Sawdust January

Well, as expected, January hasn't gone quite to plan, but then I never really expected it to! The original plan was, tidy and sort out the work-spaces, make lots of stuff, work on some new experimental stuff, and do lots with the huge glass order I placed two weeks before Xmas.

I've managed to find time to make a few new marbles too!

The one big hold at the moment is a big order of coloured borosilicate glass, which left the USA warehouse on the 12th January. By 14th it had got to 'forwarded to exporter,' where it seemed to remain until 2nd, when on-line tracking said 'arrived in UK.' I finally heard today, on month later, it might have actually got through customs and just requires me to pay up for tax and duty before I can git my mitts on it!

In the meantime I have got some small degree of organisation going in the workshop. First on the list was the ever expanding quantity of jars containing frit and powder. I have quite alot of old baby food jars with special lids for plant micro-propagation (long story!)  These are ideal as they are designed to be removed with one hand, so I can easily pop the lid off one that I need to use whilst the other hand is holding a rod of hot glass ready.

Before

What I obviously needed was some kind of spice rack. I'd previously tried a 'lazy Susan' rotating stand to hold them, but it just seemed to take up too much desk room. The result isn't very neat or well made, but it does the job! The before and after photos show how much tidier it looks already!

I didn't realise how much frit I'd acquired, some of them only have a little left, so I'll use those up and start transferring over to all having the same jars. Luckly the commercial small 4oz Northstar jars are about the same height too, as I know I'm going to end up with some more of those too!

After

The slightly bigger job was to sort out rod storage for the incoming 26lb box of glass (yes, I went a little crazy with the ordering, but I figured it would keep me going for quite a while.)  It also became a bigger job as the table that it was going to go under had a strengthening bar that was in the way. In the end I replaced the table completely, it was quite old and rickety. A pack of 40mm plastic pipe chopped up into lengths has made a nice neat 60 storage holes, but I've left space above as I'd like to extend this later on. I probably should have gone for slightly wider tubing, some of the colours may have to take up 2 slots for now, but the 50mm came in dull grey rather than white. At the bottom I've left wider sections to keep the more bulky supplies of tubing.

Apart from this the other major January job has been to get the dust off my Etsy shop. If you check my Facebook page regularly you may have noticed I've gone listing crazy, as I try to get lots of variety and a range of items back into my Etsy shop. I've been aware for a while now how little I manage to list, Greenwich seems to have taken up an awful lot of time and energy this past year, so I'm taking a few weekends off over the quieter months to try and catch myself up in advance - if that makes sense!