A New Technique... Again!

Coffee in the New York skyline mug, “Nighttime in the Switching Yard” by Warren Zevon sliding into “Wild Man” by the J. Geils Band on iTunes (Blogger is sloooow loading this morning!), nothing written yesterday except a letter to the editor. I was right that my saying “no” was not enough to deter them from pushing me to get all my projects back to them for photography. The reply to my email stating the projects could not be shipped and I do not have the time in my schedule to make another trip up to them was met with a genteel invoking of the “C” word. Contract, doncha know. I know. I know the word intimately as I negotiated it for several months.

I delicately replied that, no, it didn't state in my contract that I had to deliver anything to them other than the manuscript, and I offered a couple of other options including putting their art director up here for a day or so. It's never a good sign when the "C" word is invoked. It doesn't necessarily mean everything has gone to hell in a hand basket, but it says you are on that road and it has a slippery slope (any more metaphor thingies I can mangle?). I am expecting a phone call today since the email didn't elicit the desired response.

In the meantime... Success! I tried a shaped screen melt and it worked perfectly! I had to charge the kiln once (add more scrap glass to the piece when it is at process temps) and extend the soak a bit, but I should be able to tell the gentle reader how to do it without a charge by the final weight of the piece. I guessed on the initial fill from the weight of another piece that shape, but I knew it was apples and oranges and I might run short a bit because melts are always a bit thicker than regular two-thickness fuses and will weighout higher

Today has a slump load scheduled in the big kiln and a surface fix of the melt in the medium kiln. Tomorrow I will slump it and I'll post a picture on Friday. Today is also a writing day. Today I begin for real the monumental task of writing the kilnforming section of the basics. Shelf Prep R Us. Even now I am already in the sky chair on the front porch, but I may have to move inside. Even though it is the perfect temperature out here to sit, it has rained without drying out for the past three days and it smells a bit like the boat house at the lake... Eeuw. Canvas must.

To the Keyboard and Beyond!