Search This Blog

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Great Honey Dipper Disaster of 2011

Christmas Honey Dippers
Oh dear, disaster has struck at my house on Melbourne Cup day in Western Sydney.  I came home early from Leo's work Melbourne Cup function to take my new stock of christmas themed Honey Dippers up to the honey lady only to find my Mum (who was up visiting from Canberra) was in tears.... not just tears but sobbing inconsolably sort of tears.  I was understandably concerned, counted my three kids were all here, checked I had the clean undies on (something that would potentially have made her cry with frustration if not), looked around to check there were no flames.... and then asked the fatal question...... "what's wrong?"
Honey Dippers on stand before floor annealing... ie. breaking into bits!
It turns out that poor Mum had been putting a bag on the table and had knocked off my whole box of honey dippers (packed and ready to take) off the table face down into the tiled floor......hmmmmm, only one lonely one survived... wouldn't you know it.... it was the ugliest simple one!!!!!!!!!

As you can see above Leo has made me a super cool display stand for the Blue Mountains Honey peeps and I am positive they will love that bit, but I REALLY want to take along some actual stock too, so the kiln is heating up right now and I will make another dent in the list.

Broken "bits" of honey dippers
I am sure there will be a little tiny bit of angst making more of these and the reality is, being borosilicate glass, they could be repaired, but it would be quite a bit faster for me to just make some new ones.  The added benefit is also that I would know they were lovely and strong - sort of like a new car rather than a refurbished one.  At least this time around I will be a little faster and probably do a better job avoiding the odd pitfall you have with sculptural glass items.

I still feel badly for Mum who has been totally distraught for two days about this..... she's still upset I might add!

I am a bit more prosaic about the whole thing, after all, no-one was hurt and really...its only sand!!!!

2 comments:

  1. Aww Nat I can imagine how bad your mum feels... god I don't know what I'd do if I did that... good to see you are in pretty good spirits about the whole incident!

    Karyn

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's so sad, for your mom and for you! Interestingly, I've also been making honey dippers, but using soft glass. Had a special order, and didn't even take a photo, bah. Your work is beautiful! And I enjoy your writing.

    ReplyDelete