The end of a busy week and developing an idea.

Wow,Friday evening already and here I am typing my blog in bed with a cup of tea at 10pm! I have had a really busy week and am very tired! Due to the nature of my 'day job' I have very little to do over the winter months(good for turning time!!) and then suddenly spring arrives, the phone starts ringing and 'pow' I'm busy again(good for my bank account!!) This week I've had two days of grading potatoes for the local farmer, a day and a half mowing lawns and a day spent digging up fir trees and barrowing soil!!! Oh the joys of manual labour!!! Still, the moneys good and the sun has been out all week, so it has been nice to be outdoors. Luckily I managed an afternoon to devote to my passion and make some shavings fly!

I finished work Wednesday lunch time and came home to find the family out for the afternoon, they had gone to see the 'inlaws', so it was off to the shed for me! After making the piece posted

previously, the ideas continue to come on a theme or at least a style and it continues to develop into something else. I really liked the colours on the 'fire' based bowl and started thinking of a new design based on a supernova, using the same colours. The result is shown opposite here, the

description of the design is as follows "In the death of a star, it sheds off the outer layers of itself in a supernova, thus creating a nebula of gaseous filaments and dust, in this case leaving a dark remnant behind"

I began to wonder how much wood I was

removing in these pierced bowl forms and found

up some very accurate scales.This piece started out as a 10" by 2" Ash bowl blank weighing more than a kilogram(2.2lb) and was turned into a 2mm thick round bottom bowl, this weighed

88g(a tiny bit over 3 oz), I then marked out my design and did the piercing work, sitting in the warm sunshine at the garden table, after quite a bit of sanding to ensure the removal of fluffy fibers and clean inside edges of the holes I reweighed the piece at 28g(1 oz). It was then airbrushed with acrylics and lacquered to finish, the final weight of the piece after drying out the paints is 31.4g(1.108 oz).