It's been a while...

It's been a while since I've posted last as I have been busy with things. Lots of stuff has come in this week material wise. My kiln on Monday, which is going to be set up this weekend and some PMC clay and more wire for pendants that came in yesterday. I also got some beautiful ring sized cabochons of natural rubies, amethyst, sapphire, emerald, citrine and green tourmaline. I also have a beautiful colored iolite stone and opal floating around. Lots of stuff to play with this weekend. I'm also expecting some green turquoise in that I ordered that I think will make beautiful men's rings just in time for Father's Day.

Speaking of father's Dave totally ticked me off last night. On our weekly grocery trip I had bought some pre-cooked chipolte flavored chicken that was cut up similar to how fajitas would be with longer pieces or strips of chicken mixed in with smaller "chunks". Bought tortillas and some shredded lettuce and whatever else would be needed for the meal and cooked it up last night. I was busy getting Little G's plate ready and getting him buckled in his booster seat at the table so I told Dave to go ahead and fix his plate up first. So by the time I get back to the kitchen to fix my plate Dave is done and already put his on the table. I take a look in the skillet and he took ALL of the big, long, strips of chicken all that was left were the little chunks that were like 1 to 1.5 inches. Then he actually came back into the kitchen getting the drinks and says, in a truly genuine tone, "See, I left you LOTS of chicken". I was speechless, all I could do was shake my head pour my chicken pieces into the tortillas and just go with it. Tonight we're having spaghetti, at least I know there's no bigger pieces for him to hog tonight.

Getting a kiln

I am super excited because next month we get our incentive bonus at work. This will probably be the last year we get one for a while so I'm planning on enjoying mine completely. I have been wanting a kiln for a while so I can start doing some stuff with PMC clay. After looking and comparing for weeks I've finally decided on this one, the Paragon Caldera.

The nice thing about it is that it's small, reasonably priced and it fires up to a cone 10 which means if I ever want to actually get into some pottery and ceramic type stuff it should get hot enough to do just about whatever I want that will, of course, fit inside the kiln. Also, I'm getting the bead collar extension on it because I've always been a bit of a pyro and I have been amazed by glass work ever since the first time I saw someone doing a glass blowing demonstration when I was in highschool. I'm not interested in blowing glass but doing some torch work looks intriguing and from what I've read and seen I think I could do it. I'm starting off with soft glass so I can start off small but maybe someday I'll work up to the boro glasses. So any tips or recommendations on torch work are more than welcome.

Old friends

Today while we were driving around town running errands Dave got a call from an old co-worker of his. He had recently moved to Tallahassee and he was in town close by so he wanted to drop in to say hi. Of course that means the evening straightening for people coming over. My dining room is basically my "studio" and the dinning room table and hutch stay cluttered with my jewelry and clay. So I spent about an hour reorganizing and cleaning all that up. I found some old "friends" that I had forgotten about.

The first thing I found was this. My first successful (if you can call it that) attempt and wire wrapping. And I thought this thing looked amazing when I first did it, compared to my work now, not so much. LOL. But still, it brought back some old memories

The second thing I found were two stones that I had bought at an estate sale. The purple one is a very nice iolite cab that reminded me that I need to find some setting for it. I've wire wrapped stones this small before but this one I think needs more of a traditional setting.
The other reminded me why I have decided to save all the money I make off etsy to buy a kiln to use for metal clay. It is a beautiful jelly opal that has some very nice blue green fire in it. It will make an absolutely stunning ring but it's size is not a normal size you would find a setting for so it will have to be hand made.The past week or so has been good to me on etsy. I figure I have about 1/3 of what I need to buy one of the small recommended kilns. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have enough in 3 or 4 months.