work stuff and dinner

Monday I got all the rest of the frit in the big flower and ready for the background color which I still had not decided on. Sometime during the night I woke up with the the answer. I guess my mind had been noodling on it while I slept. I chose a color called olive smoke. I didn't want to use a blue which would have been my go to because the chemicals in some of the blues react with the chemicals in some of the yellows to produce a brown wherever they touch. I could have covered all the yellow with a thin layer of clear which would prevent that from happening but that would have been another whole day's work. Anyway, I think it will look fine with the color I chose.

Tuesday was grocery store and then back in the shop, got the background color in 

and then the rest of the glass, a clear layer and a final white layer. So now it's ready to go in the kiln.

Here's my work table.

Just some of my 355 color samples, these are mixed transparent colors. I also have mixed combinations of opaques, opaques and transparents (like the sand mixtures), pure color samples of all the transparents, opaques (frit and powder), and of the modeling glass.

All my frit and powder. There's also a table in the shop full of large containers of some of these colors. I will never use all this, I will never use most of this in what's left of my lifetime. I could probably winnow out at least a third of the transparent colors that I never or rarely use because they are so dense they just look black but I like having the option, a complete palette.

transparent colors on the right, opaque colors on the left

I checked with one of the metal shops here and got a sample of 1/8” aluminum and I think I like it with the feather pieces. I have to let the guy know so he can check and see if he has a drop off big enough to cut two 11” squares, otherwise I'd have to buy a whole sheet and that would be very expensive. So I'm waiting to hear about that.

And then I fixed dinner Tuesday night, tried my hand at another pastie only this time I did one big one instead of four little ones like last time. Same basic ingredients...shredded leftover roast and pork chop, onion, garlic, celery, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, potato...a little bit of everything cleaning out the crisper in the fridge. This one came out better. The first time the filling was a little dry so this time I added some of my frozen tomato juice cubes which was perfect. Sort of like a pot pie only without the pot. Small disaster though, once I spooned the filling onto the pie crust and folded it over it split along the fold so I cut a section off the other pie crust (I buy them ready made, 2 to a package) and patched the split.

More finish work on the drowned feather piece Wednesday while Marc made the other trumpet flower mold. Worked on the rocks with the fine polishing point, and the feather, and the edges. Hot and sweaty work but getting there. the gray powder I laid down first in the feather really doesn't show except in certain light and certain angle, neither does the gray I used in the quill. Though I supposed those shadows are really the gray powder, just not as apparent as I had intended. 

I'm pretty single minded right now, nothing else to post about besides work but that will change as soon as I get finished for the show. I'll still be working, just not to the exclusion of all else.