Plugging Along (and studio bribery)

I've just been plugging along, working on my tea infuser. My friend's wedding present is coming along nicely, especially since she came down and visited last weekend and we reworked the design. This version is coming out absolutely fabulously. The new design is full of hammered swirls and chased flowers. I've got about half the swirls finished and assembled, but I've got five flowers to chase entirely and one to finish.

I've also been applying a new method of studio bribery: Audible. Only at the studio am I allowed to listen to my awesome audio books, which means I'm in there and working a lot more frequently. So that's definitely working out for me.

I've also got two classes coming up, an enameling class on Saturday and a chain making class next Tuesday. Pretty excited! We did a major test run of the kiln last weekend, and it works absolutely wonderfully. My anvil, although still rather dinged up, makes a great place to put the pieces to cool, because it's such a large chunk of metal that it sucks the heat out pretty quickly. Probably going to start enameling more often now, although I still need to set up the table my kiln is suppose to go on. Right now it's a little low, and while I managed to get cinder blocks to raise it up on, they turned out to be two different heights, which is, to say the least, not awesome. But soon, soon I will have cinder blocks of matching heights, and then I won't have to move the kiln every time I need to use it.