What a boar
Wednesday morning
Another day of mousework today. Woopee, not. I made a few beads yesterday and have to get them out of the kiln, they include a glass ring, oh yes. I decided to try one of the ring mandrels that Martin at Tuffnells has started to stock, it was difficult to get a thin coating of mandrel release, took ages to dry, then after I’d made my ring, it didn’t fit in the kiln! Well, it went in but I couldn’t close the bead flap. I had to turn the kiln around and use the side door, knocked all the other beads on mandrels sliding it in, then could only fill the kiln half full because it got in the way! lol. Can’t wait to see how it turned out, just off to see……..oh it’s cool. It came off the mandrel easily, but is a bit of a pig to clean – I won’t be using my diamond drill bit or I’ll mess the surface. I will however be cutting the mandrel handle down to a shorter length so it fits in the kiln sideways without hogging all the space.
Talking of hogs…did you know that the male hedgehog was called a boar and the female a sow? or that their young are called Hoglets? I helped my daughter with some homework yesterday and we found all sorts of interesting facts about hedehogs on t’internet. The most interesting (apart from being able to swim, climb almost vertical walls and run at 2 metres per sec!) was that they love to eat snails and slugs, and eat about 200g a night. Now I could do with one of those in my garden. Some plants are looking a bit lacy to say the least, but the hostas with crushed up egg shells do seem to be fairing better now, together with the hosta with a natural mulch (it was left under the holly tree in the corner of the garden). I may even start mulching other tasty plants with my free holly leaves.
Here’s a few pictures from Hampton Court Flower show last week, it was very hard to make a choice.
