June 22-28, 2018 Fort Collins

Sunset tonight from our deck. I have been playing with dyeing the pine needles. The top green looking ones are what they look like before dyeing. The bottom ones are dyed tangerine. They came out nice. The right ones are dyed navy blue, I left them in the dye bath too long  and they are black. Raven wing black, kind of shines a bit blue. 

The masterpiece after the first firing, painted with gold-you can't see it until it is fired and in the kiln getting ready to slump.  Below it is slumped into a plate and done. 

John cooked a scrumptious dinner tonight that we ate out on our deck.  Still dyeing pine needles. The bottom are what they look like before. I picked them green from a fallen branch and dried them in the dark so they would be light colored. The colors so far, left to right are wine, navy blue-they look blue in the sunlight here, black inside and tangerine. I will have a rainbow of needles soon. 

I drove down to Firestone to visit with my friend Ila who is visiting some friends today. My brother Jerry came with me. Jerry, Ila and Suep. This young girl Nora took our photo. Afterwards she wanted her photo taken too. 

 

 The gathering was an annual family affair. They were honoring relatives who had passed. Here is the George Ross memorial with his coffee. Jerry and I.

 Jerry as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow near his house. Sunset tonight. 

I stayed up most of the night last night making this beautiful balloon piece in memory of my dear friend Barb Flowers who passed away last week to enter into the next glass show that I needed to send in photos of the pieces on Monday. She loved flying in  hot air balloons so this is her flying to heaven. This Monday morning when I opened the kiln the piece was shattered. I used a piece of not compatible glass in it so they cooled at different rates and shattered the glass.  It was so incompatible that I was able to lift the balloon up off the shattered pieces and John suggested I set it in resin for a basket center.  So all is not lost. 

Here is the seasons piece I am sending to be juried in the show along with the above The Space Between piece.  Golden grasses in the sunset by a lake on my bike ride tonight. 

 Sunset over the baseball fields along the bike path. A Mexican hat flower and brome grass along the bike path.  Sunset over the baseball field along the bike path.

I worked in the glass/pine needle mines today. I went to invite Jimjim to dinner at John and Mandy's and he was deep into the work on their  rental house. He demonstrated the cake decorating style of mortaring his foundation that he invented Dane his hired hand bringing more mortar and Jimjim pointing to the hole they dug to get to the leak in the foundation. It looks abut 8 feet deep to me. I rode my bike to John and Mandy's on the hottest day of the year. I actually only rode half of the way and then John picked me up and took me to John and Mandy's for dinner. John fixed the tire on my bike. It has had a tack in it for about a week. John, John and Mandy went kayaking this afternoon while I was in the mines.