my first big break

Well I took the plate out of the kiln today. Sadly it was in two pieces:

Thanks to the helpful folks over at warmglass.com, I have a couple leads on the reason why this happened, and will adjust future firings to prevent it from happening again (hopefully)

As for what to do with it...I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. I have plans to fix it, but they hinge on supplies arriving in the mail. Since we are leaving for two weeks on Thursday, I won't be able to do much in the way of repair until we get back. In the meantime, my next project is going to be: pattern bars

photo borrowed from http://www.clearwaterglass.com (he does some pretty neat work)

I've already got glass cut for one of them. I am going to do two quilt block designs. A log cabin (top) and a double v (bottom), but not in the colors shown. They are stock images from www.quilt.com (a good resource for patterns if you are a quilter)

So after they get fused together, which I have read is a 56 hour affair!) I can slice them up and lay them side by side and make some cool designs. Kinda similar in theory to cut rock candy, as seen below, but you can't eat glass!

And now for the cute Sara pictures that you have all been waiting for:

Sara has been showing a much greater interest in interacting with the dogs lately. We are entering the fun phase of dog slobber/hair covered hands and feet. It's actually kinda funny to watch her harass the dogs. Her favorite game is to get in her walker and play bumper cars with their food bowls.

I think back to all the times that Oscar harassed me; barking at me and instigating interaction when I wasn't looking for it, and I can't help but think " what goes around, comes around".

And I don't have much sympathy for him.