Happy New Year

Well,another year, filled with productivity, challenges, and world changing events has passed. Jim and I continued our current solitary celebration, early, with a lovely 5 course dinner at our favorite local restaurant "The Knife and Fork", followed by a relaxed evening in bed, with a great bottle of Frank Family Winstone Cabernet single vintage, red wine, while listening to a the wonderful PBS concert of Leonard Bernstein's score of West Side Story, with those amazing counter melodies - what a score in it's time and it still stirs the soul! And now, they've switched to Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. What would life be without music that takes you to such heights!

While Jim takes our little furry, Jack Russel terrier, Bodhi, on his last walk of the evening, I'm taking a bit of time for this blog.

Today was a busy kitchen day, spending lots of time chopping and cooking, but a delicious, spicy, shrimp and chicken gumbo is cooked and ready for tomorrows house guests. In the morning I'll be baking corn bread and a breakfast nutty fruity, sourdough bread which I had hoped to make today; but that job had to be put off because i forgot that it needed sourdough and my sourdough needed feeding. The sourdough's been fed and the bread will get made in the morning. Then it will be time to tidy up the papers which seems to shroud my sitting area of the living room, which has become my other office. When am I going to slow down and just enjoy retirement! Busynesss is a lifelong thing for me and even at 72 is one that is hard to release. So rather than fight it, I just stay productive and let it take me where it takes me. If this body fails me totally, I guess that will be the time to just contemplate my navel.

House guests arrive tomorrow, for just a day, so it will be a lovely start of the New Year with family, belly warming, spicy seafood and chicken gumbo for dinner along with home made fudge and some other, lovely, store bought candies, and Jim, our in house sommelier, sharing one of his lovely white wines for the gumbo.

Hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration with loved ones, and/or dear friends, with good food and quality liquor if that's your choice! And I hope you all have the most productive, healthy, joyous and prosperous New Year, filled with joy, challenging and rewarding experiences and live well lived!

Mish mash sort of day

The only remotely studio related things I did today were copy and print out the four pages of the charted notes on the cone 6 soda firing and driving them over to John's studio. I also compiled all the information I've been gathering on earthenware clay bodies, slips and glazes and will print those out tomorrow. Exploring earthenware is one of my 2012 projects.

The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping for company dinner Sunday (shrimp and chicken gumbo), having lunch out, then back home to put away groceries, tend to house plants,email, make dinner, then after dinner, make a batch of fudge.

It was then time to give Bonnie kitty some mom play time. She loves this crazy laser light. Fortunately, she chases it with such vigor that she tires herself out in about 5 minutes. Time for the adults and a Netflix Midsomer mystery before meditation and sleep. It's been a busy, smorgasbord kind of good day; but a good one.

Chicken soup and test tiles

I'm bleary eyed, and waiting for these back spasms to ease after getting over 7 dozen test tiles lined up in numerical order on my slab roller and making followup notes; but the job is done! In the morning I'll photo copy these 4 pages of notes for John, my testing partner in this venture and drop them off at his studio.

Next step will be for me to re-fire some of these tiles, and make new tiles for another firing; but that will have to wait after this weekends company leaves, and the weather is mild and dry enough for two consecutive days, to wheel my little gas test kiln outdoors to fire. The weather forecast for next week is pretty gruesome (cold, wet, snowy), so it looks like I'll be focusing on getting the cone 10 pots finished before I can re-fire these cone 6 tests.

Meantime, there's the house to tidy, and food shopping and cooking to do before house guests arrive early Sunday, as well as a studio to tidy if I can squeeze in some time after I get back from shopping and other chores tomorrow. I'd like to start the New Year with the studio a bit more organized; but it looks like I may not have the time to complete that goal, with all the other things I have to do between now and the New Year.

Tonight was a good night for chicken soup and fortunately I have leftovers for tomorrow. If we get home early enough and I'm not too wiped, I may just get an hour before dinner to do some of the studio tidying. That would be nice!

Cone 6 soda test tile results

The cone 6 soda test tile firing looks very promising. I will need to re-fire tiles because we only reached cone 6 just starting to soften. Cone 7 looked like it was at 3 o'clock; but it turned out that it was just in the process of toppling over. Guess I didn't seat it well enough in it's little house. With only one cone pack visible I asked John to just shut it down, rather than risk over-firing, which was a good call, since I was more interested in getting a true picture of the flashing slip at cone 6, not cone 7.

These tiles look more promising than the tiles from the Energy Exchange's wood/soda firing. They're brighter, and with the new soda mix, it looks like they will flux more at a full cone 6. They also showed more flashing potential in this firing with this new soda mix. As I suspected, the wood in the Energy Exchange firing made the tiles drier. The yellow slip was a great example to show the difference. It was buttery on all 3 tiles but dry at higher temperature in the Energy Exchange firing.

The draw rings were very good and some of the glazes are good at cone 5. One oribe is a beautiful, rich, dark green and the turquoise oribe also looks promising. A matt white was under fired at cone 5 as was Reeves green, and another oribe.

I'll make new tiles for the shinos and a few others and start body reduction a bit earlier next time and do it a bit heavier,reduction next time. Two of the of the shinos were mature at cone 5 and look good as potential liners. They just need more and earlier reduction to shine. The one temmoku in the firing was brown; but re-firing might help. I think I'll also do another version. I have to check which Iron I used, but I thought I used a very high purity iron and was expecting black, not dark brown. John has one C 6 temmoku that I'll try as well. I forgot to put my celadon liner in this firing, so that will go in with the re-fires along with another one from John.

My new gloss base looked good, but some of the tiles got hit with too much soda - difficult to avoid in a small kiln with only test tiles. My yellow slip (Linda's yellow with my revisions) turned out great on all bodies tested. Another really nice surprise was 2 versions of a known glaze called Juicy fruit - better at cone 5 in soda and light reduction than in my full cone 6 oxidation firing using Steven Hills firing schedule.

I'll be spending another day or two making some charts, cataloging these with follow up notes, then it will take another couple of weeks after the holidays to make, bisque and dip new tiles and then wait for two days of consecutive good weather to fire them; but I'm very happy with all the information and more potential good results with some tweaking and re-firing.

I also want to batch some new revisions of a couple of flashing slips using Ronans excellent suggestion of replacing Grolleg with EPK and Newman red with Redart.

Time now, to get a cup of herbal tea and start cataloging the other two shelves of tests.

Cone 6 soda test firing cooling

The firing went well and I was home before 7pm. Love it! I think we may have gotten a bit hotter than our goal. Cone 6 in the only cone pack that was visible didn't seem to be moving although the pyrometer showed it should be. So I opened the burner shutter more and adjusted the damper for light reduction and we went off for a few minutes and when we came back cone 7 was at 3 o'clock, even though cone 6 hadn't shown any sign of movement a couple of minutes before! With soda you never know if that's a true reading; but I had the cones inside a little open hut of sorts to protect it somewhat from the soda in an attempt to get a truer reading. The tiles should tell the story.

The last draw ring showed good gloss from the new soda mixture (which Dan Hill uses for cone 6) which was 4 parts sodium bicarb, 2 parts soda ash and 1 part borax. This soda test kiln is small - maybe 4 cubic feet of setting space, and I didn't even finish the 1 gallon of solution which had 1 1/2 lbs of the soda mixture. In fact, I may have gotten a bit more in there than ideal. We'll see.

John thinks we may be able to open it this morning. I'd be thrilled to have one workable flashing slip from all those tiles! If not, we should have enough information to explore it further.

The high grolleg flashing slips tend to be dryer than some others unless fluxed a lot or have some clay substitutions. Ronan Kyle Peterson said that his experience has shown that replacing the grolleg with EPK was an improvement. So I can try that in future tests if needed.

In our first soda firing, using the Gail Nichols method, straight cone 10 flashing slips were all dry or very dry; but there were some that had more possibilities - Randy's, one of my Avery clones, and two others. I didn't put those originals in this firing with the newer soda mixture; but I did have several variations of those in the firing. Looking back, it might have been a good idea to put at least one tile of those 4 original ones in the firing with the new soda mix as a good comparison.

Another very good suggestion from Ronan was to sub Redart for some of the more refractory clays. Randy's uses Newman red which is classified as a fire clay, so that is another possible, future test.

Day after making merry and firing day

Moving slowly after all the holiday merry making and too much rich food. Friend John Britt said he'd be lighting the kiln around 8am this morning, so at some point I'll be heading over to his studio with this soda mix and my fancy, battery charged sprayer.

I dragged myself into the studio to weigh out the soda mixture, and make sure both battery packs for the sprayer were plugged in, before my first cup of tea. Until I hear from John about when my presence is needed, I'm going to just vegg out and catch up on a lot of correspondence and get my own battery recharged.

Hope all who celebrate had a great Christmas and a great Hanukkah!

From our house to yours

From our house to yours - wishing you a very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and a joyous, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

June and Jim Perry

Twas the Night before Christmas

This is for the children in your house and for those of us who still love to tap into our childhood memories every Christmas.

Today will be an all day baking and pre Christmas dinner prep day. Yesterday I went through all the flashing slip test tiles that were in the Energy Exchange firing and most still seemed too dry; but I suspect the wood ash also contributed to some of the dryness.

John and I put off our firing of the 175 plus slip and glaze tiles till Monday. Hopefully by then, we'll have heard back from Ronan on how hot they fired the kiln and what kind of soda they used in the firing. Till then, I'll be cooking and baking and indulging in some wonderful holiday meals.

Tomorrow we'll be having our family's traditional Lithuanian/German/Polish breakfast of home made babka, ham, kielbasa, hard boiled eggs and horseradish. Dinner will be pretty much a repeat of the Thanksgiving turkey dinner since the store was out of the rock cornish hens which I had planned.

Wishing all who celebrate it, a very Merry Christmas.

Mr and Mrs Claus

Jim's sister Pat gifted me these delightful Mr and Mrs Claus dolls several years ago and Jim found the perfect place to display them for the holidays.

Yesterday was a busy day getting the last paper work done for the test tiles, dipping a few last minute ones and packing them up along with draw tiles and cone packs and delivering them to Johns studio. When I got there I got a quick peek at the tiles that he had just picked up from the Energy Exchange firing. At first glance, most still look a bit dry, so I'm waiting to hear more about the firing. John hasn't been able to reach anyone yet; but it looks like they did a light salting; and my guess is that they only used soda ash. I'm hoping that using bicarbonate of soda and some borax in our firing will flux those slips more.

John had some tests with laterite which had a much better finish but were darker than my current flashing slips. I brought home the box of his tiles with my slip revisions which I'll examine closely today.

I'm not sure if we'll be firing today. It will be Johns call; but I'm thinking it might be better to wait until we get the information about the Energy Exchange firing.

It's going to be turkey again for Christmas because the store was out of rock cornish hens, my first choice; but I got all my Christmas food shopping finished yesterday and if we don't fire today, I'm going to relax and go through the piles of unread mail and get this living room company ready for next weeks house guests.

Foggy mountain top morning

We got a little antique Baker figure (actually looks more like a butcher holding a roast; but the ebay listing said it was a baker) to put in front of the bakery under the tree. This year Jim lit up the buildings which is an improvement. You can actually see what's inside some of them now.

Yesterday I got 175 of the finished tiles in numerical order and charted them all against the list I made when I dipped them; and got the last 6 raw dipped tiles bisqued. I found a couple of unmarked and two obviously mis-marked, so this morning I'm going to check those against the containers of glaze and slip. Counting the 6 I bisqued overnight, plus the couple John included in the Energy Exchange firing, there are at least 185 made so far. This morning I'll probably re-dip a few of the missing and obviously mis-marked ones; but first I need to make another list of all the slips and glazes I batched for this project.

When I left the studio around 6 last night, I forgot to turn up the tiny test kiln. Fortunately, I awoke around midnight and hobbled out to the studio, turned it up to high and went back to bed; and I was able to empty it early this morning. The base of one of the tiles broke off; but I think it was one that was broken before the firing and patched with some sodium silicate and not because of firing it so fast.

Our lobsters didn't arrive till almost 7 o'clock last night; but they were worth the wait. We decided that 2 lb lobsters might work better than the 3 lb ones since neither of us could finish those big lobsters even though we only have a little salad before. So I put aside the few leftovers bits and will make a tiny amount of lobster salad which we'll have as a lunch snack on crackers today.I also think the smaller lobsters would be a bit more tender. The lobster dinner ended my delicious, week long birthday celebration.

Lobster day

This is another section of Jim's, under the tree village.

Today is the last day of my prolonged birthday celebration, with an indulgent lobster dinner. Jim ordered two 3 lb lobster which will be delivered some time today. With our advanced years, we decided that we should do this prolonged birthday celebrations starting this year and it's been great fun!

I would have been in the studio early; but some good friends stopped by for a visit this morning, and brought a present of home made cookies. I'll still bake some of my own, but not as many as I had planned. For now, it's time to get to the studio and finish making glaze notes on those tiles which I'll be delivering tomorrow to John Britts studio for our Friday cone 6 soda firing.

Yesterday we were out and about all day with doctor's visits, lunch, food and other shopping and didn't get home till dinner time. Fortunately we had the leftover lamb shanks so I didn't have to cook. One of our stops was to pick up some prescriptions for Jim's back; and I can report this morning that they're working. Now I just have to keep him from doing any more heavy lifting in the future!

A working birthday

Was prepared to get a full studio day since we celebrated my birthday with friends yesterday with a brunch at the Grove Park inn; but as often happens, a planned day goes awry with unplanned chores which demand attention.

A huge amount of emails this morning, mainly from so many wonderful birthday wishes, notices that my Norton anti virus software has expired, and using the last of my bread, changed the plan. So now I'm downloading the software on one computer, with two other computers to do after this, then I need to start on another loaf of bread, and get an early start on tonight's braised lamb shanks dinner before I can even think about the studio.

I will get in the studio at some point this afternoon to finish sorting the test tiles and making those last minute notes, which I didn't get to do yesterday because we didn't get home till around 5 o'clock and still had to unpack the car and get groceries put away before thinking about dinner, which wound up just being some popcorn with some parmesan and spices.

After the lovely brunch and working through the tourist crowds at the Grove Park Inn viewing the gingerbread house contest entries, followed by a Sams Club shopping trip, there was no time or energy to do anything more than rest for the rest of the evening. Our friends have these insulated bags that they bought at Sams club, which work great for those long drives home from Asheville. No need anymore to spend several dollars on ice or deal with large, bulky plastic boxes. We bought two of them ($9.98 each),and everything was still solidly frozen after an hour and a half; and we can leave them in the car since they lay flat and hardly take up any space.

Time now to get that bread started, finish those downloads, and get the dinner started early.

A play day

Here's one of the middle sections of our under the tree village decor.

Having an early birthday celebration with friends and brunch at the Grover Park Inn. We haven't been for two years and are really looking forward to the brunch and checking out the yearly gingerbread contest entries and the lovely Christmas decor.

Doubt if there will be any time studio when we get home. If I'm up to it, I might just go in and finish getting all those test tiles in numerical order and go over my notes. I have a couple of tiles I forgot to mark, but I did make a chart and enter which tests were dipped on which clay bodies, so maybe I can figure it out enough to either mark them or just re-dip new ones.

Before I get back to glazing the cone 10 soda pots I really need to do more studio tidying; but that job will have to wait for another day.

Fettucine revisit

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We're having a repeat of this fettucine, ham, onion, mushroom dish from two nights ago. I made enough of the sauce, so I'll just have to cook fresh pasta.Since dinner is covered, I'll be able to get in a full afternoon in the studio.

Yesterday I got all the draw rings and cone packs made for both cone 6 and cone 10 soda firings and just did a bit of studio tidying (a never ending chore)since I didn't have enough time to batch that last glaze because we had to do a Walmart run before another great dinner at the Knife and Fork.

Time to head to the studio and get that last glaze base with six color variations weighed out. At this point, I'm pretty saturated with this glaze testing, so I hope all this work brings forth some encouraging results for me to switch to cone 6 soda next year.

Hubble photos to Bach's Air on G string

Hubble photos and Bach's air on G string - what a great way to start or end the day!

Didn't get much done yesterday other than dipping a few more tiles and doing the attendant paper work. Too much standing on the hard, concrete, studio floor the day before made this bad hip and knees act up, so yesterday was a day to find mostly sit down jobs.

This afternoons plan is to get some cone packs and draw rings made for both next weeks cone 6 soda firing, and my later cone 10 soda firing.

The Energy Exchange wood/soda kiln is being fired to cone 6 today with some of my cone 10 flashing slips revised (hopefully) for cone 6 included; and I'm really eager to see if any of the alterations bring up a couple of good results. I really only need one good flashing slip as a base to make the switch to cone 6.

Glazes for cone 6 soda/salt are much easier to design - just make sure you have enough calcium, boron, barium and/or magnesia in the glaze to repel the soda/salt; but the flashin slips are a bit trickier, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed so that when that kiln is opened Monday or Tuesday, there might be some encouraging results to use, or at least, to build on for next weeks other cone 6 gas/soda firing in John Britt's small soda kiln.

Mashiko "Broken Earth" exhibit

Here's some morning eye candy of the Mashiko Potters "Broken Earth" exhibit in the Netherlands. Thanks to Swanica Ligtenberg for making and sharing this body of some exquisite work.

Nothing new to report at this pottery - still dealing with cone 6 soda tests for a bit. I got all the current flashing slips done and some liners like celadon, temmoku and shinos batched, along with a couple of colored slips; but now I'd like to get some exterior glaze possibilities batched. I designed a couple of bases and will start weighing those out today. By the weekend, I should be finished and then go back to getting these cone 10-11 soda pots lined.

John Britt and I are planning on firing all his and my test tiles in his small soda kiln later next week, and I might even be able to get my cone 10 soda firing in after Christmas. It will be good to have both of these projects wrapped up before the New Year. It's been a bit of a mind scramble, multi tasking journey, having to shift gears in the middle of one project to start another, then merging the two into a bisque firing which I unloaded yesterday.

R.I.P. Malcolm Davis

Malcolm Davis passed away yesterday - such a loss! He took American shinos to another level with his years of work on carbon trap recipes and firing techniques, discovering how wax resist over the glaze could give these wonderful patterns, etc.etc. He will be sorely missed.

Spent part of the morning with John Britt, dipping some of his test tiles in some of the flashing slips I made. He'll be putting them in the Energy Exchange wood/soda firing this weekend. I opted to skip it since it turns out it won't be just a firing of tiles as I was originally told, and with 155 of my tiles alone (so far), they wouldn't have room for all of them. So John and I will be doing another firing in his small soda kiln in another week or so. That will actually work better for me since I fire with gas and only introduce a bit of wood in the kiln, so I'll get much more useable results for from that firing.

In the meantime, the flashing slip tests in the wood/soda kiln will give us a good idea if I've fluxed them enough for cone 6 or too much and make some adjustments before we fire in Johns kiln.

On another note, this gives me more time to batch some more cone 6 glazes I've designed for soda. So, it's all good.

I spent the rest of the day (still at it), redoing my notes and chart on the finished tiles, and got my early dinner prep done for tonight's dinner - fettucine with an alfredo type sauce with sauteed mushrooms and ham. It's one of my favorite pastas, but since I put it in the category of "heart attack specials", I only make it once or twice a year and hope the wine will lessen the damage from the cholesterol. :-)

One more day of test tile batching and dipping

Here's the second section of Jim's wonderful, under the tree decoration. It's such fun to wake up and turn on the Christmas tree and other Christmas lights on the staircase - such a happy pre dawn vision.

Before breakfast I headed to the studio to clean up a couple of the cone 10 slipped plates and dipped a few more raw tiles and got the bisque kiln loaded with the tiles and the last of the cone 10 pots. They're warming up a bit to dry things out and I'll start the bisque this afternoon.

The cone 6 test tile count is up to 137 tiles with more to be done today. Tomorrow I'll be wadding them all. If it were my kiln, I'd just lay them on a good layer of alumina hydrate; but in the wood/soda kiln I think it best to wad them.

With some very early studio time, I need to get my tonight dinner prepped early. It's potato pancakes tonight. The potatoes and onion are peeled so I just have to grate the potatoes and get everything mixed and ready to go so I can work till 5 o'clock.

111 Test tiles

A hundred and eleven test tiles done and the test tile marathon will continue for a few 3 or 4 more days. then I can get back to finishing my cone 10 pots and get a soda firing in - hopefully before the New Year!

I quit at four o'clock when Jim arrive with 60 clams which I had to get soaking and scrubbed. Then I steamed them with white wine, onion,garlic, thyme, parsley, garlic and pepperonici pepper. That lovely broth along with butter to dip the clams and crunchy bread made for a very satisfying and filling taste treat.

Time now for some mindless TV and maybe some computer scrabble or Word with friends (my new discovery).

The day's agenda

Made another loaf of this delicious nutty, fruity bread yesterday morning. Instead of going back and forth - house to studio, during the various risings, etc. I opted to take care of other pre Christmas chores like getting family Christmas cards done and some on line Christmas shopping and then spent all afternoon on getting another 12 tests tiles done.

This morning I prepped all the veggies for tonight's Mexican stir fry,enabling me to work till five. Today I'm weighing out some oribes, temmokus, and maybe another shino or two.

Under the Christmas tree farm scene

Jim spent a few hour yesterday setting up the farm and village scenes under the tree. Most of these are from my childhood, with a few new and vintage additions over the years. These go very well with my overly decorated, Victorian looking Christmas tree.

Started another nutty fruity sourdough early this morning and it should be finished it's first rise in half hour or less. I'll be back in the studio right after breakfast, then running back and forth to the house, dealing with the bread, as needed.

I met yesterday's goal of dipping and marking 28 new test tiles. That makes a total of 64 tiles now finished. There are two batched which I need to dip this morning and more glazes and slips to weigh out later today. Glazes are not a challenge for cone 6 reduction, but flashing slips are, so I've tweaked some common flashing slips, upping the Neph Sy in some, doing the same in others but adding some borax and/or soda ash.

We had a lovely steak dinner at the Knife and Fork last night, and brought half of it home, so we have leftovers tonight which means I get a full studio day. Life is so very good!

Pizza and margaritas after a studio day

Got a head start on batching soda and glaze tests and threw more porcelain test tiles. Tomorrow I'll smooth them out and apply the slips and glazes I made today. Between today and tomorrow day I should have about 28 new test tiles to add to some already made.There are more to make in the next several days - definitely a week of marathon weighing, mixing and dipping.

The first gas, cone 6 soda firing didn't result in usable flashing slips, so I'm re-doing some of them with added neph sy, and some with both extra neph sy and a bit of borax. They also didn't get enough body or later reduction in that firing which could may have affected the color and surface. Hopefully the extra fluxes will makes one of more of them useable at cone 6 and the natural reduction in the Energy Exchange wood pallet kiln may give rich color in the flashing slips and even more fluxing of the iron in them and some of the clay bodies.

Time to kick back for the night, play with kitty and finish watching A Christmas Carol.

Cone 6 soda/wood project back on the calendar

This morning I heard from John Britt to say our cone 6 wood/soda test firing is on again at the Energy Exchange, so I need to stop working on these cone 10 soda pots, and focus on getting more cone 6 glazes batched and on to tiles in the next ten days. Fortunately I have a lot of Cone 6 test tiles already bisqued, and some tests already weighed out; but I want to make the most of this test firing and have a lot more tests ready to go since there will only be test tiles in this firing.

This morning I got a loaf of oatmeal bread started (the bread machine comes in real handy on busy days), then tidied up the gallery and studio. I had to move some of the finished South American pepper plants outside, which had been taking up studio space until the peppers ripened. I hadn't planned that job for today, but one of my customers called about coming over, so it was a good opportunity to get those jobs done.

I spent today's spare time going through some of my glaze notebooks and finding more likely cone 6 glazes and flashing slips for testing. I'll go through a couple of more glaze books tonight and early tomorrow; but I already have a pretty big stack of test sheets written out to get me started right after breakfast tomorrow.

After that, I started on dinner - a new Malaysian shrimp,green bean, shallot, hot pepper,coconut milk, shrimp paste peanut sauce dish. I'll make that one again and maybe try it with chicken next time. I also found time to do some on line Thai grocery shopping so I can continue exploring more recipes in this South East Asian cookbook. I like these recipes, because, although they have a lot prep time, I can do that earlier in the day and the actual stir fry cooking time at the end of the day, when I'm tired, is only a couple of minutes.

It was a good and busy day; but I'm ready to relax with my glaze books for another hour with some TV in the background.

Todays project

Two days of dealing with computer and printer problems gave me time in between to get earthenware slip and glaze recipes and other information neatly organized into a new notebook. Dipping my feet in the world of earthenware is one of my projects for next year, along with working on lowering my soda firings to cone 6.

I got the old desktop and old laptop back working but still haven't figured out some of the problems caused when I tried to install the printer software on this laptop. The computer guy is coming Monday, so maybe he can figure it all out. Until then, I'll keep busy in the studio, and hope mercury retrograde doesn't create more studio delays for me.