A Hot Mess Part Sixteen: The Semester of WTF

8 December 2019

I: Emulate an Artist

We have an assignment, or at least the first-timers do: emulate a glass artist. Anyone but Chihuly, we're told. I'm not an advanced class rookie this semester, but I'll play along. I already have something in mind, a holdover from last semester.

I want to combine the bead artistry of Bruce St John Maher with a Maine coastline.

Right.

My first attempts were last semester. 

Maine #1 was clear glass rolled in two colors of frit. It went right from the annealer to the student sale before I even remembered to take a picture of it. Maine #2 looked like a privet hedge, or creamed spinach, or an algal bloom, behind a wall of pink rocks. 

Maine #3 blorped out of control, the trees becoming waves, the vessel caught mid-hula, the whole thing so bad I had to take it with me on our trip to Mount Desert Island to find a coastline as tilted as this piece of work. In August, sitting on the bathroom sink, loaded with brushes, it self-destructed.

Which brings us to Maine #4. I keep it small. I'm too cautious with the tree line this time. There is depth, though.

I need to live with it for a while, to figure out what to try next. I set it on the kitchen windowsill where I can see it regularly. I think I need to add blue for the ocean, maybe put the aventurine on the outside, maybe draw a tree. It sits for a few days. One night I look at it then head to the gym. When I return an hour and a half later, Maine #4 is in two pieces. "I didn't touch it," Jack says.

I bring it upstairs for a little glue surgery. This might be the best I can do. The glue holds the two pieces together, but other cracks begin to snake around the middle. It's got to survive until the final crit, until the first week of December.

Maine #5 and Maine #6 happen a week later with Sleepless as my partner.

I cannot control these blue rods. I've got dark blue beneath the opal sky blue. On Maine #5 the water is behind the rocks completely. I'm not wild about the shape either; I opened it too fast. The trees got a little squashed.

When I'm making Maine #6, the blue rod scoots off to one side so I balance it out with rocks on the other. I draw the tree with transparent green, which disappears almost entirely as I stretch the vessel into a drop vase. When I try to flare the opening I mangle the top instead. When it comes out of the annealer I decide to remove all the bad parts by running it through the wet saw.

It's so shallow now that I wouldn't even call it a vase. At home I drop it in the reject box. When I pull it out again a few days later, I notice a little crack curving down the dark blue side. I put it on my desk and fill it with pencils.

A week later I'm working with Classmate's Partner and the blue rod gets away from me again. I lose control of my next Maine. By the time I stretch it into a drop vase it doesn't resemble a coastline at all. My aventurine threads are too short and too thin for me to draw a good tree without burning myself. Instead I splatter an abstract tree-like something on the side as the aventurine threads snap in half between my nervous fingers. Nothing is going right for me today. It's Halloween. I'm cursed. Maine #8 looks like a view from a dirty window during a gale.

Maine #8 and Maine #9 happen when I work with Alchemy a week later.

For Maine #8, I'm opting for an overlay of the dark blue on top of a clear second gather. I draw a tree and stop at one lest I ruin the whole thing. I'm using the last of my opal sky blue rod. I've got quite a lot of glass on the pipe. I think I'm forgetting how to make jack lines. The piece is oblong. I like the shape. We have a hell of a time getting it off the blowpipe. The top is so thick that the glass cracks halfway down the vessel during the transfer to the punty. I keep at it anyway, hoping the crack will heal itself in the heat of the glory hole. The top isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but it'll do. Then the bottom cracks off when we break off the punty. "Put it away anyway," I say. I'll edit in post.

There's a swoop of accidental thread from my sloppy drawing. It runs across the side, under what remains of the original crack.

A week later I finally have time to cut off the bottom. I don't like the top so I cut that off too. It's bass-ackwards: the top is thicker than the bottom. From a distance it looks okay; close up, not so much. But put it in a dark room with a light inside and all is forgiven.

Feeling some pressure to get it right (we're jumping back to the day with Alchemy again), I try for Maine #9 right away. I keep it smaller this time. As I shape the top, the heat of the glory hole turns the blue orange. Alchemy likes the color. I tell him that it looks like a sunset. We both wish it would stay that way. "I think this is the best one you've done so far, he says." I'm not so sure.

When it comes out of the annealer, though, I start to agree with him. The two blues reacted with each other, creating a deep blue line between them and a low fog on the water line, just like in real life up in Bar Harbor. There's not enough rock-colored frit, though, so the tree looks innundated. Maybe it was the heat of the torch or an interaction between the aventurine and the dark blue that created a purple shadow under the tree.

High tide?

Maine #10 collapses under its own ugly weight during transfer to the punty. I didn't much like it anyway; the glass was imploding as I drew the tree. Sleepless and I get Maine #11 all the way to the annealer.

It's okay, except for the tree, which, along with the rocks, had been sitting pretty at the bottom of the piece until I stretched it. Now the tree is a snake rising to the sky. An online friend says the piece reminds her of a Klimvt painting. I'll take that, I guess. At least it's bigger.

There's no fog this time either.

It winds up on the bathroom sink, holding hair brushes.

I don't know if I want to try again. I need some time away from this project. Classmate's Partner says I want to try again.

II:  Cracking Up

There's a running theme in the studio this semester: cracks. I suppose it always happens. Our Instructor says that uneven heat in the piece when we put it away can cause it. A splash of water can get a fracture going. A bad break-off can set a crack running from the bottom. A bad jack line on a thick top can send vibrations downwards.

I've had all of this happen at various times. I'm quick to blame myself, of course, but I want to lay the blame on the blue rod too. I blew through half a kilo of it since last May, and, so far, only two pieces, the one with the squashed trees, and the one with the tree in the gale, have emerged unscathed. There's still time for them to explode before the final.

Rods are a different beast than frit. They give a good, solid color and, when finessed properly, can be blown out to give a gradient.  I'm still learning how they move.

On a regular lab night, I accidentally pick up a classmate's rod, thinking it's mine (they all look the same when they're hot). He's okay with it. I don't even know what color it's going to be. I make a long, phallic drop vase out of it, only to discover a crack running the full length when I cut of the top to make it smooth.

I bring it home, but I realize it could explode at any minute. I wrap it carefully in bubble wrap and take it back to the studio. By the end of the night, after countless pieces of hot rejects have landed on top of it, the vase has shattered.

III:  Drop Vases

Any control I think I had in May appears to have evaporated. If I were smart I'd stop working with color for a while and focus on basic shapes. I'm not smart. I have a rolling tool case full of color and, damn it, I'm going to play.

So I'm making drop vases. They're a good compromise between randomness and control. I have to set the vase up properly for it to fall when I heat it.  I can make small ones that I heat less; they're elongated eggs. I can make tall ones that look far more like I planned them than I actually did.

At first I don't even bother to put a punty on the bottom. I just knock it off the pipe and cut it down later. At least I'm learning how to use the wet saw for more than cutting rods.

The top on this one wasn't terrible, but I needed something to practice on before I cut the orange one down.

Getting the finish to be optically clear involves hours at the sanding disk. I don't have the time or the patience. I stop when it's no longer going to slice anyone's finger off.

I try sand-blasting two vases. One is clear and boring. The other slipped while I was flattening the bottom on the disc sander; I'm going to cover that part up with blasting.

I don't like how the clear one turns out. I discard it. The red one is nifty, though, especially when seen with a flash camera.

When I make the emerald green one, I get it good and hot before I drop it, keeping enough glass on the bottom to put a punty on and shape the top a little. It's my current favorite.

The yellow one happens when I'm working with Alchemy. I have to stand on a stool to drop the glass onto the paddle, and I'm too short to reach down to put a jack line in while the piece is still hot enough to move. Sleepless and I have the jack line coordination thing down. I forget to tell Alchemy that the line needs to go in a little at a time, and gently. He squeezes hard and it pushes the top into an oblong shape as I turn it. The vase has a nifty hand-feel as a result.

IV: Playing with Other People's Color and Other People's Molds

I've nearly used up the secret sauce that Alchemy gave me. What little I have left I roll onto blue frit under a white core. I don't cover it with clear glass. The sparseness of the secret frit and the heat it's exposed to make it pull into itself. I have to bring this into work with me. It looks like microglia.

One of the Tuesday night advanced guys has a secret mold. It's meant to create bubbles: the first step is to drop the hot glass into the mold; the second step is to gather clear glass over it. I have a little trouble when the bottom cools too rapidly and shatters in the mold. I have to heat and heal, sending the pattern into a diagonal when I blow it out.

I'm convinced that there's nothing I can make with this cherry red rod that won't end up being something I like. The color makes up for everything else.

V: The Curse of Grundle

I jump into an empty afternoon slot on Halloween. 

I can't control anything. I'm working with Low Key. A Maine attempt doesn't make it to transfer. I decide to put the scenery aside and use each color by itself.

The cursed blue rod blows out unevenly. When in doubt, drop it out.

The dark blue rod is small and does the same thing. When in doubt, spin it out.

Somehow the inner bubble developed a spike. It's not sharp. If I mess with it, it will be, so I leave it alone.

It dawns on me that, despite feeling as if I've gained nothing this semester, the truth is that I'm much better at going where the glass takes me and still winding up with something halfway reasonable at the end.

The frit mix, being frit, is more cooperative, and I get a little egg-shaped vase out of it:

"Nothing is going to plan! Nothing!" I complain to Our Instructor. He says some days are like that. He says I should set aside the tough stuff for a while and play instead. I might be too OCD for that.

It's now that I find out the temperature in the glory hole has been turned up to 2050 degrees Farenheit, the same temperature as the molten glass in the furnace. This explains a lot.

Sleepless can't make it to class tonight. Because it's Halloween, Our Instructor is going to make a ghost. I send Sleepless a running commentary, with pictures. I'm not going to risk getting in trouble by posting the pictures.

"Ohhh," she writes, "He's doing it that way!!! Is he going to spin it out?"

"I think so. His chalk doodle looks spun out."

Then things go south. "Oooo!" I text. "Big crack from the moile on up! Bet he fixes it." Our Instructor can fix anything.

He takes it back to the glory hole. I assume he's giving up. "It's dead, Jim."

Then, "No, wait! He's puntying it up! Saved! 'Never say die' he just said."

Then, "Right up the butt! Ghost says, 'You should see the other guy!'"

Sleepless writes back, "Right in the g r u n d l e!!"  I have to look that up.

"Ouch."

Then, "Done."

She says, "That ghost has no clue what's happening! OOOH!  I love him!!!"

That's the thing I really like about Sleepless. Imperfections don't bother her in the least. She encourages all of us. She has fun with everything she makes and everything we make.

She and I name the ghost "Grundle."

When it's out of the annealer it sits on the table, cursing us all into the following week.

These are some of the things that Grundle cursed that day as he sat on the table staring at us.

With Classmate's partner I tried for a moonlight reflection with two rods of unknown blue, from the student starter pack, that, when picked up in sequence, ate each other, leaving me with a murky gray background to a stretched moon. When in doubt, swing it out. The shape is something close to what I've wanted all semester, even if I've gotten there by accident. The color, though, is nauseating. The moon looks like a wad of chewed gum under a forgotten desk.

I set the moonrise idea aside for a week, then come back to it when I work with Alchemy. This time I draw on the glass before I gather over it and shape it. The moon ends up by the very top of the little bowl, and so worked into the glass that it's barely visible.

Nothing is going as planned. Nothing.

See that white haze near the top? That's the moon. There's a smattering of dichroic frit that's supposed to be sparkle in the water. Sure, whatever.

I'm ready to give it away until I set it on the kitchen windowsill. The diffuse morning light hits it just right. I'm keeping this one.

Anyway, back to Halloween, after giving up on the moonrise the first time:

I lay out some frit: aqua metallic and my own, coarse, secret frit.

I put white frit on the core bubble to make the blue and the reaction stand out. We get to work on a drop vase. It's almost 4:30 as we transfer it to a punty. "It looks like a pickle!" Classmate's Partner says, because the blue looks green when it's hot, and the secret frit hasn't turned its full color yet. But I know what's going to happen in the annealer.

The middle is thin. The top is messy. I need to fix the top. Classmate's Partner has to leave. The Tuesday night beginner, who always gets here early, jumps in to help me.

I work the top and reheat. "One more," I tell her, "and I'll put it away."  I work the top some more. It's not quite there. "One more," I say, and take it to the glory hole.

As I'm spinning the vase, the middle collapses. I keep spinning and bring it out, letting the top collapse in a twist onto the bottom. It's fabulous, liquid and solid at once. I love it.

I try again, this time with less glass. I don't have enough for a good drop vase so I decide to attempt a floppy bowl instead. It's coming up on 5:00 though, and I'm feeling rushed. I don't get the opening even. The result is an organic shape worthy of the color pattern that emerges. I won't get points for a good spin-out, but I don't care.

VI: Ornaments, Ornaments, Ornaments

With Halloween behind us, it's time to turn our attention towards ornaments. Well, three of us anyway. One of the Tuesday night advanced guys is sticking with pumpkins. The other has started on ornaments. With a blow hose attached to the end of his pipe, he cranks out one every five minutes. Sleepless and I watch him. I dig out my own blow hose, which I've used all of three times before casting it aside in frustration. It doesn't go much better tonight. I put it aside again. Sleepless and I work together instead. It takes a few tries before we figure out just when to blow hard or gently to keep the glass from blowing out or getting too cold. 

I still have the white, blue, and secret frit out from earlier in the day. Sleepless teaches me how to make a hook. It's not easy to get right, but it's easier to get something than I thought it would be. 

I start off with a decent one, followed by a dud with a pinched-off air hole that becomes a marble with a hook. The color reaction is completely different: I'm getting gold instead of red. Some of the ornaments crack when I knock them off the pipe. The cracks anneal and the ornament stays whole. Sometimes the glass blows out unevenly, giving me a potato. I put them all in the annealer. I'll sort it out on Thursday.

And here they are, the survivors:

Maybe this is the best one.

Oops. Here, though, the colors reacted more like they did when I made the pickle.

Here's a potato:

This is one that has an annealed crack.

The advanced ornament-maker suggested I try my iris gold reducing color with cherry red. This one blew out so unevenly that I'm not going to keep it. It's misshapen to the point of embarrassment. I've decided that if I have to explain a piece to a person I'm giving the piece to, I shouldn't be giving it to anyone.

After my 45 minutes are up, Sleepless takes her turn to churn out a handful of ornaments. Unfortunately, the pumpkin guy left his stem rod on the breakoff table, and, still hot from his latest masterpiece, it burns Sleepless on the thumb when she accidentally brushes against it. She soldiers on, but after about half an hour she calls it quits. I've already put  my color away. Not one to leave any time unused, I ask if I can go again, with some of her color.

I roll the hot glass in a little of each of what she's got up there: blue, green, and brown. I underestimate how hot the glass is when I instruct her to blow hard, and the bubble bursts, collapsing onto itself much like the ill-fated pickle. Given our track record this semester, I shrug and ask her for air again. The glass is hot enough to get something round out of it. The ornament has a mottled gall, but at least it's round and I've got a hook on it. This is all practice anyway.

I take the best one to work with me and hang it in the window. In the afternoon sunlight, the gold glows.

A week later we're at it again. I do better this time, with ten ornaments and one dud. 

This one has a big gap where I missed the breakoff hole when I put the hook on. I take it into work with me to plug the hole. We have a bottle of thick, UV-curable adhesive that is too viscous for its intended purpose. I might as well put it to good use. I hang it above my desk.

This one needs adhesive too. I hang it over my desk.

The rest are good enough to give away or sell for charity.

I have uneven heat on this one because I try twisting the glass first. It blows out weirdly, and very much not round.

At the end of the night I borrow some of Sleepless' frit.

The day that I make the second moonrise, I have time for two more ornaments, this time with the elusive copper ruby light frit. It's white when it's cold. When it's hot, we might get deep purple, muddy amethyst, or, if we're lucky, the coppery red that it's supposed to be.

I get two copper ruby plums with scattered dichroic highlights:

Several weeks have gone by now since the first ornament night. I'm looking in the cabinet for my latest finished pieces when I come across a large ornament, smooth and nearly round, with the exact color combination I'd used that night. Is this mine? I look at the hook and compare it to an ornament in my hand that I know I made. The hooks are identical, down to the little dent at the end where I always push too hard with the tweezers. Huh. Beginner's luck, I guess.

The one I'm holding is a dud. It cracked when I put it away. Its companion is a lumpy mess. I'd used a color-changing frit that goes gummy on me, which is why that container is at the bottom of my gargantuan glass bag. The cracked one goes into the waste bucket. The other goes home with me, to be given away to someone with peculiar taste.

VII:  The Semester of What the Fuck?

Sleepless brings her hot glass to the pumpkin mold the way she always has. This time, instead of filling out, the glass stays narrow, and when she pulls the pipe up, the hot glass stays with it.

"You're making a drop vase!" I grab the jacks. She calls it a pumpkin vase and we like it.

Another time, while aiming for a pumpkin, she gets a butternut squash instead, and it's awesome, because nobody else has thought to make one.

She's standing at the furnace, warming glass. I'm griping about this semester. "I feel as if I haven't made any progress. Nothing turns out the way I want it to."

"This is the semester of What. The. Fuck," she decrees, and so it is. 

To drive home the point, when my turn comes up on a crowded Thursday night, I decide to make something simple. I have a baggie full of broken threads. I grab a handful and lay them out on the hot plate. I roll them onto a clear gather. I'll make a cup or something.

Or something. I truly seem to have forgotten how to make a good jack line. I'm so paranoid about making the bottom too thin that I keep this one thick. The top is uneven when Sleepless and I break it off the pipe. I trim it a little, but, in the interest of time, I don't get it completely even. The vessel is short and wide, the perfect shape for a floppy bowl. So I'm going to make a floppy bowl.

To spin out into a bowl, the top needs to be even and the piece needs to be centered on the punty. Mine is neither of these things. In the 2050-degree glory hole, the mouth gets soupy quickly. I pull it out to spin it, Sleepless cheering, "Yeah! Yeah!" as it goes flat, but not completely round. 

When I drop it to flop it, one side droops twice as much as the rest of it. "I love it!" Sleepless says. I shrug. "It's art," I say as we put it away.

VII: Me and My Blow Hose

Classmate's Partner and Alchemy's Partner like to work together when they can. They grab two of the three open Wednesday slots, meaning Alchemy and I can't work together. I sign up for the remaining slot, knowing that my partner will be the Beginner Who is Just Not Getting It (like me, my first semester, only worse, and not improving). This will be a learning experience for me: I am digging out the blow hose and, dammit, I will teach myself to use it.

Our Instructor doesn't like us using blow hoses. He'd prefer we work as teams. He knows that a handful of the advanced students use them. I've watched both of the Tuesday night guys do it. They sling the hose around their necks. When I first tried mine that's how I did it. I guess my tube is shorter because that setup didn't work at all. Last week I watched Tiny's Daughter's Sister use hers in class, right in front of Our Instructor. I watched how she kept the tube in front of her all the time, how she backed into the bench in two steps, letting the hose swing into place under the rails. Today I try that and it works.

I start with another Maine attempt. It's okay I guess. I ask Classmate's Partner for help holding the pipe still while I draw a tree, and for help when I get the punty. The punty is hot when I put it on; the bottom of the piece is thin. They meld together; they shouldn't. I can't get the piece away from the punty. Knocking the rod hard, I send a vibration down that shatters the piece.

Next I try for a sunrise over water. I mix red, yellow, and orange frit for the core color and overlay dark blue for water. Colors never look the same hot as they do when they cool down, but I can tell well enough that I don't like this combination at all. I haven't stretched it out very much so I decide to try to make a floppy bowl. I'd just walked the Beginner Who is Just Not Getting It through the same steps as I walk through now. The beginner failed. So do I. Too thick, too cold. I put it away anyhow.

When I retrieve it the following Tuesday, Sleepless falls in love with it. "It's yours," I tell her, after I grind the bottom down so that it'll stand without rocking.

I need to consult with Alchemy on this. Perhaps I need an opaque color, or a background color on the core bubble over which I can add sunrise colors. Or I need to load up the core bubble with frit to the point that no clear glass shows through.

I'm not going to try any more scenery today. It's time to make ornaments by myself, with nobody to give me air and nobody to bring me hot bits for the hook. It's all on me. 

I get eight in. The three biggest, roundest ones are the ones where the hooks snap off as I lift them into the annealer with the same tool I used to make the hook. Big mistake. Too much pressure, too much heat in the metal. We have a homemade stick with a little wire on it for just this purpose. Next week I'll use it.

To make matters worse, later, when I'm driving home with the ornaments in a box in the back of the car, I get to a light that turns yellow when I'm far enough away that it might turn red on me if I don't slow down, but too close to slow down gradually. I try to be as gentle as I can with the brakes, but it's not enough. My ginormous bag of glass supplies rolls forward and the ornaments slide with it. I hear them thump under my seat.

I've lost one entirely; it was one with a broken hook. The hooks have snapped off of two more, leaving me now with four broken ornaments.

The little ones, which are thicker, have survived.

Fortunately, one that I made last week but forgot to take home, which I made from a piece of cherry red rod, survived. I'm keeping this one.

For the broken ones, I have an idea.

On my way home from work I stop at a big box craft store and make a bee line for the Christmas decorations. There's a particular type of ornament cap I'm after. They come on the cheapest plastic ornaments. I find what I'm looking for and leave with 18 ornaments, setting me back a whole $5. I spend another $5 on a pack of soft ornaments that will be cat toys on Christmas day.

The ornaments are so cheap that I can pry the tops of with my hands. I save a few of the plastic balls for the kitten, who bats them around the floor right away.

Next I cut down the nubs of the glass hooks until they fit under the plastic tops. I lose one ornament in the process. The three that remain get a dose of glue.

Now, I realize that I can bang out another four ornaments in the time it will take me to rescue one of these. But that's not the point. This is the Semester of What the Fuck, and I'm going to see it all the way through.

I drown them in some more glue and wait.

Using a razor blade to scrape away glue that oozed out between the spaces in the top, I scrape away some of the silver finish too.

Well, hell, I have silver nail polish, because of course I do. Problem solved. 

VIII: Ornaments, Ornaments, Ornaments

When I make this batch of ornaments, I haven't yet slammed on the brakes, but I have seen that the last batch is kind of boring. To remedy that, I lay out some color to put on top of white. This time I have Sleepless to help me, and I use the wire hook to put the ornaments into the annealer. 

Oops.

I have three boxes of ornaments. The first box has four in it; they're the ones I'm keeping. 

The second box, labeled "WTF," has half a dozen oddly-shaped rejects. 

With a tube of UV-cured adhesive and a mini UV light that I found online, I've sealed the holes and smoothed the rough spots on the handful of early attempts that didn't go quite right. They're in the third box, among those that went right. There are seventeen in this box and they will be given as gifts or sold for charity.  I'll need to take them out into daylight to get better pictures.

IX: Shop Talk

I'm dousing my hot pipe with water at the pipe cooler when one of the Tuesday night guys comes over and says, "Did you know the ducks have names?"

"Jack and Sophie," he says.

X: December

It's the week before Thanksgiving. Our instructor reminds us that our final crit is in two weeks, and that he will not keep the furnace on past then. A collective whine rises from fifteen sullen glassblowers.

So this means I have two weeks to get Maine right. Two weeks is tonight, next Tuesday, and the Tuesday after that. 

I'll get right on it, but not tonight. I need to make something simple to get my confidence back up. Classmate's Partner assists me with an aventurine old gold cat. It sparkles in direct light. Otherwise it looks deep brown.

It's our penultimate Tuesday of the term. I'm still taking a break from coastlines. I got into my head last night that I want to try the threader. One of the advanced guys is good at this. Sleepless has used it a few times to make threaded goblets.

I want to try feathering. The advanced featherer suggests that I only pull towards me. "Pulling away ruins it," he says. I take that to mean I'd ruin the piece if I tried it. He has a homemade tool for pulling the threads, and he gives me a glove too.

I've tried this three times before, all last spring, with Glass Ninja assisting. Our Tuesday guy does things a little differently. Rather than heat the piece then bring it back to the bench, he wants me to heat it at the glory hole and pull the threads right there. That's why I'll need the glove; it's hot up there.

First, though, we have to get the threads on. I have a white core. Sleepless is making a bit from hyacinth purple. I wait at the threader until she brings the bit, droopy hot. I spin the pipe as she touches down. The thread spirals down the glass bubble. But I'm not putting enough weight on the pipe and it bounces. I reposition it; the thread gets cold and breaks off halfway. 

Sleepless goes back to get more while I heat up what I have. At the last minute I tell her, "Green this time."

On our second try I spin better and the thread spirals down to the bottom of the bubble. Feathering is much easier at the glory hole with the proper tool and a thick glove. I pull on the threads eight times before taking it back to the bench to shape it.

As with everything else I've made this semester, the shape is the last thing I think about. Next semester I need to focus on shapes. Today I'm just going to open it up a little and put it away.  By the time I'm ready for that we can see the purple coming up and the green fading into the white.

Our Tuesday guy asks if I'm going to try again tonight. "No," I tell him. "I want to see how this one comes out and live with it for a while before I decide what to do next."

I can even see where the purple  thread started.

I spend the rest of my time making ornaments.

In the back of my mind, though, I know I have to try to make Maine again. I go over it again as I fall asleep.

Tuesday is my last chance. I take half a day off from work to get extra time at the bench. My partner is Alchemy. If he can't talk me through another Maine, nobody can.

The studio is a madhouse. When I arrive at 12:45, the people from the 9:00-1:00 slot are still midway through their pieces. Beginners are drifting in and out to grind the punties off their pieces before their final crit tomorrow. There's a student art sale going on somewhere else on campus. A handful of classmates are working the tables and also drifting in and out. In the chaos, I can't set up early. I'm not ready to start until 1:30. That's half an hour of my last chance gone.

I've got a bunch of rod slices in the oven, including two slivers of capri blue. One is for Maine. The other is backup if I fail and want to try again. I lay out the opal sky blue frit and a brown frit mix. Later today I want to try threading again, so I pop a white rod and a slice of a vague purple in the oven too. By the time the oven is ready to be turned on, it's full of color from me, Alchemy, and the advanced student at the other bench.

I'm trying to relax. I really am. I get my gather and layer on four coats of opal sky blue frit. I marver the glass again to make it even and get a reasonable core bubble going. Alchemy and I chat while it cools. I get the second gather and shape it, working the block correctly this time to get as much glass off the pipe as I can. I let it cool, flame the tip, heat the whole thing, and go to pick up the slice of blue rod with the hot tip. It's too cold. The slice doesn't stick. 

"I got it," Alchemy says, working the oven door as I reheat the gather and try again. It sticks this time. I melt the overlay and flatten it onto the bottom of the gather. I block it again to get the shape even. Then I warm the whole thing, dip the bottom in to the frit mix, and block one more time. 

Sky, sea, and rocks are all there. I get the glass hot again and return to the bench.  "Air," I say.

"Air!" John replies and blows into the pipe. I wait for the opal bubble to expand, until the sky meets the sea. 

"Off!"

"Off!" Alchemy says.

"Flash this?" I ask.

While he's heating the glass, I pick up the propane torch in my right hand and the long, thin, clear-coated, aventurine green thread with my left hand. 

Alchemy comes back and we choose a spot on the rocks. "Happy little trees!" he chides.

"Stoooooop!" Bob Ross creeps. me. out.

I wish my hands would stop shaking. I take a deep breath and draw a tree, slowly, carefully.

"Flash?"

I pace. "One more."

The second one goes on to the left of the first one.

"Flash?"

I exhale.

We give it more air. I'm worried about the bottom being too thin. I ask Alchemy to bring me a bit for a button on the bottom. I haven't tried this since last semester. I get it wrong; instead of being a round disc, it's slightly elongated. "Good enough. I'll grind it off later."  Now, at least, I won't crack the bottom off.

The punty goes on, and we knock it off the pipe without a problem. I exhale again. Maybe I can do a good jack line once in a while. 

I don't want to shape it much, lest I ruin the whole thing. I don't want to stretch the trees like I did before, and I don't want to open the top past straight, lest I screw that up too and make a hat. I open the top a little, so that the vessel still curves inwards, and we make sure it's even and round.

"Put it away," I say, and we break it off the punty. Alchemy stashes it in the back of the annealer, so deep in that I can't even see it to get a picture.

I go to my notebook to write it all down, ending with, "stop shaking."

Alchemy makes something complicated, beautiful, and perfect. 

My turn again. Alchemy hates the threading machine. He calls it a "piece ruiner." I wheedle him into bringing the bit while I turn the pipe. I pick up the white rod, knowing I'm asking for trouble. White is a stiff color. It might not behave the way I want it to. 

The setup goes well enough. Alchemy pulls the murky purple bit perfectly. I manage to feather it at the glory hole without burning my hands.

It all goes to hell when I try to shape it. I ask for too much air; we blow it out thin, and when I try to shape it, I can tell that it's going to collapse. I mess up the button again (Alchemy says next semester he'll show me his way of doing it) but at least the bottom won't fall out. The top is a mess: thin and uneven. I try to cut it, but I can tell that there's really only one thing I can do at this point.

When in doubt, spin it out.

Last week was beginner's luck, I guess.

Alchemy makes a long, tall vessel out of a transparent rod. I watch every step, intent on learning how to lengthen glass without swinging it.

It's 4:30. There's just enough time for me to do something quick and easy. In the oven I have a piece of green aventurine rod. I roll it in secret sauce to see if anything will happen. I'll try a drop vase.

Rushing never helps. I don't expand the aventurine enough into the clear gather. When I drop the hot glass onto the paddle, the clear moves and the aventurine stays put. With care I could make a goblet with a runaway stem. It shatters instead. I shrug. "I expected as much."  There doesn't appear to have been much of a color reaction anyway.

At 5:00 I'm back at it in my regular time slot. One of the advanced classmates is going to help me thread again. 

I realize that I've gone all semester without giving the two advanced guys good pseudonyms for this blog. The one who is my thread sherpa will be Thread Sherpa. The other, who uses more glass for his pieces than the four of us combined, will be All The Glass. 

Anyway, Thread Sherpa wants to bring me the bit this time. He wants to show me and Sleepless where we've gone wrong before. He has me spinning the pipe while he touches down then slowly pulls away as I spin, keeping the thread an even thickness from start to finish. 

I've got his glove and pick again. Sleepless shields me from the heat of the glory hole as I feather. I'm using opal sky blue frit with capri blue for the thread. It's blue on blue, but there's plenty of contrast. Thread Sherpa looks on. He thinks he can do better with the thread; he thinks he can be more even with it. I can't see where he went wrong.

As I always do when I'm trying something new, I keep it small. I put the punty on a little off-center. If I open the vessel up more than a little, it'll look obviously uneven. I keep the opening small and put it away. It's in the front of the annealer, where I can get a good picture of it.

Cool!

I head to my notebook. Thread Sherpa is behind me. He wants more contrast. I don't have any white frit up, but I do have chameleon, which might be white-ish, set out for ornaments. He brings out a black rod. "Next time," he says, "Go bigger." I give him a little smack upside the head.

When my turn rolls around again, I don't use more glass than last time, but I do dare to marver the second gather, something I've seen everyone do but have been too afraid to try myself. It works; the piece is longer.

We get the thread on and I feather it. The black is supposed to be a reducing color. It's already getting a sheen to it as I shape the vessel. "Wanna get another gather?" he asks.

"NO!" I roll my eyes at Sleepless. "Besides, we want the black to reduce."

Before we put it away, Thread Sherpa hits it with the big torch for a full minute. He's perplexed when we can't see any reduction at all. I shrug. "Maybe it'll reduce in the annealer. I've had that happen before."

I can already see the top turning a little yellow. I'd rolled the core bubble in secret sauce after applying the chameleon frit just to see what would happen. Maybe this is the two colors reacting?

It's not; Alchemy tells me later that chameleon changes color depending on how quickly it cools off. The top of my piece cooled at a different speed from the bottom.

I have time to make two more ornaments, one from a bag of yellow frit mix that another student gave away as she left her session this afternoon.

There's so little glass left in the furnace now that I can't keep my next gather warm enough for an ornament. (All the Glass is using the glory hole.) We struggle to get a tiny copper ruby light one, and then the night is over.

XI: Emulate An Artist

It's crit night. I need to get to the grinding wheel before class starts. There will probably be a line.  I arrive half an hour before class and scurry to the cabinet in search of Maine #13.

OMG! You guys! I did it!

I'm so relieved that I'm worried I'll slip on the grinding wheel and mess it up. I hold on for dear life until most of the messed-up button is ground away.

Everything's there. The two trees. The rocks. The water. The sky. And even a little fog.

That's it. I'm done.

In my suitcase are Maine #4 (the one that's more glue than glass), Maine #8 (the bottomless one), and Maine #9 (now second best), plus the pickle, the reactive color floppy bowl, the invisible moonrise, and the emerald green floppy vase. I set them all out on a table next to all of the things I made on Tuesday.

Our Instructor wanders about with a camera. I get out of the way when he gets near. "You got threading down," he says. I'll take that as high praise.

We go around the room, each classmate spending a few minutes explaining what they've done and what they hope to do next. When it's my turn, I hold up Maine #13. There's a smattering of "Wow!" and then Our Instructor says, "I'd like to see the trees taller."

Right. Like I'm going to do this again, ever.

"I want to try a sunset," I say, dodging his suggestion. "I tried a transparent frit combination but I didn't like how it came out. I gave it to Sleepless."

"I love it!" she says.

"Yeah, that's a difficult one. One night, Alchemy and I were leaving and the sun was going down. We said we wanted to do that in glass. It took some doing but I came up with the colors. I'm keeping that close for now." He's got a sheepish grin.

My goal for next semester, I tell the class, is to focus on shapes. "I have no control. I spent so much time on colors that I didn't bother with shapes." As much as it pains me, I'm going to have to work in clear glass for a while.

I wish I could show pictures of all the fantastic work everyone else is doing. Mine shrivels by comparison.

We pack up our work and leave, one by one.  Alchemy and I walk out together. We stand by his car and talk about color. We're going to figure this sunset thing out next semester.

XII: The Winnowing

It's after 10:00 when I get home. Jack is out at a Bob Dylan concert in New York City. He won't be home until after midnight. We both assume I'll be asleep by then.

I won't be. I'm sorting through glass, moving some into All the Glass' discarded cabinet that I managed to fit into my Prius a month ago. 

Maines #13 and #9 go on the top shelf, closest to the overhead light.

Last year's bowls crowd a lower shelf.

All the cats are crammed together, left to right, oldest to newest. None from this fall has made the cut.

Mishaps, flowers, and threads go together.

Everything else is lined up on a windowsill and chosen, one by one, for holiday gifts. The leftovers get a special photo shoot in the back yard; they'll go on sale, some for charity, some to offset my tuition.

Two pieces go to the lab with me. Five ornaments remain at home, hanging from a tacky tree that, I hope, will hold more a year from now.

Now it's time to take a deep breath and think about something else. We'll be back at it in eight short weeks.