We had a bit of a snow on Sunday....

Our house is nestled in a teeny valley with its own microclimate. As you drive down the road on the way to our house, you can feel a distinct drop in temperature, (a welcome reprieve in summer), as you approach our place.

Consequently, we usually get a bit more snow than those even just a few miles from us. We ended up with about 18". 

Patch's thoughts on preparation echoed my own in the days before the storm. 

Despite being relatively isolated on our little property, I could almost feel the anticipation & concern in the air. Many people I spoke to were running amok gathering supplies (and finding grocery shelves well emptied of food & water and hardware stores long out of salt).

Me? I felt a mix of both contentment & mild disappointment.

Safe in the knowledge that we'd want for nothing. Hell, if we were snowed in for months, we'd not have to alter our lifestyle or eating habits in any way. But mildly displeased that I didn't have anything I needed to do...like I was missing out on the hustle and bustle and the electric energy somehow.

My Dad was an Eagle Scout and a Navy man and as such, we were (and still are) always prepared. Not in a crazy prepper playing GI Joe 'the gubbament gonna take our stuff' or 'apocalypse is coming' sort of way. I will lonnnnng have expired while attempting to pet something I shouldn't before anything like that happens...

Just a frugal, stock up on sale, amass over time and then you have no concerns when silly things like snow happen type of way.

The great toilet paper shortage of 2020? Not us. We had a full case to share.

Any weather event or other catastrophe?

Food? Water? Generator? Gas? Way more pellets than we'd ever need in a year for the stove? A fire pit? All the bags of salt? A big 'ol ancient farm tractor with a snow plow custom altered for our steep, bumpy, rocky driveway by a brilliant mechanical genius & metalsmith Farmboy? Check. Check. Checkity check. 

Now, more than ever, I feel lucky in that. Moreso than being someone who has the funds to run out to the store last minute and buy all the milk, bread, & eggs.

There are some who aren't lucky enough to have a Dad like I do (who also happens to be an electrician who gave us his old generator!), or a Farmboy who's not only ridiculously freakin' hot, but truly gifted mechanically. Or to have the security that comes with having learned early, regardless of how broke we may have been, to build an emergency supply. 

All of that made me think about starting to write again for my old blog, The Frugal Hippie. To share the gift my Dad gave me of peace of mind. 

I started brainstorming & outlining and I think I may just do that when the inspiration strikes. I don't intend to start marketing it & turning it into another business, or let it take away from what I'm trying to build with Mountain Woman, but it'll do me good as well to get my brains out of the glass world now and then! 

Speaking of glass (I really can't ever stop thinking about it)...

The Kiln is Set Up & Had His Virgin Voyage

We're not looking for a permanent thing for the kiln to sit on til I find the right something/make something that is going to have wheels & be the most efficient use of space (my studio is tiiiiiiiiiny...the kiln is nooooot tiny).

We were about to set up the kiln on some of the gazillion cement blocks we have saved for this year's garden, but while talking about it, Farmboy and I both, at the same moment, had the same weird thought.

Why not set it on top of the turkey fryer (gas lines obviously disconnected and nowhere near)? The stand is the perfect height for my lack of height, it's meant for high heat, and it's the right size. Aaaaand we got a double burner turkey fryer at a yard sale last year so we won't miss the single one.

So, that's what we did. 

I did my first firing the night before last with just a small, boring, scrap glass butterfly. I expected the first run would be a Womp Womp. 

It was.

It didn't fuse enough so the top right wing popped right off.

Second firing went quite well last night though! I threw in the butterfly again along with several other little scrap glass things for testing. There was some devitrification on the butterfly & an aloe/sun thing. And the paint on some googley eyes bubbled. My birdie came out boring as well, but fused great.

I've discovered that while stained glass is definitely an exercise in patience, fusing may well be moreso. 

In stained glass, there are a gazillion variables. Buuuut, you can see what's getting messed up & know how to address them as you go.

With fusing, you chuck some stuff in the kiln, wait 3240920348203 bazillion years (more like 6-8 hours but it freakin' feels like eleventy billion years), and whatever happened in there, happened.

Sometimes you can fix it with another firing, sometimes into the scrap bin it goes.

Thus, I expect the whole fusing thang to be both fun and absolutely maddening to me. 

On to the next project...