July 2-10, 2022 Fort Collins, Colorado

 88 and partly sunny today.

We had a great steak dinner at John and Mandy's last night. Great to see them. John, John and Mandy admiring John's new orange kayak. 

I put these pieces with the pattern bars in the kiln this afternoon. They look good. The firing won't be done till late tomorrow. I might die of curiosity before they are out.  The large round one in the upper left corner has a piece I made at the glass expo in the middle. I made the triangular pattern bars to go with it. Last night I had it ready to go with black around it. At the last minute I realized that I use the wrong COE of black glass, they are not compatible and the piece would have broken into many pieces. Today I redid it. I am out of black in that COE of glass so had to use two blues instead. They would have been done today if I had used the right COE, but I think the blues look better anyway. While I was working on glass John when kayaking with John and Mandy.

John kayaking. John M and John G kayaking, John G is in his new kayak.

It rained big huge drops in the sun, very pretty. Sunset was spectacular.

The masterpieces fresh out of the kiln tonight. The edges of the two big round ones are really dark cobalt blue. Sunset.

 

Square Sunsets, 10 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches. More new pattern bars to play with.. 

My brother Jerry took us out to dinner  for my birthday. season. We had Chinese at Lulu's.  Fun to see him.  Sun bowl maybe. 9 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches. I am loving how these are coming out. 

Not sure what to call this. The pattern reminds me of Navajo blanket. It is 7 x 2 inches. All these bowls are extra thick with cold worked and polished edges. Sunset with the waxing gibbous moon. 

A big anvil shaped cloud to the south with the moon.  These pieces are at this moment firing in my kiln. 

I don't like how they came out of the kiln. Way too much dark in a couple. The backsides looked better on three of them, so they are back in the kiln flipped over, fire polishing backs. Sunset last night on our stroll around Old Town. 

While strolling around Old Town last night this huge dog bit John's left hand. It is a nasty deep wound, there was lots of blood. The ambulance came. I took him to the ER for disinfection and stitches. His hand is now wrapped in a huge bandage with a split. He is seeing orthopedics tomorrow. He claims it does not feel too bad. The part that hurts the most is where he got the tetanus shot. Sunset tonight. 

June 24-July 1, 2022 Fort Collins and Denver, Colorado

 Been in the 90's. Threats of rain, but not much.

Still working with the glass pattern bars. This last batch I did not put enough glass in to fill the molds. So I took two of them and put them in a larger mold with some black frit. With luck they should come out with nice black borders. I am going to make some fancier pattern bars from some of my scrap, so I dug out all the small pieces of scrap and it is a lot. Good to have a use for them. Also going to try another technique called screen melts that will use up a lot of it.

We could hear all this cheering from the house, so we went downtown to see what was up. It is march and protest to the defeat of Roe vs Wade. It makes me sad to see it defeated.  Sunset tonight. 

Last night I fired the two pieces that were ameba shaped since I did not put enough glass in the mold

in a bigger mild with pieces of black glass around them. This is how they came out. Look much better. Except the one with the 4 holes in it. I will have to think of some cool shape to slump it too. Both pieces have some see through glass in them, but you can't see it when does not have light coming through it.

Today I put this bigger ameba shaped piece of glass in a larger mold with black around it and it is firing right now. Sunset tonight. 

Sunset. These are the latest glass pattern bars I made. You can't tell a thing about them until they are sliced and then fused.

Downtown Denver from the Kaiser building. I am down in Denver visiting my Dr's. I had lunch with my friends Katie and Katy. Always good to see them.

 

Rainbow on the way to dinner.  I had dinner with my friend Cindy. She purchased two of my baskets. Always good to see her. We worked on Colorado Trail Crew together many times 20 years.

I slumped the last two pattern bar pieces into bowls. 

New fancier pattern bars. This triangle one is 14 inches long. I made it to match the small plate I made at the glass expo. The triangles are cool. More pattern bars. They turned out way better than I thought they would since I had no idea what I was doing. The top one was sort of random, the middle one I tried to make a kind of southwestern one and the bottom one was totally random, I just piled  up some scraps. It is not exactly aligned like the ones above it, but it does form a kind of repeating pattern. Stay tuned for masterpieces made from these. 

We walked downtown after dinner. There was a big thunderhead that looked like it was going north. I almost brought an umbrella, but thought no, if I do, it won't rain. It was a torrential rain. We stood under an awning for awhile, then went inside and had dessert and it was still raining hard. We just walked home and got drenched. Best rain we have had since we returned home.

 

June 12-22, 2022 Fort Collins, Colorado

 95 and sunny. We made it back to Fort Collins. 

 Driving east on I-80 with a tailwind. One last fill up. With the tail wind we got 10.1 mpg!

Woo hoo, welcome to Colorado! 4 hours of driving and then 4 hours of unpacking the bus, up and down stairs in 95 degrees to our place above the garage. We are whooped. Sunset a couple days ago. We both have killer colds. Tested neg for covid, so just sick and my back is still killing me, so not much activity. 

The city  threw a block party so we could meet with city people in .the park 1/2 block away. There was drinks, snacks, games, police, fire etc. people. The Fort Collins Police command post and me sitting in the SWAT armored vehicle. We got to see some really high tech drones. 

 

John got to visit with former coworkers and I got a tour of a fire truck at the city block party. It is always reassuring that we have dedicated officers and equipment protecting us. The right half of a gigantic thunderhead last night at sunset.

The left half of the same cloud. There was a big storm south of us for hours last night, nice lightening show. Flowers in Old Town Square Fort Collins.

We had dinner on our deck.  The weather was lovely. We have been having the same homemade chicken soup for days. Each day we add something else so it seems like a different meal. It  must be helping, our colds are much, much better. I am gong to have to start selling some art, I am running out of room to put it. Baskets on the dining room table.

Baskets on the chest of drawers. Baskets in the living room with a couple of older glass pieces I made.

I finished  Rainbow Dance. It is combed glass I made at the glass expo in Las Vegas in May, but I finished it off by slumping it into a bowl mold. I am going to try some more with this technique. I bought this new wet tile saw so I can cut thick pieces of glass. I am working on a pattern bar technique.

The sun setting on me cutting pattern bars in the backyard. The pattern bars before cutting.  I arranged the pattern bar slices in molds and fired them.

This is how they came out, top side and back side. I did not have enough glass in the top two , so they did not fill the mold. Meanwhile John is BBQing cauliflower steaks to go with bbq pork and farro pilaf. They came out yummy.

I slumped last night. The River piece that I made at the glass expo was flat when I brought it home, I slumped it into the wave mold. Trying to decide where to mount it on something, or leave it as is. I also slumped the two not round pattern bar pieces.