(And no, I don't mean you, Mr. Heath!) Bob-the-blowdryer died a fiery death on Wednesday. I laid him to rest (in the trash can) and... mourned. Slightly. Maybe I should explain. I name my inanimate (but usually mechanical) objects once they've hung around long enough to exhibit some quirks. That's why I drive Sherry-the-Camry, peer into the Web on Izzita-the-iPad, [...]
Babica Hen Cafe Location: Dundee, OR Price to brunch two: $35 or thereabouts There's Breakfast. And then, apparently, there's Not Breakfast. At least that's what it said on the menu at Babica Hen, where Mom and I stopped for brlunch on the way back from Lincoln City. We'd been there for a family weekend and Mom, eschewing the [...]
What do the above pieces have in common? They still live with me. I’ve never really thought of myself as sentimentalist. Sure, I sometimes sob at tearjerker chickflicks or cracking good animation or sublimely elegant algorithms or wonderful UX or hardware that really IS “plug and play” or somebody just being nice for no good reason or incredible art. And maybe I [...]
Did I ever mention why I love--that is, L-O-V-E, all caps--Glassland? For the uninitiated: Glassland = Portland, Oregon, USA. For its size, Portland has more glassmakers, glass artists, glass factories, glass sellers, glass collectors, glass sales, registered glass websites, glass businesses, and just plain old glass lovers, i.e., glassists, than just about anywhere. The only things Portland has more of than glass are nice [...]
"The recommended amount of air leakage for your home is 2,060 CFM50. The actual amount of air leakage tested to be 6093 CFM50. The results of this test show your home is 196% above the recommended level of air leakage. This classifies your home as Very Leaky and puts air leakage reduction as a high priority for energy savings and [...]
This is the fourth and final installment of the (longer-than-War-and-Peace) tutorial on making a pate de verre panel. In the first post, Carla, Shelby and I designed and made our models. In the second, we "invested" them, i.e., poured refactory plaster over them and made molds, and in the third we filled and fired the molds. This time [...]
Stopped off at Home Depot to pick up a couple of things, waited patiently in line to pay for my purchases. And no, that's not the line I'm talking about. While I waited, I daydreamed about the new Sapphire Rose lead crystal billets* waiting on my doorstep (yum). That occupied me all the way up to the counter, where the credit card reader [...]
By now you’re probably wondering when this is ever going to end; we’ve made our models, turned them into molds…now what? We fill them, that’s what. In this post I’ll discuss how to choose and layer frit into your mold, and getting them into the kiln. In the final post (next week), I’ll show you how we finished the panels. [...]
"Maybe we're just too old to spark," my sister laughed. We were standing in a strange bathroom with the lights off, trying to get wintergreen Lifesavers to light up as we crunched them with our teeth. Nothing was happening. Correction: Something WAS happening, something that had nothing whatsoever to do with blue-white sparks shooting out of my mouth. We were just [...]
In Part I of this series, I gave a (long-winded) description of designing, making and refining a model for a pate de verre garden panel. It's about 5x7 inches and maybe a half-inch thick (or a bit less), meant to hang on the wall. In Part II (this post), I'll talk about making the refractory mold. Part III will cover [...]
