I managed to make 4 kittycats before my blog-writing efforts stalled me out completely. The week, which is basically shown from left to right, did not begin well, as the bead on the left broke off the release. Consequently it's unfinished, and it cracked besides.

So then I made the second bead, using a different release—Arrow Springs’ super blue sludge, which a friend claimed not to like and gave me to try out—and it too broke. I did feel, however, I was making progress, especially with the eyes: this is where I finally began to realize that adding glass around the eyes would cause them to shrink. It's a variation of the same thing that happens when you do those mushroom pendant inside-out pendants the boro folks are so fond of.

Duh.

But the rotten thing still cracked across the muzzle.

Finally, by bead 3 I managed to make a bead in which I didn't break the bead release, possibly because I was back to using my favorite all-purpose release, fusion flame-dri. So, having fiddled with this bead for an hour and a half—I'd decided no matter what I did all my beads were gonna come out badly, and that released me from ‘production’ to ‘r&d’ mode, which had the advantage of reducing my expectations (not to mention my stress levels)—I punched the advancement to get the kiln to go into soak&anneal, but the temp just...kept...dropping.

So I kept rekeying in the sequence to put the kiln into soak, and it just wouldn't work. I finally concluded, after stubbornly repeating this action three or four times, because I can do wishful thinking with the best of them, that the controller had crapped out again. —This happened several years ago, and the wizard fixed it by virtue of switching to another pole on the relay, which Craig Milliron had kindly informed us was only good for a hundred-thousand cycles or so. (In fact, not hearing that clicking on and all was the subconscious cue, I believe, that finally forced me to realize that it wasn't operator error.)

So the wizard took the controller apart, moved the connections to the last of the three poles, put the thing back together...aaaand the kiln still didn't work. I finally discovered that part of the power cord to the elements had burnt right thru.

Well, lucky me, the bead cooled slowly enough that after the kiln was repaired I was able to batch anneal (that is, ramp the bead up slowly from room temp) and then, the following day, actually make the bead I'd tried to make the day before, a side-drilled bead. Yay, two beads in a row in which the release didn't break!

And in retrospect, I decided that perhaps the dying wiring had had a bad impact on the previous bead(s?) annealing. Or at least, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it:)

photo 15jan, post started 15jan, completed 17jan10

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn