Roy G. Biv?

I was up way too late last night and completely slept through Dave's leaving for work this morning. I did get up around 7:30 though, then got a nap in the late morning. I think I'm fighting off an infection, possibly in my ear, so I'm sleeping a lot. I'll see what the ENT has to say about it during my appointment tomorrow.

After I had a shower, I pulled together the bedding to take down to Judi's to wash while I worked in the studio.

I put in a load of laundry and then went out to work on my large sculpture. I was mainly working on the arms and hands today. I decided to add hands that mimic the hands on this piece:

I love the way they look, but they are a major, major pain in the ass to build. First I have to cut nichrome wire (what I call "high fire wire" because it won't disintegrate when it's fired to cone 6) for each finger. Then I have to make each finger out of clay with the wire inserted, form three bones in each finger, and attach it to the hand with the wire. It's tedious work but I can't let my mind get too far away from me because there are too many little places to screw up.

Anyway, I got that done. I also measured the sculpture and--ayiiii!!--I was right. It will just barely fit into the kiln with the bottom shelf where it is now. I may put the bottom shelf down a half inch, just to give myself some breathing room, but there isn't going to be the usual crown of flowers at the top.

After transferring the contents of the washer to the dryer and starting a new load of laundry, I worked on attaching the upper arms to the forearms/hands. The hands were so heavy that they started to rip apart at the wrist. When I reinforced the wrists, the forearms got so heavy that the arms started to rip apart at the elbow. So I reinforced the elbow. Ay yi yi! It's all one form of damage control or another from here on out, seems like.

When Dave got off work, he came up to the studio and we unloaded the kiln we fired yesterday. There are a lot of new, beautiful things--and one or two not so beautiful things. But every kiln is a lesson, especially now when we're working with entirely new glazes.

After that task was finished, we went off to have dinner with my mom, aunt, and brother. We went to the awesome, cheap Chinese place and I had my broccoli in spicy garlic sauce. We ordered six dishes for the table and shared. It was all very tasty. We had planned on going to Costco with my brother after dinner, but we were all so full that we decided to hold off and go tomorrow.

Dave and I came back up to the studio and while the last load of laundry tumbled dry, he helped me to attach the arms to the sculpture. I mostly needed an extra pair of eyes to make sure I wasn't about to do anything stupid with the placement. Then I used the extra pair of hands to hold one of the arms while I reinforced it at the shoulder. I could have managed it alone, but it was a lot easier with two of us.

I was worried that the arms would pull away from the attachment at the elbow, so I made a kind of splint for them out of dry-cleaning bags to hold them in place while they stiffen up.

After that, I started painting this little one:

She's the one I said I relate to least and I realized that I don't relate to her because, in my mind, she is a bride. In fact, she is so bridal that I started painting her all white. Everything, head to toe, white.  Then I thought: Well, I should give her some color, maybe a bit of pastel here and there. Then I thought, why not make her dress gray? So I haven't decided. Keep to all-white bridal or go for some color and make it interesting? I could pull a Roy G. Biv for the layers of ruffles--there are the correct numbers--and all white elsewhere.

There are too many possibilities at this point!