I had another minor setback in my silkscreening journey. There is some wiggle room in the process of making a screen but it does require a specific series of actions to happen within a window of time. I will give a brief oversimplification of this timeless craft. You start with a clean and dry screen. You must apply emulsion to the screen in the dark. Once the emulsion is exposed to light it cures solid. This means that everything is done in the dark until you are ready to expose the design. After the emulsion has been applied and it is dry, you overlay your design and put it under a light to cure. Then you have to wash out the negative spaces from the design and you should have a useable screen.
Let’s imagine a scenario in which you applied the emulsion but forgot about it because you ended up in the emergency room with an eye injury. The next day, you accidentally turn on the light in the studio where the screen is drying. You had forgotten that you were in the middle of this project and wanted to investigate the sound coming from the studio. It was the fan that you were using to dry the emulsion. Now you have a very dry screen that has been briefly exposed to light. You are unable to admit defeat. So, you waste a lot of time trying to expose your design even though you know it won’t work. You still act surprised and angry when it doesn’t work. If this scenario were to happen, you would then have to wait until next week for some high-end emulsion remover to be delivered so that you can reclaim your screen and try again. It’s just bad timing.