Back to the Grind

So, usually when people return from a week away from their spouse, they are met with a hug, perhaps a kiss, and a "welcome home".  I'm still waiting for that.  I arrived back home during the afternoon on Saturday, unpacked and started my laundry (yes, I was frighteningly efficient).  I had asked if I needed to come into the shop and had been told "no", so I didn't bother.  Sunday I started catching up on some computer work and played LOTRO for several hours, even finally sitting down and writing a new story - I'm woefully behind on my writing since I have discovered I can't write effectively on my laptop in a hotel *sigh*.  Today I am still catching up, and I will be for quite a while still. 

The good things about my trip come down to creativity and friends.  I had a chance to meet many of my friends, as well as some new ones.  I finally have a face to put to my friend Dot - we've been writing on boards together for many years.  But I failed to find Charlene or Grace.  I ran into many customers, including Colleen, Randy, Mary and Dawn, and met new friends.  And I had the chance to play with fire and glass - can you say 7th Heaven? 

These were the enamels that I made during
class.  The Yellow and Salmon pendants in the center
row are two-sided and are enameled the same.  I kept
one, and gave the other to my friend Zhie who wined and dined
and toured me through Milwaukee.  The bottom four
fit into a changeable pendant. 

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the illustration that I am doing for Darth's story in Big Bang Tolkien.  The method and passage crystallized on my drive home, I now have the dimensions nailed, the methodology nailed, and I will begin working on that quickly.  As always, in my life, it will be a bit edgy and incorporating multi-media techniques, but I was given permission to do that, so that's my direction.  I think it will be fun, a bit cheezy, and hopefully not TOO work intensive since my time, as always, has limitations. 

Mary had never enameled before and just did a great job.  I really
love the color combinations and patterns that she ended up with.  

Denise is from the Minneapolis/St Paul area and a surface designer.  You

can see her love of pattern and color coming through in her work. 

These lovely items were Claudia's work.  She did a lot of

very fun freehand work.  

These items were from Tom.  He was very focused and precise.  As a
former engineer, his precision really came through in his work.  He did

some great work with the lustre decals - some eyepopping results.  

The pictures are from my enameling intensive class.  There were five students and we worked like crazy for three days.  At the end of that time, we took photos of everything we had created.  I'm sharing those with you today.  The class was held in the Anatomy lab, so we had skeletons, 3-D body muscle representations, and such all around us, rather bizarre, but fun.  Tomorrow...the Chocolate Bar!