Old Reliable

Hi there! I hope you had a great weekend. I fired a kiln-load of stuff today but none of it's quite ready to show you. I dug through my archives this evening and decided I'd show you a photo of my kiln instead. Ta da! It's a Paragon SC2, and it's been a great help to me since I purchased it, almost a year ago. For anyone thinking of investing in a kiln for metal clay work, I would recommend it. (Ironically, I primarily purchased it to anneal glass beads, and I never use it for that purpose...)

I actually took this photo at Tammy Powley's request for her new book Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry. It's kind of embarrassing, since you can see how untidy things are in our garage in the background, but I remember distinctly that we'd just had a snow dump, the Husband was out of town, and I only had a few spare minutes while the Short One was sleeping to snap the shot. Oh, well, it's definitely true to life. I wonder if Tammy actually used the shot? My copy of her book is en route from Amazon right now - more on this later, once I've had a chance to read it (I can't wait!). You'll note that I keep the kiln on a nifty rolling cart. Technically, we have a two and one half car garage, but the one half space is really taken up by a tool bench. The kiln does have certain requirements for being a minimum distance from any wall or flammable substance when fired - in our garage, that would have put it smack in the center of the doorway. As we enjoy actually being able to use said door, we had to come up with a different operating solution. Putting it on the cart so that it could be rolled into place when in use seemed like a reasonable compromise. Incidentally, the big plastic shoebox in the shelf underneath the kiln is filled with glass rods (COE 104!), mostly Moretti, for all of the lampworking I haven't been doing recently. Sigh. There's just not enough hours in the day. Do you feel that way, too?

On other fronts, The SO starts a Mom's Morning Away program tomorrow. He's reached the age where, for various reasons, I feel that I'm starting to hold him back by keeping him at home with me all of the time, so H. and I decided to enroll him in a once a week, half day program. I've been quite anxious about this since I found out that he made it into the class (it's very popular and participants have to go through a lottery process each session). While I have tried to explain to him over the past week that he's a big boy and will be starting "school" soon, I don't think any of it has really registered. I am expecting that both of us will be bawling around 9:30am tomorrow (hopefully, I will make it back to the car before I start). Any cheerful thoughts you would care to send our way around that time (Central Standard) would be appreciated.

Right, I suppose I should go check his bag and plan his snack for tomorrow for the hundredth time. Good night.