As the title reflects, I feel I have been Chasing Rainbows to no avail. I needed someplace or thing to make me feel more grounded and accountable. Somewhere I can record my plans and efforts as I work towards meeting goals of increasing my Polymer Clay knowledge, skills, and abilities while working towards a healthier me, in mind, body, and soul. A place that reminds me that everything has the possibility to improve with effort (I might even catch part of one of those Rainbows, someday).

Busy Day

Posted by Sue C | Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 | Posted in , , ,

Hi, again, what a busy day I've had today and how glad I was to have that left over soup and bread for meals.  Mr. C was off work today (it's his Saturday).  You see, he works at a Nuclear Power Plant and normally works a rotating shift; with a week of days, a week of training, a week of swings, a week of mids, and a week of whatever they need him for and then starts over.  His weekends are also varied within those weeks and aren't always Saturday and Sunday.  However, right now they are in a 'refueling outage' so he's working 12 hour days 5-6 days a week (every other week he gets a 2 day weekend, on Sunday and Monday).  That's a lot better than in previous years when they had to work 12 hour days 7 days a week during the 'outage'.

Anyway, we decided to wait and go to town. . . just another aside here, we live 3 miles from a town of 2700 people with one IGA--and we're BIG TIME NOW, we've even got A (that's one) stoplight.  Therefore, where we shop most often is either 25 miles in one direction or 30 miles in the other direction, so we try to only 'go to town' to do shopping and errands once a week, usually on my Chiropractor day--which SHOULD be Tuesday this week.  Since we're basically snowed in (as far as MY car is concerned) and tomorrow is Mr. C's 'Sunday' this week, I'll change my appt and we'll take the Big Blue Truck to town.  It is BIG and has 4 wheel drive and 4 back tires, so it doesn't mind the snow.  Sheesh, I'm tired just trying to explain all that.  That's part of why I don't work outside the home, it just doesn't work schedule wise (the other part is just that I like to be home and play clay, LOL).  Anyway, here's a picture of our Big Blue Truck, so you can see I'll be safe tomorrow.

Yeah, that's our "Condo on Wheels" behind it, but I'll tell you more about that later this summer.

Anyway, how did I get so off track, I'm s'posed to be telling you about my busy day today, not about tomorrow.  So, since it was so cold we decided to wait and go to town tomorrow, yeah, that's where I was when this all started, which left me free to play clay all day today.  That's a good thing, as I have this bug 'somewhere' that I need to make some more eye canes.

Do you ever wonder what makes you do the things you do?  I don't usually give it much thought, I just know I'm weird and live with it, LOL, but writing this blog and taking pictures for it really makes me take a look at myself and YEP, I'm weird.  For example, it turns out my Sculpting a Fairy Child class doesn't start until January 29, so that gives me 19 days, I think. . . yep, that's right, 19 days to make eye canes.  Since I'm weird, and have a slew of color ideas, I may need that 19 days.  Here's why I'm weird though.  I have a new idea, so I have to COMPLETELY clean off my clay desk before I can start.  Why, you may ask, and I'd reply, "Not a clue!"  LMAO.  But since I did, I thought, gee, maybe somebody would like to see my work/play space so stopped to take a picture or two or well, just look below:

I have a great workspace, with room for 2 people to come play clay with me any time we want.




Here's the space on the left:



and here's the space on the right:









Oh dear, you ask, what's in the tub in the right hand workspace.  Hmmm, well, to be quite honest, it's a, well, it's a too big cane.  I had this bright idea to make a new type of cane, kind of a Mandala/Kaleidoscope (Mandalascope? LOL) combination.  I drew up a whole bunch of them.  I thought they would be the correct size to work with, however, my first part came out too large, so I pre-reduced it and then it was 9" long, so I made the rest of the cane 9" long, too.  It went together beautifully.  Then I started to pick it up to reduce it and realized I couldn't hold it in one hand (I had planned to reduce it the Jana Roberts Benzon Way) but I can't hold it to whack it on the floor, so now I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I suspect I'll just have to write to Jana and ask her, as I know she makes some huge canes.  Anyway, this is just one 6th of the cane, it needs reduced and then put together to make the complete Mandalascope.  I suppose you want to know what it looks like.  It looks and seems silly now, since it's well past the season and it was made in November for a Christmas cane, but since you are interested (or you wouldn't be reading this in the first place, now would you?):


This is the whole cane, all 9" X 51/2" triangle cane weighing in at only 5 1/2 lbs.  This is the face of it and the stars should meld together into a nice big star in the center.  So, I guess I should probably reduce the size of the rest of the ones I have all planned out, don't you think?  















 You might also be wondering what's on the wall behind the giant cane on the right hand workstation?  It's a fairy door, but this is a special fairy door, because it has a hatch for the water fairies to use, see?  

I made this one, but I have another fairy door I received as part of a swap, for the dry land fairies to use:


So, now I have a clean workspace and
I've given you a tour of my studio, whether you wanted one or not, and here's what I've been doing the rest of the day, besides wondering if I'm weird or not.  Why can't I just say, "Okay, self, you want to make a different color eye cane, go to it."  No, instead, I say, "Okay, self, look at all the colors you could made into eye canes, and fairies could have any colored eyes, so let's make them ALL."  And, of course, I can't just make one at a time, I take a couple of days to make ALL my color sets up.  So, today, I mixed and sheeted out the first 4 color sets along with several colors for little highlights or sparkles in the eye:

Of course I still have several colors on my desk to mix and sheet up, but then I'll be ready for the extruder.

But that's for another day!
I still don't know why I seem to have to always do things 'assembly line' style, but that's just me, guess I'll just have to live with it.  See Ya!

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