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!!!!

White butterfly disaster has struck!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, well I had better come clean on here when things go.....er...... astray too!

I have been thinking about the butterfly murrini and colours and stuff and thought that I would make a white butterfly with green lobes.... hopefully it won't look like a moth dressed up as a butterfly, but it would be worth a play around at any rate.

I made the graduated green lobes which was fine and they came out really nicely. I dedided that I would put yellow surrounded by some clear for the small dots on the wings to try and make it sort of "delicate" and that turned out quite well. I made a couple blue/green dots for some extra oomph and they came out ok..... see for yourselves, this pic taken this morning just before attempting to put together for the final pull!

Being lazy and yet, in a bit of a hurry, I decided to ramp my kiln up very quickly and to avoid some crack-a-lacking when introduced into the flame put it on 560C. Well, rather than let the components soak somewhat at this temp I just couldn't wait and as soon as it it the top temp I got my first part out......... Crack time.... yep, huge big splitting nearly in half nasty cracks with bits falling off and completely ruining one half of my cane. Needless to say I was grateful for the kids all being at school, because there was some nasty swearing (even the FG one - F#@ Glass).

Once I had killed most of that side of the butterfly I was then left thinking..... what the hell do I do now? I decided to pop it back into the kiln and see if there is some decent slices to be had off the cane for fusing or polishing and left the other intact cane in there and put the lot back through a long annealling cycle. I am going to cut the one good half in half again and try putting those together in a more measured and careful manner.

Remember folks..... the murrini never forgives and is a card holding member of the Murphy's Law of cocking up!!!!!

NOT HAPPY!!!!!!