the other half of september

...continuing our September catchup:

 We had our first broken blade in the wood shop.  In an effort to encourage safe use of tools, I show my people how to use the tools safely and I teach them how to prevent breaking the blades, particularly on the jigsaws.  If they end up breaking a blade, the deal is they have to wear the broken blade as a badge of shame.  I twist up some means of attachment and they connect it to their book bag or keychain.  Drinkwater (Bevilaqua) was the first blade breaker this semester.  

 In some meeting this month I sketched up this year's sculpture design for shirts and stickers.

 Oh this was fun.  Over the summer we scored a nice used propane forge for the sculpture studio.  Forges are super cool but when you strap a 30 lb propane tank to an unknown forge and open the valves...being the one to introduce the open flame is a nerve racking situation.  So I said my prayers, lit the match and BOOM, we had a running forge.  That first pop took some hair off one of my fingers but now we've got the hang of it and we're bending steel like champs.  

  

 Last weekend we had a kid birthday party to attend at a skating rink.  This was the same rink I went to birthday parties at when I was a 6th grader.  There was no Journey playing over the speakers this time, but they had Taylor Swift and skating was still fun.

 The next night we took our sore legs and the rest of our bodies to Gravitopia with the Slagles.

 Jim and I spent the early afternoon at a college fair at the SC Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities.  After that we gathered our families for the fun.

 Blue finally got to do the new ninja courses and Violet did pretty well on them too.

 I promise Blue had more fun than he indicates in this photo.

 We all went to dinner afterwards and then decided to hit Krispy Kreme for dessert.  I love watching the liquid sugar waterfall.

And the construction equipment showed up outside the sculpture studio today.  The next 6 months should be interesting for those of us looking to move heavy sculptures off the loading dock.