Erulisse Dances

I am winding down the projects for 2011 and starting to think about what I want to do in 2012. I know I want to do more enamel work, I know I want to play with my glass saw and fused glass pieces, and I'm really enjoying my writing and the photoshop pieces that I have worked with over the past nine months. But I don't have a specific deadline staring me in the face.

( musings follow )

 This is the week that my father-by-marriage is getting his electricity re-done.  It is also the week where we are meeting the man who I hope will become our new accountant (on Wednesday) and the week where I get my brakes done on my car because they are dangerous at this point (on Thursday).  Whew!  I think I've got WAY too much going on this week. 

( More below the cut... )

My DH has been very kind and forebearing, but I think it is time for me to start working on the den again, finishing the clean-up.  It is a disaster and shouldn't be.  The only problem is time - I don't have any to waste on my "day off".  And on Sundays, I prefer to spend my time with DH.  But, I may have to make some changes in my schedule and just get this done because it's bugging me too. 


And I have my BFAC beads sitting in front of me trying to tell me how they want to be attached to the glass that I pulled out of the kiln.  I'm very happy with my glass.  It took what seems like forever to get them formed properly, but it's all good now.  So, I'll have to dive back into my art and do less writing for a while - bummer :-( 

 So, I ground down and did the final shaping on my glass on Thursday night, then figured a firing schedule that should have allowed some slump of the glass.  I set the program, fired the glass, and nothing happened. 

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It's been a great ride so far and I've enjoyed all of it.

The world is supposed to end today, or at least the "Rapture" is supposed to happen...on a rolling schedule at 6:00 p.m. tonight.  I guess I'll meet all of you later tonight since I certainly won't be Raptured anywhere.  The whole thought of being with people who are that single-minded, without the different opinions that a variety of belief systems can inspire.  But, if the world does happen to end...well, it's been a great ride and thanks for all the fish.  

 Oy!  Have I said lately that I just can't win?  So, Malcom has a time conflict. 

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Harmon Killebrew died yesterday.  For those of you who are not baseball fans, he was one of the nicest people ever!  His standard biography states:  Born June 29, 1936, Harmon was signed by the Washington Senators in 1954 at the age of 17. Harmon “Killer” Killebrew amassed numbers matched only by the game’s very elite. In his 22 years of hard work and productivity, he was named American League All-Star 13 times, the 1969 American League MVP and a six-time American League home run leader. In 1984, Killebrew joined baseball’s immortals with his election into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was so respected in baseball that even though the Twins were playing an away game in Seattle, the Mariners pulled down all team flags and flew their own flag at half-staff in respect.  They also held a minute of silence.  This from an AWAY game.  Pretty amazing.  We'll miss you, Harmon.  You were a very classy and polite player and will be remembered throughout the league as a beacon.  RIP.  

 Well, so here we are at the end of another week. I have a full work day today, Italian food for dinner, and then a trip to Target for grocery shopping. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, I'm just exhausted.  

( Celebrate beneath the cut... )
I'm looking at the glass on my desk and trying to decide exactly what I want for my next step. I have Malcom's glass saw reserved for 11:00 am on the 19th for an hour, and I want to make sure that I not only have the larger piece ready to cut out, but also any other smaller ones. It is much faster to cut glass with the ring saw, and there is every possibility that I will be able to cut several pieces. I have two larger slabs of glass that I want to have shaped smaller. On Wednesday the 11th, aside from celebrating my birthday (which I found out I share with Malcom - how cool is that!), I want to fine-tune the shapes that I ground out this past Wednesday, and if I decide to put any platinum overlays on top of the glass, this will be the time to do it. So I'll look at my glass for a while because I don't want mistakes - every step has to be deliberate. I'm not keeping this piece - it will be up for a charity auction in 2012 - but I will be putting work into it and I will be looking at it for a few months and photographing it later this summer. I'm fighting time deadlines here, and I can't afford mistakes.


 Here's hoping that you have a weekend of joy and, if you are able to spend it with your Mother, or with your children, have a very happy Mother's day. 

 My heart goes out to the people who live along the Mississippi River downstream from us.  We had bad flooding here a few weeks ago, but everyone escaped unscathed.  However, downstream from us it seems to be a much different story. 

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Cairo is located at the meeting of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.  Because

it is low-lying, it has always been susceptible to devastating floods. 

Yesterday's craft day was generally successful.  I have discovered that I can't do a lot of shaping by hand,, at least not enough for the central element that I was envisioning.  I need a ring saw for that, and they are expensive.  I phoned the local glass shop to see if they rented ring saws, but they don't.  I don't have the spare several hundred dollars, so I'll try phoning a few more places today in the hope that someone has a cutter that I can use.  It was abysmally slow, but I did get the four pieces I needed to continue working on this project completed and I flash fired them last night.  They turned out nice, and now I need to get going on the next part, pull out the beads again, and begin stitching things together.  I hope that my vision was a true one, otherwise I've wasted two weeks in an experiment on a project that I don't have any available time to waste.  I'll know by  next week.  

 Step one of my BFAC is now complete (there will be a lot of steps, so don't think that I'm that far ahead of anyone - LOL). But the glasswork that I wanted to make for the piece turned out very well. Now I have some decisions to make - size and whether or not I'll do any embellishment. I have a bit of time to spread my beads out again and make sure I have everything that I want to use available. 

Today I get to go glass shopping. I have an idea for my Beading For a Cure kit, and to do it I need to play with glass. "So" disappointing (just ignore this big grin on my face).

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 Yesterday, my DH was awakened by my father-by-marriage phoning him shortly after 7am. He complained that his power had gone out shortly after 4am. So, I got to phone the utility company and report the outage. They came over and checked, and it was actually in the wiring going into the fuse box, so then I had to call an electrician to come over and get that fixed. Well, code won't allow them to do anything but a temporary fix because the electrical system needs to be upgraded and brought up to code. So next week the electrician will go over the house with DH and his father to give them an estimate about bringing the wiring up to code. Anyway, when I arrived home last night, there was a stunning red rose in front of my place at dinner with a note thanking me for my help. Sometimes my DH comes through in spades!


I have two stories in for crit right now, and I'm actually happy with both of them. So those will be posting onto ErulisseDances soon, if you are subbed to that board. Look for them by the end of the week.