When our oven started smoking
It was a big shock for us when smoke and the smell of burning was emerging from our big, industrial oven. All ladies were very sad and scared. None of us use ovens at home but we use pressure cookers and we were afraid that this oven was like a giant pressure cooker which might kill us if it explodes! When this happened we worried we might not survive and I realized that we had to do SOMETHING!
I called a man who runs a local bakery to give us idea. I asked him if he could help us to repair the oven and fix the problem. I sent him our burnt oven photo and the details of what happened. But he couldn't help us and said we needed a technician to sort out the problem. We were so desperate and panicking because we had to have an oven to complete the orders and we had sessions coming up with Kathleen didi and Christine didi. Specifically we were about to do our flower’s brooches when we had a session with Kathleen didi and Christine didi. And we felt like the world was waiting for our lovely flower brooches!
At first the technician said we needed a new oven which had to be transported from Kathmandu. We kept making our beads till the new oven was ordered from Kathmandu. Our plates and working tables were full of petals and cone beads. We were desperately waiting and finally, after a week, oven arrived. It was a very happy day and we didn’t wait, just said let’s do it. Two boys came to help us to carry a very heavy old oven and put the new one on the same place. They reconnected it. But then we knew that we had no idea what we are going to do next so decided to call the bakery man.
The bakery man is very good with bakery items. He didn’t know about cooking beads. And this was a big industrial oven so Wendy didi didn't know anything about it either. The bakery man sets the oven temperatures and we brought some beads to cook. After looking at our beads he was very surprised and said that beads were going to be different to bread!! He was kind but said we would have to work things out for ourselves.
We thought we had to use our thermometer and just try to work out what temperature on our dials will make the right cooking temperature. We used scrap to make some test beads and we made many mistakes but we didn’t give up. Sometimes I (Kopila) thought maybe I rushed to buy the new oven and I wondered if I would regret spent so much money on a worthless machine. I had these bad feelings continuously until eventually we figured out the temperature and set the time. We started with each dial set at 50 C and gradually increased the heat time and again and again until our thermometer said 150 inside. We set our timer for 40 minutes.
A lot of beads were incinerated along the way…
Wow it was so amazing and relieving that our beads cooked as it cooked before. We cooked and cooked and cooked! Now none of the trays are left to cook. Now we wipe our oven every time after cooking and cooling. One beautiful line I always remember of Wendy Didi is that we can always learn from our mistakes. For one week we burnt and melted many scrap beads but we ladies kept moving and now we all feel so much more safe about our oven and we know that it is not like a pressure cooker. We know how to make the temperature what we need!.
And soon....we are baking our flowers!
We hope that a lot of beads will come out of our new oven, looking magnificent!