close...but no cigar

Yesterday...I'm done with all the grinding! Yay for that. Took longer Monday than I thought and I worked til almost 2PM but I got as much of the rocker out as I think I can. Not perfect but really close. Fortunately it was mostly cloudy yesterday, cooler, and it wasn't even in the 90s yet when I quit. Tomorrow I think I can get all the polishing done and then I want to use etching cream on the feather and the egg and then everything will be ready to be assembled.

I enjoyed my day of relaxation Sunday but I can only sit for just so long unless I don't feel well or am completely exhausted so I'd read for a while, get up and move the hose, pick up some green pecans, surf the web for a while then get up and move the hose, read, snooze a little, get up move the hose, picked up more green pecans, watered the azaleas around the pecan tree until it was finally time to walk the dog.

Today...I unintentionally slept late. I startled awake to see Marc looming over me like a vulture.

“Just checking to see if you were still alive,” he says. It was 8:15 and he knew I meant to be up and over at the shop by 8.

And so I managed to get over by a little after 10, worked til 1PM, came home, cooled off, filled the sink with warm soapy water (hotter side of warm but not so hot I couldn't put my hands in it and in retrospect probably too hot anyway but the thing had been at 1650˚ in the kiln), washed all the small pieces and then put the box in and let it soak while I had lunch, scrubbed it with a toothbrush to get all the last bits of plaster and glass dust out of the tiny crevices of the texture, rinsed it off and...it was cracked.

And you know the whole time I was working on it today I was super careful in my handling of all the pieces (and I did do some more grinding to fit the heron head as what seemed good enough yesterday seemed too much today but I was taking off miniscule amounts and it really fits good now) because back in the back of my mind was a fear I'd chip something.

I'll try one more time to salvage it. We can reinvest it and re-fire it and anneal it for longer. Might work, ought to work, might not work, but, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Won't be doing it this week and maybe not even next week. I need to get some distance from it but I'd like to try it before the open house.

Well, one good thing is that it cracked here before I glued it all together and sent it off. At least I still have all the other pieces that I can think about other ways to use them if the blue box becomes a total waste.

But damn. All that work.

In a way I'm kind of relieved. The intense push is over and I can do the rest at my leisure, depending of course on how the recasting goes.

Another good thing that happened today is that it rained! Not for very long but fairly hard and we got 3/4” and I can't tell you what a relief that is and the forecast is good for more tomorrow.

I'll be grateful for that.