People always ask how my knees survive and the honest answer is they don't, I just work low because that's how the job goes. You can't set smalti on a table and see it true. So I'm down on the floor eight hours and the cats treat me like furniture. Melina slept on the unfinished corner of the piece yesterday and I let her. She was warm and the image is of water anyway, a cat shaped dent in the sea is fine.

Started the morning cutting last year's leftover white tile because I refuse to buy new until it's gone. Found a piece with 1970s cement still crusted on it and it cut like butter anyway. Old stuff is better. New smalti has no patience in it.

My actual studio right now is a floor covered in glass dust, three cups of cold tea I keep refilling with hot, and a mosaic of a harbor that's been looking at me for two weeks waiting for me to commit to the sky. I keep putting the blue down and taking it up. Somewhere in me I know the answer is fewer colors, not more. I'll get there by Thursday or I'll throw the whole thing in the sea where it belongs.