The heart of the matter............

Spent a large chunk of today in a private hospital in Eastbourne, undergoing a CT Coronary Angiogram.

No...I don't have private healthcare, but apparently our local NHS Trust is so far behind with diagnostic testing that they're shunting work out to the private sector, hence my elevation to the exalted rank of the private patient for a few hours.

I've visited friends in private hospitals before but have never experienced one from the sharp end, so I was intrigued to find out what it was like.  Once past the sumptuous reception area, with deep pile carpeting and comfy sofas, there actually wasn't much difference.  Yes there were fewer people in the waiting room, and yes there did seem to be a higher staff-to-patient ratio, but other than that, the actual scanning suites looked much the same. 

I can't say I was looking forward to it, but I must admit I was mightily relieved to be having a non-invasive CT scan rather than the traditional method which involves inserting a catheter into the groin which is then threaded through the largest artery in your body (the aorta) until it reaches the coronary arteries of the heart. A special contrast dye is injected and x-rays are taken of the blood vessels as the dye moves through them.

PP had a traditional angiogram a few years back and had the most dreadful complications afterwards, so when I found I had to have one too I was dreading it.  However the only minimally uncomfortable part of the procedure was having a cannula inserted into a vein in the arm, through which the contrast dye was injected.  I've never experienced that before and had been warned what it might feel like.


And by Jove it did.


Nanoseconds after the dye goes in, there is an overwhelming whoosh of warmth in the nether regions, which feels for all the world as if you've wet yourself. 

Not an entirely unpleasant sensation if I'm honest.  I could be worse...


At the same time there is a strange metallic taste and smell, which is a little unnerving but soon passes.  Other than that, and having to hold my breath several times inside the scanner while it whirled around, it wasn't at all bad, and after some recovery time in case I reacted to the contrast dye, during which I was given a cup of tea (proper bone china cup and saucer!) and biscuits on a tray I was allowed home.  


Now I have to drink as much water as I can to flush the dye through my kidneys, and aside from a lingering headache I'm none the worse.


The unseasonal heatwave continues unabated with temperatures due to reach the mid 80s in London over the weekend.  This would normally be only of passing interest to me, except I'm going up there to spend the weekend with my daughter and see her new little studio flat.  The London Underground will be hotter than Hades so I'm trying to find a bus route with the minimum number of changes.  


30 years ago I lived and worked in London, learned to drive there, passed my test there,  drove in and out of the city centre on a regular basis and was completely au fait with all modes of public transport.  However, nowadays I so rarely go there I feel completely lost, so what with that and the heat I will be so relieved to see a familiar face when I step off the train.


Meanwhile PP and Small Dog are staying home alone, although they do have a campsite BBQ AND possibly  beach picnic to look forward to, so they will be fanned by seaside breezes.


Right..... off to hydrate myself further. 

Summer's last hurrah..........

Another gorgeous day weatherwise, made moreso by coming so late in the season and after a lengthy period of cold, wet and windy weather.

So, we finished work early and headed off down to the seafront with Small Dog, to savour the warm sun and balmy breeze..... it's not often you can wear a sleeveless top, shorts and sandals in late September in the UK without feeling just a tad chilly.

Even the normally quiet beach at West St. Leonards was busy and there were lots of people swimming in the sea and sunbathing on the shingle.  It was lovely just strolling along the promenade, although it wasn't so much of a walk as a 'drag', since Small Dog has to pick up 'wee mails' at every pillar and post, and leave her contribution to the thread.

After our walk, with the sun just beginning to dip down towards Eastbourne in the west, we just sat in the car with all the windows open, shooting the breeze.  Sometimes it's the simplest pleasures in life which mean the most........ 

Driven to distraction by fractions.......

I had an email yesterday informing me that an article on realistic miniatures featuring my illuminated toy theatres is currently in Doll's House and Miniature Scene's Doll's House Projects magazine.


They asked me for the information ages ago, and to be honest, what with one thing and another I'd forgotten all about it.  The theatres take quite a long time to make so I generally prepare them in batches of 10 or so but they do tend to sell out almost as quickly as I put them on the website, so a new batch has been on my current 'to do' list for a few months. 

This delay has been due to running out of the very fine stripwood I use to make the theatre boxes, and the very sad demise of the lovely Alan Borwell of Borcraft Miniatures, whose wood I've been using ever since I started making miniatures over 25 years ago.


As well as being a wizard with wood, his kindness extended to supplying me with wood in the exact lengths I needed, saving me the trouble of cross-cutting them myself.  He has been sorely missed.

Following extensive enquiries, I have hopefully found an alternative supplier, who will (fingers crossed) perform the same service, but first I have to carefully work out how many pieces of each length I can get out each strip.


This is where the division of fractions come in.


The majority of miniature artisans I know, work in imperial measurements in preference to decimal.  I suspect that this is primarily because we are all of a certain age, and were educated in the pre-decimal era.  I still think in feet and inches, rather than metres and centimetres, and no amount of EU regulation to the contrary will persuade me otherwise.

However, when you also consider the fact that we work in scales of 1/12th, 1/24th, 1/48th and even the mind-bogglingly small 1/144th, it becomes apparent why imperial is simply the most sensible unit of measurement to adopt.

Until you start trying to work with fractions.  And having to divide the buggers.  Which is an arithmetical nightmare.  Numbers aren't my forte at the best of times but fractions drive me demented.  This morning I've been trying to work out a variety of sums involving 16ths and 32sths which has only served to highlight my myriad defects in the fraction calculation department.  I was transported straight back to when I was at primary school, struggling with fiendishly complicated sums and hating numerators and denominators with a vengeance.


Nothing has changed........

Yeah..... right.


So if you're on my waiting list for an illuminated toy theatre, please, please bear with me.  Once I've resolved the fractions debacle, and confirmed my order, it won't be long before I'm able to make a start.


Promise......

Giving it laldy......

Another glorious morning.  

Sun shining from a cloudless blue sky, gentle breeze ruffling through the trees, birds in the garden forming an orderly queue to use the newly refilled bird bath......

All was delightfully peaceful until an unearthly squawking shattered the calm and prompted both Small Dog and I to hurry out into the garden to see what was occurring, fearing that internecine warfare had broken out between rival gangs of magpies and crows.


However, I was astonished to discover that the raucous racket was coming from a lone squirrel, perched on top of the fence, gesticulating wildly and obviously in a right strop.


Small Dog was instantly galvanised into action and threw herself up the steps, barking her head off, in an attempt to give chase, adding her own vocal contribution to the mix.  The squirrel merely threw her a contemptuous glance and disappeared down the other side of the fence, leaving Small Dog to prance around, sniffing furiously and grumbling under her breath.


I've never heard a squirrel make such a horrendous noise before and haven't a clue what all the fuss was about.  

Unless it just wanted to torment Small Dog......

Monday, Monday.......

A gratifyingly grey, dismal Monday morning, after a gloriously sunny weekend during which I didn't get nearly enough of my to do list cleared.  However I did manage to load the kiln with several weeks worth of greenware in order to do a soft-firing, although I haven't yet  mustered either the energy or enthusiasm to unload the soft-fired ware yet.

I really must tidy up my work desk, upon which, as you can see, there is barely enough space to squeeze in a waffer-thin mint.

Yes, I know.....

I am ashamed of it.  And I will tidy it up AGAIN but I can assure you that by the end of today it will be back as bad as ever.  I call it creative chaos in an attempt to justify my complete inability to maintain a clear workspace.

Highlights of my weekend include getting to grips with Google+, which for my money, knocks Facebook into a cocked hat.  I also managed to solve an apparently insoluble problem on Blogger with the aid of a very kind chap from one of the help forums who pointed me in the right direction and used words of one syllable to explain what I had to do.  In the end it was so easy I had to laugh at my own incompetence at being unable to work it out by myself.

This morning we girded our collective loins to tackle the installation of a new wireless router, to replace our ancient one.  In the end, despite all our prognostications of doom, the process was reasonably straightforward and I must admit I already really notice the difference in the speed at which browser pages open.  Only PP's laptop was strangely reluctant to join forces with the new equipment, having apparently forged an enduring relationship with the old one, but we eventually persuaded it of the error of its ways and everything now seems to be tickety-boo.

Still in new gadget mode, we've also replaced our ancient home phones (which can't keep a charge for any longer than 10 minutes), courtesy of a timely money-off voucher and a less-than-half-price offer on a new set.  They're currently on charge so we'll try them out tomorrow.

Phew.  All this grappling with new technology has worn me out.  I just might have to join Small Dog for a restorative nap.......

How it's made..... soft firing

When I've cast enough tiny dolls and toys to (hopefully) fill the kiln, or lost the will to live, whichever comes sooner, they are set aside to air-dry completely. 

The dry greenware is very fragile and can crumble to dust so must be handled very carefully.  However, the casting process leaves seam lines where the liquid porcelain slip seeps slightly into the gap between the two halves of the plaster mould.  These seam lines must be removed, along with any blemishes on the surface of the casting.

It is possible to do this with a small piece of abrasive fabric (such as nylon net) but dry cleaning produces lots of dust, which contains silica, and is harmful to breathe in over a long period of time.  Also, as the greenware is so very fragile, it is extremely difficult to avoid breakages, especially when cleaning tiny pieces.

Years ago, I used to dry clean my castings, wearing a special mask to avoid breathing in the dust.  However the fine dust gets EVERYWHERE, so inevitably it is impossible to avoid inhaling it as it permeates clothing, fabrics, rugs etc.

Eventually, some bright spark discovered that if the greenware castings were fired to a very low temperature (approx 650 degrees, which is still much hotter than a domestic oven) any moisture remaining in the porcelain would be completely driven out, resulting in a casting which could be immersed in water without dissolving, but still be soft enough to be able to be cleaned.  And so the dust-free soft-cleaning procedure was born.

Soft firing does not vitrify the castings, so they can be loaded into the kiln with less precision than for a bisque firing.  They won't fuse together so the pieces can touch.  The castings will also become lighter and stronger, although they are still easy to break so require careful handling.

Here a selection of castings are placed on the bottom shelf in the kiln, with the shelf supports in place to support the second shelf.

After the soft-firing is complete, and the kiln has cooled down, the castings are removed and stored in boxes.   Soft-fired castings can be stored indefinitely with less possibility of damage than unfired greenware.  


They are now ready for the next stage - soft-cleaning

Favourite tools... electric kiln

I have many favourite tools, but the one which is completely indispensable, and without which I simply couldn't carry on the business, is my electric kiln.  In simple terms, a kiln is a furnace, or oven for burning, baking or drying something, or more commonly for firing pottery.

This is the biggest top-loading kiln I could find which would operate via a 13 amp standard UK electric plug and still reach a top temperature of 1260 degrees Celsius, the temperature required to vitrify porcelain.   

Inside you can see the thick, insulating kiln bricks, which help keep all the heat inside, and running in channels around the inside edge, the spiral, metal kiln elements, which glow white hot at their top temperature.  Within this firing chamber I can place up to four shelves, one on top of the other, separated by shelf props, in order to maximise the firing capacity.


This is only my second kiln in 25 years.   The first, which I had for 15 years, was a Cromartie Hobbytech 40, slightly smaller and a manual kiln.  When I decided that I wanted to upgrade to a computer controlled kiln, I was able to sell my old for the same price as I bought it. 

Cromartie kilns are THAT good.

Sadly, Cromartie, a UK firm based in the heart of the potteries district of Stoke-on-Trent are no longer making kilns, but due to their excellent build quality, existing Cromartie kilns will continue in use for many years to come.

My firing schedules consists of three different stages - soft firing, bisque firing and china paint firing, each of which has different ramp times, temperatures, soak times etc, which I have programmed into the computer controller.  Once it's set to fire, the computer takes over and regulates the whole process, which takes the guesswork out of things.  

However, skill and experience are required in order to get perfect firing results and I have  worked out my own set of firing programmes, gleaned from hundreds of firings over the past quarter of a century.  These programmes have to be adjusted according to the type of porcelain slip I'm using, the size of the castings and age of the kiln elements, among several other factors.

Having only recently replaced the kiln elements, I've been able to knock  several hours off a full bisque firing, as the new elements can reach the required top temperature much more quickly.  However this means that I have to reduce the soak times and adjust the top temperature to suit the tiny pieces I'm firing, otherwise I risk a catastrophic overfire.

Information on the various firing schedules will be found in the 'How It's Made' category on the right.