Last Night's Castings & No Email . . .

I put both flasks in the pre-heated kiln at 10 yesterday morning.  I expected my burnout cycle to take 7 hours, but ended up pouring just after 9 hours.  The weather turned a little colder and rainy so I had some heat lags to take into account.  It's better to be slow and sure, 'cause you can definitely run a burnout cycle too fast and too hot.

As I was pouring I could hear the first spring peepers calling nearby.  Spring really is coming!

A.'s Anniversary Brooch turned out beautifully!

I'll be spending quite a bit of time de-sprueing with mini-cutoff discs tomorrow.  But all those heavy sprues were worth it.  After I grind and polish Pat will be setting a 2.5 mm AA ruby into each of the 10 petals.  This is going to be a really lovely brooch!

The ring for The Jewelers Workbench turned out well too.

I've already de-sprued and ground it.  It needs a little touching up and a final polish and it will be ready to deliver tomorrow!

For some reason Earthlink's email has been out of whack all weekend.  We can't access our mail at all.  All their support has said since yesterday is, "We are currently experiencing high call volume indicative of an email outage. We are currently investigating further and apologize for the inconvenience. Please continue to check this site for updates."  Jeepers.

Our Dear Friend Greylond called us last night.  He's in the wilds of Mississippi.  He was sitting by his campfire enjoying a glass of wine and thinking of us.  I was having a glass of beer and had just thought of him shortly before he called.  We had a good long talk, about many things.  We each raised a glass, "To absent Friends!"