Enamels teach patience

I've never been a patient person. Always wanted to get there first, get the test done first, get it done, done done.

Enamels have taught me to slow down. You can't rush them; if you do you've just screwed up hours of work. It took me an hour and a half to lay in the damp enamel powder (a process known as wet-pack), and then I spent another 10 minutes getting rid of as much of the stray enamel bits as I could. Then I had to wait for the enamel to dry--you really, really don't want to put water in a 1350F environment--before I could fire it to see if I screwed everything up. All that for about 3 minutes in the kiln. (Then I had to add some more enamel to fill in a few holes, but that only took about 5 minutes--after I waited for the piece to cool.)

Chasing has taught me even more patience. You have to be mindful of where your tools are striking all the time; one misstep and you've ruined hours of work, or just added more hours to fix the mistake. Fine (.999) silver is quite forgiving, though, and I always enjoy working with it. I figure this took me about 20 hours of work and as usual I'd love to spend another 20 hours on it.

I still have to scrape/grind the teeny bits of enamel that insisted on getting on the silver despite my best efforts. Then I'm going to lightly polish it, carefully turn down the tabs, and attach a chain. I promise I'll take more pictures when it's done.

Now I'm back to working on pieces for the show the week after Thanksgiving. Thursday is given up to cooking and the Macy's parade and Pumkin Chunkin' on the Science Channel, but come Friday I'm in the workshop pretty much full-time.