I put three more resumes out last week. The one I have the highest hopes for is a two-year temp position for a veterinarian to work at a Pharm incident phone bank. They want someone to interface with other veterians who call in with adverse reactions to drugs. They need someone who speaks "vet" to field the calls, fill out the government paperwork and input the stuff into a computer. I suspect I can do that. It's too much to hope I'll actually get the job, but I'm thinking I might at least hear back from the employer.
When not looking for work on-line I've been making more beads. I'm bound and determined to figure out how to do the poked-center encased flowers. I've learned a lot from my attempts to date. The best one I'd made to date actually had three of four flowers that looked really good. Of course, that was the one I split in half while reaming out the center after I made it.
The kiln still isn't set up yet. I'll need The Prof to get it down to the basement for me - my tendonitis hasn't improved all that much and I don't trust myself to carry it downstairs. The set-up for the kiln is far more complicated than I appreciated. I figured you just stuck the beads in, plugged it in, set the timer, and waited for the annealing process to complete. Nooooooo ... You set it up on a special surface, you check the elements (which are all exposed) you prep the bead shelf with a special kiln wash, you need to get a special bowl to put the beads in to batch anneal them, and then you'd better pray that you did everything right or you ruin the kiln. Eventually I want to anneal the beads before I remove them from the mandrels, which is slightly less complicated. It also requires another $200 worth of equipment that I'm just not able to shell out for right now.
I want to practice the annealing now, while I'm making beads of a less than perfect nature. If I finally manage to master the poked flower technique, I don't want to go through all that work just to have it explode in the kiln!
Here's a sample of the flower technique I'm trying to master. Ignore the cubic zirconium in the center and the gold foil embedded in the core of the bead - those are all superfluous to what I'm trying to accomplish at the moment.
DISCLAIMER! NOT MY BEAD! JUST AN EXAMPLE OF A TECHNIQUE I'M WORKING ON!