and this is how it goes

Woke up to heavy rain Tuesday morning and a nervous panting dog at 6 AM. Fortunately it didn't last long. And it rained Monday too only just lightly and Wednesday morning. While I didn't get over to the studio Monday I did get two compositions done with the yellow angel trumpet flowers that I'm happy with. But of course, I have to alter them to fit the stands I have or display them differently.

Two and a half years ago I had three stands made for three fairly simple pieces, not high dollar work. The stands he made for me previously, the most expensive one was $75 and larger than the three new ones I ordered, one 5” wide and the other two 6”wide, so I was a little shocked when he charged me $115 each for the new ones. If I was to send these pieces to a gallery, I would have to double the price of the stand adding $230 to the price of the piece so I framed the work for wall hanging instead.

My error with the new sketches was I drew them for the 5” wide stand, forgetting that it was inappropriate for the 8” height of the sketch. Well, fuck. I enlarged them to fit the 6” wide stands but now they are too tall. So now I'm back to square one. So do I want to go with the shorter wider revision for the stands or stick with the original drawings and mount them for wall hanging and design something else for the stands (edit - this is what I've decided to do).

Well, I have plenty of time to think on it as the next thing up is filling the drowned feather mold. I got the mold cleaned up

and then my dilemma was doing the volume measure. Usually I weigh an amount of water in a container in grams, pour that water into the mold to the appropriate level, pour the water out of the mold into a basin and then weigh the water that's left in the container. Subtract figure two from figure one to get the weight of water that filled the mold. Multiply that by the specific gravity of the glass in relation to water, in my case with Bullseye glass that's 2.5, to get the weight of glass, in grams, needed to accurately fill the mold.

I know, right? Math.

But I was concerned about the strength of the plaster/silica mix of the mold and didn't want to do that. Fortunately, there is another method. Fill the mold with sand. Amount of sand equals amount of water, weigh the amount of water and do the math. First thing I did was sift my sharp garden sand to get out the larger pieces and dry it out in the sun.

and then gently spooned it into the mold and smoothing it out level. 3 1/2 cups of sand= 3 1/2 cups water weighed and I have my volume measure converted to weight of glass. The kicker is making sure every grain of sand is out of the mold so fingers crossed on that. I've brushed it out, rinsed it out, examined every square centimeter over and over, rinsed it out again, and I have declared it ready to be filled with the glass powders and frits. May not be able to devote a large enough span of time for that til Friday.

Also I'm experimenting with some wire mesh as a support for the modeling glass lichens during firing which will also involve the fiber paper wedges seen in previous photos but not this one. I think it will work, will probably run it by the lady who formulated the modeling glass and see what she thinks.

In other news, I made french toast Sunday morning with real french bread, well, the HEB's version of french bread. Probably more accurate to call it french style bread.

And then I made the complicated roasted cauliflower with green olive dressing on Monday that Ms Moon sent me the recipe for. I think that's probably all the cooking I'm doing for the rest of the week.