Geez, i’ve had the same issues with bronze casting. I struggle and struggle for a sculpture and finally cast it. But I suspect bronze is a lot more expensive than glass, and the casting method is so wasteful that it is a ridiculously expensive hobby. I’ve made two castings, and I’d love to make more, but each one ends up costing me about $200. Yikes.

That *is* an expensive hobby. You have one expensive acorn and bookend. But they are so nice and *you* made them. I’m glad that glass is much less expensive. My tree panel probably cost me all of $2 in glass. Well, a little more than that when I go buy new glass, but pretty inexpensive, nevertheless.

But yes, being able to easily draw (or sculpt) would help matters a lot. Every time I look at my pattern it reminds me of a mutant kohlrabi. Looks very tree-ish in glass, though.

This evening I cut the glass, ground and foiled the edges, and now I’m ready to solder. I’ll do that tomorrow. I’m pretty pleased with how it looks, though it probably should have been a little wider. And I snapped a branch in half. But, since it’s a practice piece, I patched the edges and the tree will just have to live with a cracked branch.

Don’t despair........if I drew a tree and put it next to yours, you would look like a regular Van Gogh!!  It used to be a joke in our family when the boys were little that “mommy cannot even draw a good stick figure.” And yet, both of them were fairly good in that area.....Go figure (and their father is as bad as me!!)

At least you accomplished something yesterday, I planted my fat you know what on my front steps Friday afternoon and yesterday, read two books and soaked up the sun.  I have this notion I can store it up for what is ahead!! 

Today though nothing like that shall occur, it is foggy and gray and damp, so will have to do double duty to make up for lost time!!

Happy Sunday!

Yeah, the drawing gene bypassed me completely. The lad has it and draws really well. He can even draw portraits that actually look like the subject he’s drawing.

I had my windows and doors open all day yesterday so the pretty weather had the chance to come in for several hours. But today....UGH! We’re supposed to have this until next Saturday, with maybe a few hours of reprieve on Thursday. It’s so ugly out there.

While I worked on my glass, I had an audio book playing. The library has a pretty decent selection of downloadable audio books. When I work on my glass, it’s usually a 4 hour or more time investment, so audio books work well for that.

I’ve never tried an audio book.  I’ve always felt it required a level of concentration that would preclude my doing much of anything else, just like one of them things printed between two covers.  I guess I’m wrong, huh?

It depends on what I’m doing, whether I can pay attention. Working on glass seems to use a different part of my brain than the listening and comprehending part. 

But I lose track of the story when I try to listen while cooking or cleaning. Don’t understand it...just the way my brain works, I guess.

Speaking of losing track of the story....when I used to frequent the gym a lot more than I do now, it was always amusing for me to watch other women on exercise bikes when they were reading something I had already read.  I could always tell about where they were in the book by the level of their effort.  LOL

Oh my gosh, Cyn, now that’s funny. 

And speaking of gyms...mine has a row of 4 televisions in front of the treadmills, tuned to 4 different stations: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg. Each row of treadmills is outfitted with headphones, tuned into one of the stations. Maybe it’s unintentional, but the Fox and MSNBC rows are on opposite sides of the room. Or maybe it’s not unintentional when Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann are on at the same time.