for the ACRE show in Vegas so I read through the exhibitor services manual this morning and was brought to a screeching halt by the following section:



CES, which stands for Champion Electrical Services (our Exhibition Services provider for the show) is driving the bus on these rules--they don't have anything to do with the Las Vegas Convention Center, or the union labor used by the convention center. The critical sections for me are the"Requires labor to install and remove materials: Installation of lighting fixtures, track lights..." (labor is $92 per hour). They do say that "Exhibitors... are allowed to hang up to six (6) single light fixtures on track lights in their booth. This is meant for light fixtures that hang on the back or side wall where the electrical cord drops to the floor and plugs into the power supplied with your booth package." Well, we use 8-10 fixtures per track, and what about extension cords? Do they count as the electrical cord dropping to the floor and plugging into the power supplied? If the tracks are not on the back wall but out a foot from it and the cord goes back to the wall before it drops is that considered "distribution"? What IS distribution? I had better hear back from someone soon about this issue or I may be making other plans for (not) showing in Vegas.

I asked the wholesalecrafts.com staff for clarification on what we would be able to do this year after the show last year when we had such a furor with the electricians (I really wanted to have information before paying for this year's booth if I wasn't going to be able to do the show because of increased electrical charges). I never got an answer, but I signed up and paid anyway. Then I asked again when I saw them at the BMAC in February, I was told someone would get back to me. Then I asked again when they called me about something else the end of February/beginning of March and was told absolutely someone would get back to me... So far there has been a deafeningly silent action in someone-getting-back-to-me.

But let's end the post on a more positive note as I really don't want to think about driving out to Vegas so I can close up shop there and bring my work and display home. Yesterday was Noah's last private lesson in glass studio and I let him pick what he wanted to do. He chose vitrigraph and glass blowing. I need to experiment with the vitrigraph a bit more to get consistent results (flow rate and color), but we ran through 3 lbs of scrap in about an hour and a good time was had by both of us. Then he made a flower and a paperweight with Lee in the hotshop.

This afternoon Jessie's girls scout troop will come back to clean up the front garden at the front of the studio and to plant flowers. We did an exchange back in February--I provided them with all the glass and tools to each make a Valentine's day plate and they are working in the garden to pay for it. I love barter. Now off to get a kiln load in--really!

Opalina-Palooza!

Coffee in the New York skyline mug, "Never Gonna Change" by Drive-By Truckers (really loud) for music. It's Monday and the studio is officially closed today, but I have my last in a series of private lessons today so I'll be there. Noah has been having a great time in his lessons and I gave him a choice of what he'd like to do for his last day. he picked vitrigraph so I had him load a pot with scrap last week before he left and I'll put it in this morning so it'll be ready when he gets here. Lee has also promised him a little hands-on time in the hotshop--maybe even using some of his fresh vitrigraph pieces. I also have a couple of kiln loads for orders to do so it will be a full day.

This past Saturday was the first day of Opaline-Palooza and it went great. Pics are of the first set of opal glasses before and after firing. Four people have signed up for all four sessions, but schedules being what they are, almost all of them have one or more days they can't come to the workshop. No worries though as they were so into it on the first day that three of them went ahead and cut the pieces for one of the Saturdays they'll miss. Since everyone committed to all four sets of colors (104 in all) I have decided to throw in all the tints for no additional charge (about 24 more colors) so everyone will end up with a set of 130 sample tiles. Next up on Sample Saturdays--Strikers in sheet and frit. I also have a set and there is an extra set too as it was easier to divide up the glass that way.

Other big changes on the horizon. This past year--especially the part in 2010--has shown me that it's just too difficult to effectively manage three different web presences--not to mention confusing for the intended audience. I have been struggling internally with the best way to handle it and I think going to one website for both the resource center and the studio with the blog as the anchor on the front page is the way to go. by putting the blog in I know I'll get updated content almost every day--with the latest photos--(and I won't feel guilty about posting instead of doing other computer work).

Computer work lately included getting a business listing on our Google search page.--though it still isn't coming up close to the top (or at all) if you just search for Siyeh Glass. You have to search for Siyeh Glass Atlanta--and that's annoying! However when you do get there you get a map, hours and directions, a photo of the front of the building--even a link to the date night video at the beginning of this post! How cool is that? There is also a place for reviews so any kind-hearted folk out there who have a little time to write are encouraged to post a review.

And speaking of new photos I finally have a great picture of Judy the Studio Assistant for the webpage. It's good to be able to put a face to a voice and she answers the phone most of them time... I also need a new pic of Lee and one of Shy Todd. Did get a new one of the front of the studio to help people identify it.

Now off to polish some items off the to-do list before heading to the studio.

The Newsletter is DONE!

And I am celebrating with strong, real, coffee with Belgian toffee creamer, sweet Italian cream creamer, regular coffee mate, and a shot of whipped cream to top it off in the New Orleans skyline mug. If you are not on the Siyeh Glass mailing list (shame on you!--sign up here) you can see it on-line here. Whew. I'm exhausted. First the Vertical Response system--like a bad Spaniel acting out because his people left him home alone--ate my first version. I spent two hours writing that version and it was all 100% *gone*. I was transported back to the early 90's when not saving a document every five seconds was a recipe for certain disaster. I have become complacent with the automatic autosave option on almost every application I use. I have also smugly relied on Mac software not crashing or randomly restarting (as Windows did/does). Say what you will about Mac hardware (and believe me, I do), software built on their platform is usually sound.

Yesterday was my wake-up call though, and I was up writing (and saving--and taking a screen capture before saving as saving sometimes behaved weirdly and I lost a bit of data during a couple of saves) till after midnight-thirty. But I got it out, I'm happy with it, but I need to say more... What's new?

Today, renewed, I FINISH the summer camp info sheet and get it to Michael for the web. I also make a couple of slideshows for last weekend's date night and date morning. Then, while I'm still feeling the newsletter victory flush, I'll get back to the class schedule.

The problem with the class schedule is that there are so many things I want to do/teach, and I want to do them all NOW. Why is that a problem? Well, I also have a production studio to run, orders to fill, and a life (and family) outside the studio. Not to mention a garden which needs another bathouse and a big pond with a waterfall, a bog section for bio-filtration, fish, a fused glass mosaic wall on one side a rock garden on the other. Not that I'm pulled in too many directions or anything (wow is that good coffee!)...

Monday Morning You Sure Look Fine

Coffee in the Atlanta skyline mug, the ticking of the clock and the snoring of Ernie Monstrocat for music. So far this morning I waded through the mail (recycle, recycle, recycle, file, recycle, needs action... wash, rinse repeat). That last sentence should be longer--as in there should be many more tasks completed by 10:44 am (which it is now). *sigh* There was a lot of mail. Now I'm going to hit some of the highlights of the "needs attention" piles (plural, really) before checking in with Lakeem on my Creative Loafing ad status for the week and getting a couple of kiln loads in. And a newsletter written. Oy. I want a clone of myself for Mother's Day and another one for my birthday, can you help me out there?

Vacation is over--though there are more posts and pics coming from it to Stranded In the South--and it is good to be home.

The Forest From the Trees... Again

Yesterday I woke with the fire and the fervor to finally get the Siyeh Glass newsletter out announcing the next round of classes (beginning with Opalina-palooza and Reactive Saturdays), the arrival and availability of the white Tekta, and new hours. As a start, while the family went off on a three-mile hike, I updated and cleaned up my emailing list in Vertical Response and then moved onto designing the layout for the newsletter. I should've brought breadcrumbs. First there was the metaphorical tree of a template for the email. My idea was that I'd put together a permanent newsletter layout and that would make it easy to just dump data and photos in every couple of weeks. Picking a template--or even deciding between using the creation wizard or a different layout tool--got to be to frustrating so I took a break to work on a logo. In the absence of Mike's skills I thought I just whip one up based on the others he did. Snort.

A couple of hours Dave and J arrived back from their hike and I had an oh-shoot moment at how little I'd done. I vowed to buckle down and recover the fire, drive and purpose I'd woken with. I worked a little more out on the balcony of our room and then the sun was too bright so I retreated inside... where Jessie was watching a movie on the Disney channel called Cow Belles. Ho boy.I liken it to a visit to the witch's oven in the middle I ignored it as best I could, but by 5:00 when it was time to go play family mini golf I had a start on a logo that I didn't even like... and nothing else.

The rest of the day/evening was all about family (no mini golf but a cool chair lift ride to the top of the Natural Bridge), pizza from a local rock-climber hangout (we were if not the oldest, definitely the largest people there), a rousing game of Carcassone (I won big), and a little reading before lights out.

Today, we drive home. While I have laptop juice and Dave is driving, I am going to WHIP OUT THAT NEWSLETTER! Really, how hard can it be?

The Forest From the Trees... Again

Yesterday I woke with the fire and the fervor to finally get the Siyeh Glass newsletter out announcing the next round of classes (beginning with Opalina-palooza and Reactive Saturdays), the arrival and availability of the white Tekta, and new hours. As a start, while the family went off on a three-mile hike, I updated and cleaned up my emailing list in Vertical Response and then moved onto designing the layout for the newsletter. I should've brought breadcrumbs. First there was the metaphorical tree of a template for the email. My idea was that I'd put together a permanent newsletter layout and that would make it easy to just dump data and photos in every couple of weeks. Picking a template--or even deciding between using the creation wizard or a different layout tool--got to be to frustrating so I took a break to work on a logo. In the absence of Mike's skills I thought I just whip one up based on the others he did. Snort.

A couple of hours Dave and J arrived back from their hike and I had an oh-shoot moment at how little I'd done. I vowed to buckle down and recover the fire, drive and purpose I'd woken with. I worked a little more out on the balcony of our room and then the sun was too bright so I retreaed inside... where Jessie was watching a movie on the Disny channel called Cow Belles. Ho boy.I liken it to a visit to the witch's oven in the middle I ignored it as best I could, but by 5:00 when it was time to go play family minigolf I had a start on a logo that I didn't even like... and nothing else.

The rest of the day/evening was all about family (no minigolf but a cool chair lift ride to the top of the Natural Bridge), pizza from a local rock-climber hangout (we were if not the oldest, definitely the largest people there), a rousing game of Carcassone (I won big), and a little reading before lights out.

Today, we drive home. While I have laptop juice and Dave is driving, I am going to WHIP OUT THAT NEWSLETTER! Really, how hard can it be?

Still Vacating

A last post before leaving this island of Internet for the rest of the wilderness of Kentucky (and the next island of Internet in Cave City). The POS program for Siyeh Glass proceeds apace. Dave wrote me a little extension for Excel yesterday that saved me several hours of work and I hope to begin importing data into the system later today. Yesterday saw more outdoor activity--chronicled on Stranded in the South.

Okay Already, I'll Post!

Sitting on the little balcony off the bedroom of our cabin at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park in Kentucky. Everyone else has gone for a walk, but I couldn't resist the lure of the Internet so here I post. I'll continue the story of the vacation on Stranded in the South (now more true than ever!), but it's more than time to post on studio happenings over the past couple of weeks.

On Thursday 3/24 I took delivery of my biggest glass order ever--4500 lbs of very sharp stuff. And it wasn't enough that it had to be the biggest order, it was also the most fraught, the most damaged, and containing the most rare of fusible glass.

When the driver first lifted the roll-up door on the truck and I saw the cases, I thought my heart would stop. The biggest one, the one with boards hanging off on the right contained the only full case of White Tekta on the planet and if anything had happened to it, it would have been irreplaceable.

I'm not sure who was thinking what, but the two cases-one of 4' X 2' sheets and the other of 6' X 2' sheets--were banded together vertically with no attached pallet or other support. After they were banded they were used as ballast in a forklift race. Then they were slapped from truck to truck and showed up at my door drunkenly sagging and ripped completely apart. They were so badly damaged that they were tied to the wall of the truck to keep them from falling over.

Someone was looking out for me though, because I only had about seven damaged sheets in the smaller case of clear Tekta and one in the larger case of white Tekta. Of the seven damaged, I was able to salvage most of the sheets in pieces large enough to resell and the rest will make nice filler for a sink class. The one damaged white sheet only had a corner chipped.

So more about the legendary elusive Moby Dick of glass--my 66 sheets of 6' X 2' White Tekta. After we got it off the truck (and propped it up against the picnic table so it wouldn't fall over), we (Dee and Lori were AMAZING!) processed most of it into 4' X 2' sheets, 3' X 2' sheets, and 2' X 2' sheets. Really, this is the ONLY case of white Tekta currently in existence and yours truly has it all. It has never been sold anywhere else (outside of the BE factory), and unless someone orders 5000 sq feet of it, it won't be available anywhere else any time soon. Cuts like butter, get it while it's available.

For those of you on the Siyeh Glass mailing list, you'll get details on pricing and availability in the next week or so (along with details on the upcoming Opaline-a-palooza . If you're not on the mailing list... why not?!?