Update

Well, things have been fairly busy the past couple weeks, so I didn't get to do the update I wanted to last week.

Well, they fixed the radiator and head gasket, which got the car to start again. Unfortunately, the cylinders were badly warped from the heat, and the engine was worthless. So, after already spending 1600 on the repairs they recommended, the entire engine needed replaced, which they could do for another 1200 if they got a used engine. We left the car there over the weekend and went home to try and figure out how we were going to afford to pay for a new engine. Wednesday rolled around, and we went back up to the garage with the first of three payments we were going to make on it. At which point, the tow-truck driver says he's got another option for me to consider before I commit to replacing the engine.

So, the guy leads me outside and shows me a green Ford Windstar that he says he'll sell me for 600 dollars plus my old junker. The rear window is broken, and the front seats won't adjust...but other than that, it runs beautifully.

Other than that, we had our critique on our first two projects in ceramics. The first item was a polka dot candy dish that I made for my daughter. The glaze inside in one of the corners began to chip off, but other than that, I'm overall pleased with the way it turned out.

The second item was a water pitcher, which I glazed with white glaze, then used black and blue stain to paint water and ice cubes around the outside of it. It's really fairly small for a water pitcher, but it's light, and overall decently shaped. I'll look forward to using it once I bring it home.

The third item that was included in the critique was my box project. I was really pleased with the way it turned out, and the rest of the class seemed to be really impressed with it. On two opposite sides, I sculpted reliefs of each of my kids' school pictures, with holes cut through on some of the contours to allow light through if a tea candle is placed inside. On the lid, I cut two keys, to make sure that the lid sits properly. Each key matched what the kids were wearing, a butterfly on one side, and a spiderman mask on the other. The box was glazed with white glaze and then each face painted to help it stand out against the rest of the box. There were a few things I'd change if I could redo it, but overall I'm very pleased with it.

We're working on a project of our own choosing in drawing class. I've decided to do a series of drawings of a friend of mine. One will be pen and ink on white paper, one will be red conte crayon on brown paper, and one will be pastels on black paper. I'm still struggling with proper proportions in the human figure, and also struggling with planning out my work to fit in the allotted time. This is by far the most ambitious project I've done so far this year.

We put our midterm projects into the display case in the library. While I don't have a picture of it in the case, I do have pictures of the finished book. The covers, the spine, and each of the pages were cast out of resin, with various items embedded inside to create the images. The covers were cast, then painted with acrylic paint to help give the look of an old leather book. The cover was then bound together with a brown faux suede cloth, with an extra layer added around the spine so that the good side of the fabric showed both outside and inside.

Each of the pages have a loop of brown paper ribbon glued to them at the top and the bottom of the page. I then trimmed and stained a bamboo skewer, slipped one through the loops for each page, then glued the ends of the skewers to a small wood slat, which was then affixed to the spine of the book to hold each of the pages in the wood slats covering the ends were then stained to match the rest of the wood, and left to dry overnight. The paper ribbon loops give a small amount of room so that each page can be picked up and looked at, rather than just flipped back and forth. There are seven pages, each one dedicated to a single classic children's story. The two shown here are Sleeping Beauty (the page on the left, a netting of quilled rose vines) and Rumpelstiltskin (the page on the right, with the frame of straw. In the middle are a background of finer straw, a castle, a crown, a spinning wheel, and a handful of little spools of gold tape).