check list

Email inbox cleaned out - check

First stab at a newsletter done and sent on it's first mass mailing – check. Unfortunately, I made a bone-headed mistake and put the mailing list in the CC address line instead of the BCC address line. Not very professional of me. I won't make that mistake again. Assuming, of course, that I don't get an avalanche of 'remove' requests.

Web site updated – check

Start on first 4” square wax model – check.

Day in the city to get business taken care of and dinner with friends – check.

It all comes at a price though which was not reading any blogs. Boy, get busy for a day or two and the number of posts is overwhelming.

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Still in the city. We brought yard tools as the property here is in dire need of some maintenance. Now if it will just warm up a little bit I'll be able to pry myself away from the heater, the cheap natural gas space heater which is cranked up as high as it will go. We're having some of our coldest weather of the year to date but it's a sunny day and the weather prognosticators are saying it's going to warm up.

Perhaps the poking and prodding I have been doing to the business the last couple of weeks may be doing some good. Turns out our business was not completely dead, just mostly dead. I've already had one response from the newsletter I sent out to the design professional community. It's only an inquiry at this point but that's where jobs start.

We'll be spending several days in the city next week. That's the down side of having work. I have three box forms, some feet and perhaps by next week a lid to grind excess glass off so I'll be spending the better part of a day at my friend's studio working on their flat lap. Then over to another friend's studio to lay out the fiber paper shapes on the kiln shelf to get the first of the three panels for this job cast.

This is my first time to do this type of work, this 'kiln carving'. I think I described the technique here. I'm a bit nervous about it. Didn't charge enough, didn't really know how to charge for it. Hopefully, it won't cost me anything and I will have learned something for the next time I propose something I have no direct experience with. Which I do. I get these ideas, sell them and then have to figure out how to make it work.

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Well, it's warming up nicely out there. The picture is of just one small area in my yard in the city that is covered with these small lilies. What you see now is just the foliage. They started coming up last month and in another month or so these areas will be a sea of small red flowers blanketing the yard.

If I took a long shot of the yard you would see these everywhere with just a few paths through between gates and door. I discouraged grass in the city yard years and years ago and so usually have one wildflower after another instead. These are not actually wildflowers but they turned out to be highly invasive. This yard full of these lilies and next door in my daughter's yard as well started out with one 8” diameter clay pot (I don't know their proper name, the tag in the pot said African Lily). After they bloom and go to seed, the foliage dies down.

I'm always amazed at this early harbinger of spring.