just general stuff

A couple of notes:

re my post about choking...took Autumn home and my daughter says to me mom, you know we love you, your family really loves you but we laughed so hard when we read your last post. Autumn piped up, it was horrifying! My daughter said I'm sure it was and then she ragged on me to go to the doctor now that I have insurance. Coupled with all the other ragging I got in the comments and on FB, I guess I will see about making an appointment with someone.

re the layout of my blog...I have changed the comment section so that there is a reply button beneath each comment so now maybe I'll start replying to your comments. Some of them. Sometimes. Maybe. But do check back. I may just surprise you. And me.

It has rained every day for 8 days straight, not all day but off and on during the days and nights. By Wednesday we had already had 7”. I haven't checked the rain gauge since. It's not mine anyway, belongs to the new neighbors now. Frank Of The Bountiful Garden's house finally sold and the new owners have moved in. They are also artists/crafters. Robert does metal work and wood work and what all making stuff suited to the Renaissance fairs and fantasy/graphic novel conventions and such. Debra works in clay, not really sure exactly what, if it is functional or sculptural or maybe both and also makes costumes for these different venues and maybe paints too. They are still getting organized and getting the greenhouses converted to studios so I haven't seen any of their actual work and only chatted with them briefly a few times. They are a bit younger than us. She still works full time and commutes into town.

For those of you who don't know who Frank Of The Bountiful Garden is, he was our neighbor who with his wife Dorothy had a nursery there at their house and were mostly retired when we bought this place. They kept that place immaculate and Frank had a garden and fruit trees that produced prodigious amounts of food and he was very generous, always coming over with something to share, sending my daughter home with bags of stuff for the kids. Dorothy died about 4 years ago and Frank quickly declined and died almost two years ago. Both in their early 80s. Their son and daughter kept the place for about a year and finally put the house on the market. Frank built that house. Anyway, I would write in the blog about Frank and Dorothy periodically.

Did I mention I have a functioning kiln? No, not the one that skyrocketed and turned a small leaf casting into an alien geode of fused boiled glass and plaster. It's still broken as the expensive part we bought didn't fix it. No, we finally plugged in the old kiln, our first Paragon glass kiln that hasn't been turned on for at least 6 years and we haven't used for at least 10 years though my sister and her husband were and it was in their barn, and it came on and so we cleaned it up and did a test cast of one of the bark pieces and it worked fine.

So now we have our third firing going. The second firing was the new leaflet for the pink flower and the moonflower that goes with the leaf plaque. The molds were so dry that my volume measure wasn't very accurate and as a result I had way too much glass in both molds and had to grind off a considerable amount on each casting.

Still have to take off a little more and I started the cold work on the surfaces. All this going on while I am still trying to finish the second diagram so I can start on the first stencil for the A&M commission. August is drawing to a close and I've been telling them I'll have the first stencil cut by the end of the month.

Anyway, the pieces that are in there now are four more of the bark pieces. The last one I'm casting in white so it will get fired separately. The next firing will be the leaf plaque for the moonflower.