Winding Down.

Summer break is almost upon me, and for a change, I am not frantically doing a hundred thousand things that have to be finished before the break - there's only one thing with a deadline left to take care of, but it's not a huge task, and two that should be taken care of but where it's not crucial to do it before the break, and otherwise I'm more or less set. Which is a nice change to some other years where I was really getting a bit of extra stress before the break... so it feels a bit like I'm winding down now, and that is very pleasant.

Which, mind you, does not mean there's not a lot that could be done. It's just that nothing will explode if I don't manage to do it before - and a lot of the other things are stuff on the "when I finally get around to it" that have been on said list for way longer than I'd like them to be anyways, so they are well used to waiting, and nothing bad will happen if they don't. But, after enough years of doing this job, I have come to realise that there are always things that would be so nice to do, or to have, or to start, or to make... and then there's something that does not line up, or stuff happens, and it's plainly not possible to do all the things one has ideas or plans for. Which is kind of sad, if you look at it one way, but on the other hand... imagine you only have so few ideas and plans and find so few things exciting or interesting that you get around to doing all of them? That would be a totally different, but at least as sad situation.

And to give you a picture, because they are nice, here's a complete non-sequitur that is not sad at all: 

This  is another case of a project that has eaten more time than initially planned - but oh, it has also delivered. I don't regret a single minute invested in the membrane gold thread project, as it brought me a lot of new knowledge, some new skills, a good amount of new contacts and pleasant time spent working together with wonderful people. 

And the result, as of now, is a method that would be absolutely workable for production. Plus some beautiful thread as the outcome - even though my skills in wrapping the membrane around the core are still not where they could be, it's gotten much better. There will be the EAA conference in Belfast at the end of August, where I'll do a little presentation about the project, and I am planning to do a bit more silver spinning before that. Overall, though - very, very content with the current state of things.