Burning down the house...

It was a productive evening, as I sit here picking polymer clay out of my fingernails. I probably have pearl ex powder on my face also because I had a little "issue" with the lid not screwing down all the way. It's a lovely color blue, probably compliments my skin tone well! :)

I worked on three new beach journals, finished binding them and spent the rest of the evening making the polymer clay and beach glass ornamentation. I was scared to death to bake them due to the day I had (more on that in a minute). I was certain I was doomed to burn them, but they turned out well.

I've burned polymer clay one time, about fifteen years ago, and hopefully will never do it again. I made the mistake of asking my husband to turn on the toaster oven for me and he misunderstood the temperature I said. Instead of 275, he put it on 375. After about five minutes, I noticed black smoke coming out of the oven and ran over to unplug it. Mistake number 2 was opening the door! One puff of those noxious fumes sent me gagging and weezing outside to the porch as fast as I could run! It was as if I couldn't breathe, even though I was taking in air. All my hard work was scorched, but I only had myself to blame...I should have checked the temperature before I put my pieces in.

Anyhow, on to my day, which ironically involved burning something else. I decided to make vegetable soup today. This is the first time I've made soup on my new stove, which is one of those smoothtops. I really like the way they look, just not the way they cook. It takes forever to boil water, but once it gets going, it really goes. As for the soup, well, it went. All the water cooked out of it after only an hour, despite that I had it on low, and I was left with a burnt mess by the time I smelled it. I thought I was going to have to throw out my pot, but I managed to salvage that. As for dinner, I wasn't as fortunate!

Then I had some book binding issues while the soup was cooking/burning, which is why I didn't smell the burnt soup sooner as I was in my studio. I stuck myself pretty good with the needle while sewing signatures together, miscalculated how much thread I needed and ran out with one hole left to sew, and ripped a signature cover and had to replace it. Grrr...and then came the soup. And that was my day!