The most wonderful time...

This morning was cool and crisp, sunny with a few puffy clouds.  Gorgeous!  Perfect fall weather.  It was my kids' first day at preschool, and I am renting a space nearby for a studio so I don't have to drive home between drop-off and pick-up.  !!!

My building

As other parents were taking pictures and hiding tears I made a quick exit and couldn't wipe the smile off my face.  I walked by the coffee shops to say hi to other preschool moms.  (There will be plenty of time for good coffee; I was already wired.)  I walked to Simply Charming Boutique to check on my Sonoma collection and show them some new graduated turquoise strands I bought.  (They are my middle-man, so they know the customers and I don't.  I like getting a read on things when I can.)  I love being downtown!  Finally I unloaded a box of stuff at my studio, only to realize I forgot to pack my pliers which is like forgetting my hands.  I had been a little disappointed at the thought of being cooped up inside on a day like this anyway, so I drove home and enameled beads with my torch.

Blurry, but you can see some of the colors

For the enamel nerds: I'm testing colors from my sample pack from Rio of Milton Bridge transparents, and I really like that Ruby transparent bead toward the center.  And over to the right there's Autumn Brown.  And several of the others have Autumn Brown layered over something bright (Turquoise, Nile Green from Thompson, etc.)  Some of the deeper green-blues have Mallard Green in them, another MB I like.

We didn't have much cool weather over the summer (my bench is in the garage) so it was nice to have a chance to experiment with color layering and bead-gripping techniques.  Torch-fired enameling is tricky for me because I don't want the bead to rotate on the mandrel, but I do want to get it off easily when I'm finished.  And now I can work on that because it's the most wonderful time of the year.