“He respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right.” ~ Winnie The Pooh, A. A. Milne

 Hello from the woods of Orrefors!  Saturday night we had a camp fire in the next little village/town over called Flygsfors.  I don't know why we went there but it was like a 20 minute sober walk through the woods to a frozen lake.

 We had sausages warmed by the fire which were delicious.

 And, toes warmed by the fire (which we didn't eat).

 We tromped around on the frozen lake some.  It was completely frozen and you could run and then slide on it with all the snow on top flying out around you.  Pretty fun, maybe made more fun by the presence of alcohol now thinking back on it.  But, the alcohol didn't make the walk back more fun.  It doubled the amount of time it took to get home and probably multiplied the falling over in the snow times by one hundred.  There was a lot of falling in the snow... and it was VERY dark.

Monday morning I was super excited about going to the hot shop to see my graal piece... and my nightmare had come true!!! The top had exploded off!  I had a nightmare last week that when we opened the annealer all the graals were missing their tops... and it HAPPENED!!!

 Micke and Ake looked at it and decided that the crack actually ran all the way to the bottom and when they tapped it the whole thing fell apart.  I was horrified.  They think the yellow (which I had thought was orange) is not compatible with the clear glass we used, thus breakage... and tops falling off.  And not in a fun Spring Break in Cancun kind of way... 

We worked on blowing some square and rectangular bottles.  It was really hard since we haven't been doing that in mooooonths! After a while Stig-Allan showed us how to make cool round bottles like these:

 The big one is quite large but of course I have forgotten my matchbook again. So, I made these yesterday and then again today.  I saved a few square ones too today... so I did do what we were supposed to be doing some too ;)

And today I had noticed that my graal had fallen EVEN more apart! Micke suggested I save it for my big graal exhibition and title it "Bloody Swedish Graals!" or something... an example of what not to do... uhg!

Today and yesterday I also worked on my Tiffany piece!

 I had to cover all the edges of the pieces I cut in copper foil tape.

 Then put solder (but its said soder) on top of the copper.  I have to put this oil stuff on it to clean the copper and then put the solder which is made of lead and tin on top of that with this super hot pen thing.

 Then I had to stack up all the pieces and align them just right before I could solder them together.

 I put on dabs of solder on the outside to hold it together and then did the whole thing on the inside.

 Here are the two ends, sort of, its a circle sort of... so it doesn't really had ends... the two caps?  You are looking into the one of the left and the one of the right you are looking at the outside.  They are the same size even though they don't' look it.

 Then I started putting more triangles on and slowly it came together!

I had to leave it here today... two more triangles to go and then all the half circles (which Rebecca are calling "fins").  I will finish it tomorrow morning and can't wait!  I think it will look really cool!!

After school I went to the gym with the guys.  I could tell I hadn't been in a while and had to push myself to do some of the upper body machines.  I think it is good to do both the gym and the The Shred... though maybe not in the same day... that is hard.  But I am doing it!!!

I also paid all the bills this evening and made myself a chocolate brownie cake!  It came out of the box, I didn't even need water but it was SUPER good! I am going to share some tomorrow with Rosanne and maybe some other people... maybe... it was really good, I might have to keep it for myself.

I don't think Jillian had it in mind that her workout is just enough time to cook a frozen pizza (which I did last Thursday) and cook a chocolate brownie cake... Lucky for you, I discovered it... doesn't it make The Shred seem a little more appealing?