Anticipation... is keepin' me way-ay-ay-tin!

I haven't torched in a few days, and while I'm craving gettin' my torch on, I'm also looking forward to having a new torch, with oxygen, and hot fire, and melty glass, and happy happy happy beads!  Well, technically, in the popular vernacular a "happy bead" is a bead that's been properly annealed, but I'm sure they're much happier beads to begin with if they're made an an oxy/propane torch instead of a Hot Head.  I can't wait to get my hand on that thing and just mold the glass rods into beads in a perfect oxygen rich flame.

And once we get the torch up and running, I'll start making so many beads I'll have to get the kiln electrified, 'cause I don't think that Jon is going to be none too eager to put a plumber's torch in that thing again.  Considering what happened the last time, I wouldn't blame him either.  I'll test my theory tomorrow and push for annealing the batch we were going to anneal last week.  We'll see if we can get to Ace Hardware early enough to buy a good hose clamp, so we don't have a repeat of last week's debacle.

The update for today on "the project" is a picture showing what I decided to do to label my beads.  I've heard of people using little price tags on strings, or organizing them in boxes, or even writing up note cards with pictures  (which sounds kind of like the thing I would do), but I decided on a more direct approach.  It all starts with a numbering system.

I have assigned a number to each color of glass I have.  The assignation is random, I just picked up a glass and said, "You will be #1."  I marked it with a sharpie (which I'm discovering will need some reworking because the sharpie rubs off if you handle the rod too much) and pulled a stringer or two from it, then marked the stringers with a piece of tape on the end (like a flag) and numbered with the same number.  Then I made a grid:

1,2	1,3	1,4	1,5
2,1	2,3	2,4	2,5
3,1	3,2	3,4	3,5
4,1	4,2	4,3	4,5
5,1	5,2	5,3	5,4

If I were (un)lucky enough to only have 5 colors of glass, I would be making 20 beads (ah, the bliss!).  The first number is the color of the base bead and the second is the color of the stringer.  But, using the grid as a checklist only helps if you can then subsequently identify the beads you've made against the chart.  That's where the next picture comes in.  I'm so clever!  I made this image so large so you could see the detail.

The sharpie works to mark the glass.  You'll see B16 on the bottom; that means that the base bead is made with color 16.  On the top you'll see an S5; that means that the bead was decorated with stringer in color 5.  These are the same beads I showed pictures of the other day at my friend's house.  Two colors of beads, and 8 colors of stringer.

And now, before the next huge batch of glass comes in, I'm gonna go organize the glass I already have.  Baby and Hubby are asleep, so I get my "me time" -- starting at 11:19pm.  Oh yay.