It's Sunday night and I can't believe I have to go to work tomorrow again. Weekends are always too short, even with having the Friday off. I am still trying to work only 4 days at the office, but it does not work out this way all the time. I don't know why some people love to schedule meetings on Fridays... At least this time I pulled it off and had my 3 day "creation" weekend.
I needed it. Esty is keeping me busy and with the Spring
Artful Home catalog out now, there were also some orders for the featured "
Aquarius" ring.
Seems the catalog exposure really brings in sales. Since it looks like they want to put the ring in the next catalog too, I need to order more of those aquamarines. Wish they would choose another of my designs with stones that are easier to be sourced. I have such a hard time finding nice oval aquamarine cabs in the size I need. Luckily next weekend happens to be the International Jewelry and Gem show in the LA Convention Center. Already checked with my new supplier for these stones and he confirmed to bring a batch of those gems for me. Hope I don't overspend on other pretty little treasures again. I "hate" going to these shows. It's so tempting. Too many pretty precious things to admire and trade for credit card information. Some girls spend all their money on shoes, I spend it on gems.
Normally I try to do the wax work for the weekly orders all on Friday to be able to do a Saturday cast. But I switched it this week to get a head start on finishing last weekends castings and get a few rings out of the door. I also needed to go to downtown LA in the morning to get some more silver for all these new orders. Almost fainted when I saw the bill for the sterling silver casting grain. It's now over 40$ per toz, crazy! After finishing some rings, I ended up starting on the wax work at 8pm. This meant having to put in a long night with vacuuming the investment for 6 rings at 2am. And then the rain started.
I realized I really should have checked the weather report before scheduling my casting for Sunday. It was poring cats and dogs all day! Living in LA, I almost forget that it does occasionally rain here. And when it does, it rains hard. My dog Lena did not get out of her bed all day long. She snuggled up in the pillows the entire day and only got up for food and the occasional look out of her doggy door. Wish I could do that too, the pillow part. I miss spending rainy Sundays in bed.
With the rain, every time I checked the temperature outside on the kiln, I got drenched. For better fume ventilation the kiln is outside under a little roof overhang where it does not get direct rain on it. But the overhang is not wide enough to protect me too. Fortunately the kiln electronics did not get affected by the humidity and it finished the 6 hour burn out cycle without problems and one wet caster. Now I have a few castings to finish over the week before next weeks new batch.
