Spent about 5 hours yesterday turning over and digging through some very rocky soil sections next to my gallery (the area was part of the old gravel driveway), to deeply plant these 10 tomatoes. To say I was tired afterward doesn't come close to how exhausted and sore I felt; but I managed to make a quick pot sticker dinner, shower and get to the Michael Kline and Stacey Lane opening at the Crimson Laurel gallery, here in town. The show is great and they had a wonderful turnout! There's another show at the gallery called "Containment", with a great selection of boxes. The gallery has several new artists and I highly recommend it if you're in our area.
John Britt came by late afternoon and installed the bees and brought some of the plumbing parts for the Olympic kiln which will have to get re-installed later. With all the rain in the forecast, and the need to wheel the kiln outdoors to fire, there's no rush to complete the job in the next few days.
On this Mother's day, I'm going to indulge myself with a do nothing, lazy morning reading the Sunday papers. I ordered myself a Mothers day present - an Ipod touch, inspired by Michael Kline giving me a demo on his at the gallery last night. With it, I'll be able to take charge cards through Square, which gives you a free, little card swiper that attaches to the unit and a downloadable free app to go with it. This will work better for me than an Ipad, which is bigger than I need for what I wanted. It's also half the price of the IPad. It takes photos, hd video, has an on screen keyboard for email, notes, etc. and has wi-fi and blue tooth built in, and of course stores all your regular IPod music, photos, etc
If I perk up by this afternoon, I'll transplant the plum tomatoes into large containers which works well for the smaller tomatoes, but not the big heirloom and hybrid beefsteak types.
There's only one day in the next 10 without rain in the forecast, so I'll be able to get in some good studio time in between seedling care and maybe some garden time if they are any lulls in the rain.
ipod touch??? I am sooo green about these things... price? I still have knuckle cruncher for Credit cards and would love to upgrade but the cost of electronic filing is like 1000 for new equipment last I heard and waiting for used stuff has not worked out for me yet... I quit looking... but ipod touch sounds like a mini computer that you can take on the road like a lap top ?
ReplyDeleteI befriended your friend the master kiln builder Shane Micky and hope I can have him convert my kiln with the same burners to natural gas ... that would be so awesome.. hubby thinks I have 3 lbs of pressure or the equivalent in natural gas talk... I will be calling them monday... I'll need to get it plumbed in and the right orfice size installed. SO glad you have him as your bud, and others too as I have hooked up with that workshop in Shelby because of your blogs... thanks JUNE, have a marvelous moms day ...
June, enjoy your special day. Nothing better than chilling out at home, enjoying the day without a care in the world. Be well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Todd. I vegged out in the morning but got busy in the garden in the afternoon. It was a good, but tiring afternoon.
ReplyDeleteCat, the one I order was around $365 give it take a few dollars. I went for the more expensive 64 Gig storage; but it's less for the 32 gig. It was shipped to my local Walmart, so I guess I should have it some time this week.It's a lot cheaper to buy an Ipod touch than pay for regular credit card setups and monthly service fees. The Ipad touch has wifi built in, so if you're somewhere that has wifi that you can hook into, then it would be mobile.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise you might be better off with an Iphone, which can also be used with the attached card swiper from Square.
As far as your kiln, all you need to do is get some new orifices for the burner that will allow for the natural gas. You will need larger piping for natural gas to give your more volume. Also, you may have your gas company install a larger unit. I had to do that in order to get the pressure I needed because the kiln kept shutting off with a normal size household unit. You can check any good kiln building book, like Rhodes or Olsen, etc to find out the proper pipe size to get the volume of gas you'll need with the natural gas.
PS: Cat, if you don't have the kiln books and the library doesn't have them, email me and I'll check my kiln books for you. The gas pipe size will depend on distance from the meter, and how many turns the pipe has to make before the gas enters the kiln.
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