Good News, Bad News

No coffee, no music, no new words... and I just found out that's a problem. Unlike probably everyone else in America, I wish today were Monday following a three-day weekend. I have the write-ups for five projects and ten pages of basics due the day after tomorrow, and I haven't started writing any of it. Add to that I have three firings to do today so it was slated as more of a kiln day than a computer day. (down panic attack, down. Sit, stay.)

The weekend was not spent at Marietta Art in the Park. Friday on the way to pick up my hanging panels from the glass driller I almost got into a car accident from not letting an idiot cut in front of me into the left turn lane. He didn't want to wait through the long turn line during rush hour so he thought he would just cut in front of me. Annoyance trumped common sense on my part and I did not let him in even though he turned right next to me from the going straight lane. This action was really, really stupid on my part as I was driving the barely a month-old Odyssey which only has 500 miles on it. Good news, he didn't hit me. Bad news, I was such a wreck when I got home that I had a complete meltdown. At which point my spouse stepped in and suggested that maybe I had too little margin to do a three-day art fair with the accompanying set-up and breakdown. Especially since it would mean three days of no firings with a potential project review this Friday at the Publisher's.

So over the weekend I re-grouped. I fired, I assembled wind chimes, I fired some more. Then yesterday I cleaned the studio. Dave and Jessie came downstairs just as I finished and Jessie exclaimed, "Mommy, all the crap is gone!", and it was. I finally unpacked all the boxes of stuff I have received over the past few months and put it all away. I also cleaned all the coldworking tools and their table, cleaned the frit area and the worktable. I finished by sweeping the floor and washing off the Morton cutting surfaces. I bet today's firings go much more quickly since I don't have to move a pile of stuff to use a work area and then move it again to use another work area. Let's hope so anyway as I need every minute I can scrounge today.

On the good news front I have a re-do of the interim schedule to send back to the Editor. I think it will behoove me to reschedule some of the load due today to another day and the project review to next week at the earliest. There are still projects I have not done, and other projects I have done at least two different working versions of. Today should see the last of the projects into the kiln.

And I am going to try one more box. Barbara, were you referring to Amy Buchwald's boxes when you mentioned the schedule Ray Ahlgren did? A couple of years ago Ron Coleman sent me instructions for his method of making boxes. I never got around to trying it out and I haven't been able to find them now (switched computers and moved email twice). If I remember correctly though he does not do the fuse in box shape, he uses powdered glass as a glue which melts and holds the pieces together at higher temps. This method would not obviate any issues with annealing however. But I have a new idea, and it may drastically shorten the firing time and produce a gorgeous box. We shall see.

Now off to put pedal to metal, nose to grindstone and fingers to keyboard (interim schedule first).