argh dammit where is my BRAIN?
May. 21st, 2010 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Yay: earlier this week at my third flameworking class, I think I finally started to very elementarily grok the process-- the length/proportions of a well-adjusted flame, the color progression of the glass as it heats up enough to melt the surface and self-round by surface tension, the proper (non-)angle to hold the mandrel to keep the resulting bead reasonably symmetrical, and so forth.
Less yay: I have managed to misplace all of my post-kiln shaping gadgets (bead reamers, grinding stone, and itsy-bitsy brush) as well as my main UV flashlight. I can replace them if I really have to, but I know they're around here somewhere, and buying replacements always summons out the original missing items to greet the newcomers.
What really, really gets me is that I clearly remember the last time and place I *used* the shaping gadgets, and logically I would've kept all of them together in a single spot for safekeeping afterward. Evidently somewhere so very safe that even I cannot find it.
I've also managed to misplace my main roll of packing tape with attached tape-cutter, though at least there are other rolls of packing tape all over the place. And the gadget-searching process has finally driven me to clear out certain areas and discard old postal receipts from 2007 etc.
Meanwhile, without the multi-LED UV flashlight, it's much harder to get pix of uranium-glass items fluorescing-- I do have single-LED UV keychains but of course they're not as bright; most of them are borderline UV with a lot of visible violet spillover (which makes them more versatile as semi-normal flashlights, but interferes with good pix), and my comparably narrow-wavelength single UV LED only has a squeeze switch, so it's considerably trickier to keep the LED on *and* hold the camera steady.
So I can't set up good listings of any new uranium glass stuff, which means that there's no point in making new uranium glass stuff, which frustrates me because I have a new order of possible uranium glass beads coming in today. That supplier normally doesn't retain the Czech color codes, but they happened to randomly append a familiar-looking number to a listing I hadn't noticed before-- the pic was really washed out, but the existing uranium-glass beads I already have in that code number's color scheme are very pale and photograph very poorly against a white background, which is what they used. Even if the new ones aren't a uranium colorblend, they'll at least be a visible-light match to the older ones that are.
But some of the listings I was prepping were assortments of loose beads that included some uranium glass, and which really need the glow pix. I could rearrange the assortments to dump out the uranium, but it was hard enough for me to settle on those particular assortments in the first place. (I went to Trader Joe's last night for eggs, but got stuck in decision paralysis because they have too many damn kinds of eggs. After an hour, I gave up and fled home.)
...I was planning to pick up this week's lampworking results later today, though now I'm wondering if I'll be able to get myself out of the house without tripping over my fallen-out brain cell. I do need to get to the post office to mail some orders from earlier this week. But before heading out, I still need to superficially re-sort all the remaining piles of stuff that I already searched through, so it won't look worse than when I started.
I would headdesk, but my head would probably fall off the desk and roll under some random other piece of furniture where I couldn't find it.
Update-- ...increasingly inevitable but still dreadful conclusion: I think I'm going to have to muck out my bead zone to find those gadgets. It already looks like an explosion in a bead factory back there.
At least it might give me additional incentive to Get Rid Of Unused Beads. I'm on the verge of shovelling unsorted handfuls into a flat-rate box.
Further update-- after excavating most of the bead zone, finally found the gadgets near the lamp base, all nearly tucked into an unlabelled white cardboard box of the same type as the zillion other unlabelled white cardboard boxes stacked about. Now I need to stuff all of the beads back into the bead zone.
The flurry of activity incited the cats into leaping about, careening into random piles/boxes, and knocking them over. While trying to pick my way over there to examine the carnage, I tripped over an open container of beads and confettied them all over the carpet.
I'd better shove everything back into some semblance of order within the next few hours, or the wombat-consort is going to implode when he gets home. He was so happy this morning that I'd sorted through the unopened mail, old magazines, and sundry other stuff on the dining-room table.
Cats: your local agents of entropy, contributing daily to the eventual heat-death of the universe.
Less yay: I have managed to misplace all of my post-kiln shaping gadgets (bead reamers, grinding stone, and itsy-bitsy brush) as well as my main UV flashlight. I can replace them if I really have to, but I know they're around here somewhere, and buying replacements always summons out the original missing items to greet the newcomers.
What really, really gets me is that I clearly remember the last time and place I *used* the shaping gadgets, and logically I would've kept all of them together in a single spot for safekeeping afterward. Evidently somewhere so very safe that even I cannot find it.
I've also managed to misplace my main roll of packing tape with attached tape-cutter, though at least there are other rolls of packing tape all over the place. And the gadget-searching process has finally driven me to clear out certain areas and discard old postal receipts from 2007 etc.
Meanwhile, without the multi-LED UV flashlight, it's much harder to get pix of uranium-glass items fluorescing-- I do have single-LED UV keychains but of course they're not as bright; most of them are borderline UV with a lot of visible violet spillover (which makes them more versatile as semi-normal flashlights, but interferes with good pix), and my comparably narrow-wavelength single UV LED only has a squeeze switch, so it's considerably trickier to keep the LED on *and* hold the camera steady.
So I can't set up good listings of any new uranium glass stuff, which means that there's no point in making new uranium glass stuff, which frustrates me because I have a new order of possible uranium glass beads coming in today. That supplier normally doesn't retain the Czech color codes, but they happened to randomly append a familiar-looking number to a listing I hadn't noticed before-- the pic was really washed out, but the existing uranium-glass beads I already have in that code number's color scheme are very pale and photograph very poorly against a white background, which is what they used. Even if the new ones aren't a uranium colorblend, they'll at least be a visible-light match to the older ones that are.
But some of the listings I was prepping were assortments of loose beads that included some uranium glass, and which really need the glow pix. I could rearrange the assortments to dump out the uranium, but it was hard enough for me to settle on those particular assortments in the first place. (I went to Trader Joe's last night for eggs, but got stuck in decision paralysis because they have too many damn kinds of eggs. After an hour, I gave up and fled home.)
...I was planning to pick up this week's lampworking results later today, though now I'm wondering if I'll be able to get myself out of the house without tripping over my fallen-out brain cell. I do need to get to the post office to mail some orders from earlier this week. But before heading out, I still need to superficially re-sort all the remaining piles of stuff that I already searched through, so it won't look worse than when I started.
I would headdesk, but my head would probably fall off the desk and roll under some random other piece of furniture where I couldn't find it.
Update-- ...increasingly inevitable but still dreadful conclusion: I think I'm going to have to muck out my bead zone to find those gadgets. It already looks like an explosion in a bead factory back there.
At least it might give me additional incentive to Get Rid Of Unused Beads. I'm on the verge of shovelling unsorted handfuls into a flat-rate box.
Further update-- after excavating most of the bead zone, finally found the gadgets near the lamp base, all nearly tucked into an unlabelled white cardboard box of the same type as the zillion other unlabelled white cardboard boxes stacked about. Now I need to stuff all of the beads back into the bead zone.
The flurry of activity incited the cats into leaping about, careening into random piles/boxes, and knocking them over. While trying to pick my way over there to examine the carnage, I tripped over an open container of beads and confettied them all over the carpet.
I'd better shove everything back into some semblance of order within the next few hours, or the wombat-consort is going to implode when he gets home. He was so happy this morning that I'd sorted through the unopened mail, old magazines, and sundry other stuff on the dining-room table.
Cats: your local agents of entropy, contributing daily to the eventual heat-death of the universe.