22 October to 3 December 2020
I: Distracted By Color
There are two things I keep in mind before every class: I need to have a plan; and every day could be our last day. The virus is surging again.
Every day's plan includes attempting a floppy bowl. I've lost count of the failures, most of which end with "nope," and a tap-off into the re-melt bucket. I'll try a few times and move onto something fun, like planets.
I have two big jars of Alchemy's secret sauce. It works best with certain blues and greens. If I want to make a planet, I put the sauce on last. This one started out with blue, then green, then the magic.
I've never tried putting it on first, so I give that a shot. On top of it I layer green, then stick some blue on the bottom. The sauce mixes with the green and turns a reddish-brown. The green and blue combine to do some in-between stuff. I think this piece needs light. I'm going to put it in my office to watch what happens.
I really should try one more time to make a floppy bowl. I'm not going to get better if I don't practice. This time, the green goes on under the blue, and then I roll it in Alchemy's secret. Even if it doesn't work it'll be interesting to look at.
It sort of works, which is to say that one half of it flopped. At least it's interesting to look at. (It's destined for a Hill Slug.)
II: Failing to Flop
It's another Saturday with Old Man. He's a good partner. He's always standing by the hose, ready to slam it onto the pipe when I approach the bench. He likes mucking about with color too. He's got good control, far better than I had at his stage. He likes making flowers as much as I like making spheres and ornaments. Imperfections don't bother him. He likes them.
Today I'm in a Cherry Red mood, so I cut off a few slices from the new rod.
I'm working on a straight vessel until I lose control of the top; it becomes a hybrid between a vase and a floppy. It's probably the first cherry red piece I've made that I don't want to keep. Maybe I'll discard it. Maybe I'll sell it for charity. It's not going to live in my house, that's for sure. (It lives around the corner at a friend's house now.)
The cat goes much better. I'm going to take it into work so that it can sit in the sun. Cats like sitting in the sun.
What about that vermillion? What happens if I make an ornament from it? I mix it with black and it comes out Halloweeny. (It has crossed the pond to London.)
I try to make something with a slice of garnet rod. It's the end of the day and I'm getting worn out. I start with thinking I'll make a sphere, but then the bottom is too thin. I'd added black, which is a gummy color, and it's spread all over. Now the thing looks like a sorry gourd. There's not much I can do but try to put a hook on it. So it has a hook and a flat bottom. It's hideous. When it comes out of the annealer I try to cut the hook off and then grind down the bottom, which is so thin that I wear a hole in it. When I try to smooth out the hole with a file, the thing shatters. I throw it away.
As we get ready to leave, Pumpkin Master carries a bowl he made on Thursday. It had kinda gotten away from him, and spun out unevenly. For lack of a better option, I suggest he use it as a face shield.
Perfect!
Meanwhile, sitting on top of my computer at work, the three-color vessel shows me what it can do when the sun shines on it. The effect reminds me of the hazy sunrises in Maine last month.
III: In a Purple Mood
These days, I'm usually the first one into the classroom on Tuesday afternoons. With the pandemic, there aren't as many sessions, and on Tuesdays there's no morning class. Most of the time, the inside door is open, the pipe warmer is on, and the glory hole is ready. Several times, though, I've opened the door into a dark classroom. The first time this happened, I puttered about, setting up as usual, and texted Our Instructor: "How do I turn the pipe warmer and glory hole on?"
He was there in an instant and showed me how to get the pipe warmer pilot light going. The glory hole remains a secret under his control. It takes about half an hour to get up to temperature, limiting us to using the furnace in the meantime. We're all okay with that. It takes us a good fifteen minutes to set up the tools, fill the buckets for the blocks, fold the newspaper we use for shaping, and set out our colors for the day.
There's always grinding to be done. One of my goals is to make my pieces balanced enough, and my punty breaks clean enough, that I don't have to sand anything down. I'm not there yet.
I reorganized my glass over the weekend, and today I'm playing in the purple bag. Sleepless can't make it, so Classmate's Partner is working with me. He encourages me through a vase whose height is out of my comfort zone. I'll have to grind it down to set it straight. (It's on its way to Massachusetts as I type this.)
Planets are fun to make. (It's around the corner at my friends' house now.)
I use Fuchsia powder for a floppy bowl. Do four flops count? The ombre effect is unintentional but I'll take it. (I mailed it to Indiana last week.)
I try again. No matter how much I grind this down, I can't get it to sit without tipping over. I keep it at home for a while then eventually send it to the scrap can. I'm never gonna get this right.
Mucking around with color combinations lands me a handful of ornaments.
Meanwhile, on my computer at work, evening sunlight shines through the haze:
After the sun goes down, it's a whole different thing.
IV: The Flopped Flop Collection
Our final crit's not until December, right? I've got time. Right?
V: Working Bigger
I need a bowl for the ornaments, so on a Thursday night I try to work big. It's scary. And hot. Thing is, my ornaments are also getting bigger. I can get maybe three in here. Sigh.
Okay, six, if you count the three on top that are balancing on the three underneath:
VI: Blue Wave
It's November 3. I know all the votes won't be counted tonight. I know it's going to take time. I shouldn't be nervous but I am.
Every election night, for the past 16 years at least, I've worked on a jewelry project to calm my nerves. Today's project is going to be called "Blue Wave."
Classmate's Partner is here again. I tell him what I plan to do, which is to pick up a rod, gather over it, then pull another rod over that, twisting it to make waves. I haven't tried this in a year at least.
I get everything stacked on well enough, but then I blow the middle out too thin. First it begins to collapse. I try to save it by papering it back into shape. That cools the glass too much, and when I bring it back to the glory hole, it explodes.
I hope the election goes better than this.
"Do it again," Classmate's Partner says. I don't have any more rods in the warmer, so I go with frit instead. I'm still wound up, though, thinking I have to succeed, to at least get something in the annealer I can call Blue Wave.
"Don't rush," he reminds me. I'm keeping it thick this time. It's a little off-center. I'm wary about opening it up too much, lest I lose control. This piece is big, for me, at least.
"It's uneven," I say as we put it away.
Like our democracy: imperfect but intact, for now.
On Saturday, November 7, I have another chance to make a Blue Wave. The election winner hasn't been announced yet.
Tuesday's Blue Wave has a good side,
On Saturday, November 7, I have another chance to make a Blue Wave; the election winner hasn't been decided yet. I stick with frit again, and this time I'm more relaxed. With help from Old Man, I get a much more controlled piece into the annealer. It's big again, big enough that a line of bubbles formed when I tried to cram the second gather into an 8 block when it belonged in a 10. Old Man thinks it adds to the piece.
In between blowing and helping Old Man, I've been checking for news.
It's half an hour hold when I see it:
I hold it up for Tall Vase, Pumpkin Master, and Old Man to see.
We exhale.
Finally.
Tall Vase changes the music to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."
VII: More Playing With Colors
When I'm not failing to flop bowls, I'm making ornaments and planets.
I bought sample sizes of three new colors: Fluoro Green (top), Citron (middle), and Lime Green Aventurine. My ornament game is way off these days. The Fluoro Green one looks like a piece of fruit or something. The aventurine one isn't even round. (These all were given to the Trenton Bike Exchange to be sold for their benefit.)
This flop failed so hard it became a serving dish.
I layered white under citron and aventurine for this planet.
It lives on my desk at work. It sparkles in the afternoon sun and makes me happy.
One night, Tall Vase makes a sphere so big that it takes both of us to turn the pipe while he works in the jack line. When we put it in the annealer, it takes up the entire bottom shelf.
I keep mine smaller.
I'm still in a bouncy mood when I get home. Glooskap poses with the sphere.
The more I look at it, the more sure I am that I have to send this to my friend in Massachusetts. It needs to live in her yard. (It's living there now.)
The second big bowl for ornaments is taller narrower than the first. It won't hold any more than the other either.
I set it on the window sill for now, next to two red-orange pieces that are coming alive in the autumn light.
Playing with the new yellow and greens, I make spheres and a flower pot. I have to check my notes because they all come out looking the same. It doesn't help that I mixed them a little.
This is , supposedly, Citron with Fluoro Green pulled over it. Save for a few streaks near the bottom, I can't tell where the yellow ends and the green begins.
I get this shape whenever I open the top too wide. I'll use it as a flower pot.
This one, too, has me scurrying back to my notebook to figure out what I did. Lime Green Aventurine and Citron, I think. (I'm giving it to a Hill Slug.)
VIII: Charity Glass Sale
I put the not-ready-for-prime-time pieces up on Etsy. I plug the sale on social media, and at the end of two weeks, my friends have donated more than the matching amount I'd promised. I lug boxes to the post office and send $400 each to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and Ride for McBride.
I'm left with two pumpkins, a handful of ornaments, and a few vases. The ornaments get a second chance down at the Trenton Bike Exchange, where one I sold to my friend, the director, gets sold again to another friend.
One contributor sends me a picture of a vase's new home.
IX: Rolling in Flowers
With a small pack of millefiori (that's "one thousand flowers" in Italian), I try using Tall Vase's technique of picking up glass from the top of the pipe warmer.
I don't get them all on the first try, so heat the glass and go in to mop up. The result is a combination of stretched flowers melted into the glass and intact ones on the surface. I bring it home and drink out of it every day.
When I try again a few days later, it doesn't go as well. I put the punty on off-center, and no amount of sanding down will get this vase vertical.
I'm tempted to throw it away. Instead, I offer it up to the first taker in my social media feed before I drive home. The next morning, it's in a box destined for upstate New York, traded for a chain maille bracelet.
X: Power's Out
I'm thinking of layering on some purples. When I get to class, the pipe warmer and glory hole are off again. I get the warmer going, but Our Instructor has to switch on the glory hole. Jay and Silent Bob come in. Sleepless called out today too late to find a substitute. That's okay. The three of us can manage.
I'm not using rods, so I get started while Jay and Silent Bob get their colors ready. I'm on my first gather when half the lights flicker out. The glory hole, almost as warm as it's supposed to get (we can tell by the glow inside), starts to fade. The normally tight blue flames under the pipes in the warmer are now loose yellow fingers. "Is this okay?" asks Jay. "I guess?" I answer.
The furnace is still making noise, so I guess the glass is still being heated. I set the pipe down and text Our Instructor that the glory hole is out.
I'm on my second gather when he comes in. The glass in the furnace seems kind of sticky, as if it's cooling down too. He says that the blower is on but the heater isn't. The annealers are off, too, which means that we can't open them or they'll lose what heat they have.
"I guess I should stop then?" I ask. "Keep going," he says, "If the power comes back on, you can put it away." So I keep going, but the glass is too cool to work with now. I can't really melt any color into it, and the longer I try to use the furnace as a glory hole, the faster the glass and the air above it are cooling down. I knock the piece into the waste bucket minutes before all the lights go out.
This is followed by a college-wide text. The school is closing due to a power outage. I look over at the pipe warmer. The flames are out now (did Our Instructor turn off the gas?), and in the near-dark it looks as if the pipes are covered in soot. I can't really tell if it's soot or shadow.
We clean up as best we can by the light of the open side of the classroom. I have to pull that corrugated metal door closed in the end, leaving me little light to navigate my way to the classroom door, my bags and glass in tow.
Silent Bob is still outside, and, for the first time, we have a real conversation about what it is each of us does for a living.
I got back to the lab to finish out the day's work.
XI: More Color Experiments
Mayfly (because I see her only ever briefly) and I work together for the first time on a Thursday night. She's really good at working big and she likes to swing her pieces more than I'd ever dare. I liked how the second Blue Wave came out, so I'm going to try the same thing with greens, three colors this time.
The Lime Green Aventurine goes on first. I gather over that and roll it in Light Reseda Green, then use the pick to pull it up over the aventurine in little spikes. I'm using the marver to get the shape back to a cylinder again, something I've been afraid to do up till this semester. I've been watching Tall Vase out of the corner of my eye; I'm copying him. I gather again, and now I'm into the #10 block, out of my comfort zone once more. I roll in a layer of Emerald Green Metallic and pull up with the pick again. At this point I can't tell where one green ends and the next begins; they're all a deep brown when they're hot.
"Send me a picture when it comes out!" Mayfly says. We exchange phone numbers. We don't really have to; she's in the Tuesday slot after mine, and if I hang around until she arrives, I can show her in real life. We're not supposed to do that, though. We're supposed to be cleared out before the next group comes in, supposedly because the room will be cleaned between shifts. It's never cleaned between shifts. None of us has seen anyone come by, ever, to wipe anything down. There's a big tub of bleach wipes by the door. We do it ourselves if we do it at all.
These greens went every which way!
I have a little bit of a yellow and white mix a classmate gave me last year before she left for good. I need to get my ornament mojo back.
I've been carrying around a baggie full of scrap threads that I've found in the scrap bucket, on the floor, or in the mesh that covers the drain in the back of the room. Tall Vase and Classmate's Partner are pros at using scrap glass. I've watched them lay out the pieces on top of the pipe warmer, covering them with one of the half-cans we use to use to hold frit, to keep the heat in. Now it's my turn to try.
Sleepless and I text each other incessantly, our conversations going from serious to silly and back. We have one episode involving spiders on drugs. Sleepless and I spend some time deciding which spiders we are. I decide I'm the caffeine spider. She says she's the pot spider because "my pieces are always lopsided."
I use the scrap to make Spiders on Drugs. It comes out less webby and more blobby than I'd planned.
USPS mangled one of my glass shipments, breaking the tail off an Aventurine Old Gold cat I'd sent to an old friend as part of the charity sale. I set about making a new one, but it comes out so big I suggest sending her a kitten I'd made last year that's been living on my window sill at work. I send her the kitten and keep the giant cat. I try a smaller one with white underneath to see if it makes the gold pop more. It doesn't. Our Instructor isn't fond of this color. He says it's difficult to get it right. Tall Vase tried a few weeks ago with a giant floppy bowl. Even then it looked muddy. My giant cat is the clearest I've managed to get it so far. I have so much of this frit left. Someday I'll figure it out. Colors are like that.
XII: War and Peace
COVID 19 is spreading like a forest fire now, worse than March, and because covidiots are deciding to travel for Thanksgiving, it's only going to get worse. Our Instructor sends email and writes on the blackboard that masks must be worn at all times. Apparently, there are several in class who don't believe in them. I can guess who they are; I haven't worked with them this semester. Out of an abundance of caution, the college is going to end classes a week early.
We have this week, Thanksgiving week, and the week after. That's it.
What a time to switch glass on us! We've used up the old stock of cullet. Now the furnace is full of Bomma glass, and Our Instructor has warned us that it behaves differently.
Great. I finally figured out ornaments and can center my pieces. Now we've got this new stuff that, apparently, has a longer working time. I don't know what this is going to mean. It's good, I guess?
It's Thursday night. I'm tired and cranky. Mayfly digs in and makes a perfect little bowl out of the new stuff. My turn.
I can't control it. It takes me forever to get it to the punty stage, and then I screw that up, sending it to the floor. Mayfly graciously lets me try again. I don't get past the first gather, pissed off at the uneven shape of the bubble. The third time's the charm. I make the same sort of bowl Mayfly did, but it took me three tries. I don't hide my annoyance.
Over at the other bench, Pumpkin Master is doing battle with the new glass too. Tall Vase takes to it easily.
Mayfly goes again, making a small vase. I roll a gather in frit and hope for a simple vessel. It all goes wonky on me after I open it up. It's just about 8:30, time for the next shift, only there's isn't a next shift because nobody has signed up. Our Instructor is rushing me anyway.
"I hate this!" I grumble at the bell-shaped thing I've made. I carry it to the glory hole, figuring I'll give it one more go at the bench to whip it into something I might like. "Make this your last thing," Our Instructor says. Fuck. I cram it into the glory hole and start spinning. I have no clue what I'm going to do with this now. He glances in and opens the door wider as the top starts to fold in on itself, just like it should if I'm aiming to make a floppy bowl. I leave it in there until it gets soupy, then pull it out, spinning the punty furiously.
It goes flat, just like it should if I'm aiming to make a floppy bowl.
I drop it to vertical. As if in slow motion, the sides cave in, drooping in flutters, just like a floppy bowl.
He was right. This glass is better for flopping.
I've made an angry starfish.
I wake up the next morning still grumpy. Standing in the doorway of the room where the 2020 glass is living, I take stock of the pieces I have left. There's too much of it. This stuff has got to go. It's time for a much-needed purge.
I sort through what didn't sell and dump half of it into a bag that will go to the discard bin. I pile other pieces into a box that holds things that are good enough to give as gifts. I carry ornaments downstairs to fill the two bowls and hang from the tacky ornament tree in the corner of the dining room. I do all of this before heading out to work.
It's time for a much-needed reckoning. I have to remind myself that what I'm doing is small-a art. I'm never going to rely on my glass pieces for a living, nor do I want to. Just because I'll never qualify for the Tour de France doesn't mean I shouldn't ride my bike. Just because I'm not one of the class superstars doesn't mean I can't have a blast blowing glass. This is my fourth semester, and yet I have to give myself the same lecture each time.
Saturday is another chance to make peace with the new glass, and, damnit, I'm going to figure this thing out.
I want to try to make some more floppy bowls. Using Copper Ruby Light, a color that goes on clear, I can pretend I'm working without color and get something reddish-brown if I'm lucky. I get two in the annealer. I'm not sure they'll past muster with Our Instructor; they're asymmetrical. (Keep one, give one to a Hill Slug.)
Alchemy had left me and Old Man with some frit mixtures on Thursday night. The Angry Starfish came from that. Now I'm playing with it some more.
Something's funky with the pipe-hose connector. The piece keeps flying off whenever we apply air and the glass is cooling. I'd noticed it on Thursday and thought my pipe was clogged. Now we're sure it's something else. When Our Instructor passes through, as he always does about an hour before his afternoon slot starts, I call him over and explain the situation. "It's the connector," he says. The seal is worn. He has replacements somewhere.
After getting three ornaments in, I'm at peace with the glass. Hooks are easier now because the bit doesn't cool as fast, which gives me time to cut and shape it properly.
Tall Vase is having a good day with the new glass. Pumpkin Master is not. The annealer is filling up with pieces from the three of us.
I try a sphere, and it blows out thin enough that I decide to put a hook on it and make a giant ornament.
I try again with his red mix, but it doesn't go as well. The breakoff is rough and wide, too big for a hook. It cracks when I break it off but we put it away anyway.
I lay some of Alchemy's mix on top of vermillion and pull up, a red and orange version of Blue Wave, without the waves.
Our Instructor comes in again. I'm working on my piece, facing the furnace, when he starts to yell at us. I mean, really yell. "You guys are taking up more than half the annealer! You're supposed to use half! Where am I supposed to put my pieces? It's not fair!"
I don't turn around. Old Man says nothing. Tall Vase says nothing. Pumpkin Master says, "I have nothing in there."
Our Intructor goes outside. He's right, of course. We haven't been careful about placement. "Could you get dressed," I ask Old Man, "and consolidate?" Old Man puts on the ratty sweatshirt and the heat-proof helmet, dons the thick gloves, and moves as much as he can into as little space as possible. He gets it all onto one and a half shelves, leaving half the annealer free for Our Instructor and Glass Ninja.
Working on the cup, I have too much glass on the punty, and it moves around more than the old glass would have. The piece goes off-center. I'll have to spend some time grinding it down to make it look presentable.
When it's Old Man's turn again, I go to the annealer and remove the cracked sphere. It might not have survived anyway, and even if it did, I could never trust it not to explode at any moment.
Then I go out to where Our Instructor is standing, near the sagging now-beige picnic table where Glass Ninja and Sage are eating the lunch they always buy for each other. "Alchemy texted," I tell him. "He's not coming. And I took out one of my pieces to make room."
Old Man and I clear out early, still a little rattled. Sage is still hanging about, and I'm outside, talking to her from more than six feet away, when Our Instructor comes over, a bag of connectors in hand, to show me that he has them and where the last one wore out. Cool. New connectors and he's not going to hold a grudge.
(It's been shipped off to Freehold, NJ.)
I'm gonna need a forklift and a redwood for the big one.
XIII: Is This the Last Class?
I'm so confused. I could have sworn that our last Tuesday would be the one before Thanksgiving. I came in here loaded up with plans, and now my classmates are telling me that I read Our Instructor's email wrong. So this is our penultimate class.
My modus operandi these days is to try something big, fail, try something big, succeed, and then go easy with ornaments and spheres. Today I try threading, using Narcissus, a gooey yellow, under a Cherry Red thread. The threading part mostly works, although it's thin and breaks off early. When I go to blow it out, my error of making the core bubble too big screws me over. The glass blows out sideways, and I waste at least ten minutes trying to beat it back into shape, even flattening it on both sides to try to save it. But I don't have a jack line yet, so that doesn't work. I melt it back into round and try to blow it out again, only to have the same thing happen. I chuck the whole thing into the bucket. What a waste of time!
The other big plan is to layer three shades of purple, pulling up with the pick on the second and third layers. First is Fucshia, which is a gummy enough color on its own, on the new, gummy glass. Somehow I keep things under control. I've figured out how to slow down to match this cullet's leisurely pace. The second color is Hyacinth, which is a transparent purple. Third is the last of a reducing violet that was part of my student starter pack. I know I don't have to take a torch to it; the color will reduce on its own in the annealer. From the looks of things when I put it away, I'll have some grinding to do. With this new glass, and with my bigger pieces, I'm seeing my old problems creeping back. The two purples aren't different enough from each other either.
I hit the side of the glory hole at one point during the final color layering. It adds texture. I'm lucky it didn't ruin the piece.
I have one more rod in the warmer. I use it for a sphere, peppering it with some leftover purple frit. This color is Gold Ruby Extra, which, like my favorite, Cherry Red, is totally lickable.
Sleepless has the magic touch with optic mold ornaments. I can't ever seem to keep the ridges. I blow them out at the bottom all the time. One of them cracks in the annealer; I have to discard it to be safe.
Mornings are getting cold. The giant ornament is covered in frost. Let's see if it survives the winter.
It survived the frost.
Late Friday afternoon, Alchemy texts me. He needs to quarantine because a friend of a friend turned up positive. He offers me his Saturday slot with Old Man. Of course I take him up on it.
Now I'm mixing colors that might class horribly, like Hyacinth and Vermillion, on a giant ornament. The result isn't as ghastly as it could have been, mostly because I blew the bottom out thin, squashing the pattern to the top, near the hook. The two colors combine to make a sort of blue.
When I layer Cherry Red on Brilliant Yellow frit and pull up, I can't see the red at all.
In indirect light, some of the red shows through.
Aqua Metallic, which I thought would reduce, doesn't, when it's on the inside, partially under Brilliant Yellow. The cup is so lopsided that no amount of grinding can hide the fact that it's got one round side and one flat side. (It's living in the bathroom now, holding toothbrushes, appearing symmetrical from above.)
Yeah, oops.
Two more floppy bowls for crit? These have four, almost even, folds.
Here, there's Cherry Red under Brilliant Yellow under Cherry Red, and this time the red shows through, albeit muddily.
What happens if I pull Vermillion over Cherry Red? (It gets sent to California.)
The following Tuesday really is our last class. Mostly, Sleepless and I want to have fun. We make ornaments and spheres. I try threading again. This time, as last time, the Cherry Red thread goes on wire-thin and breaks. I make the mistake of reheating the color and applying it again. It goes on in a massive blob and then goes thin almost right away, breaking off halfway down the core glass. I decide to roll the bottom in Brilliant Yellow, even though the core is already yellow, Narcissus. I pull up with the pick to fill the empty space. Once again, my punty has too much glass on it and moves around, sending the piece off-center and lopsided into the annealer. I'm sure already of two things: I'm not gong to keep it, and that Sleepless likes it. (After I grind it down to get it almost even, I mail it off to her.)
XIV: Final Crit
Okay. It's time for the second winnowing. Who will accompany me to withstand Our Instructor's withering smirk?
In the before times, all of us would gather at once for critique nights. All The Glass would bring pizza. In October, the midterm crit was three of us at a time. Tonight it's one-on-one for us returning students. The new advanced students are in the classroom when I arrive. I've signed up for the next 15-minute spot, in one of the classrooms down the hall. Classmate's Partner is signed up for the 15 minutes after me, in our glassblowing room.
We're not allowed to grind anything down ahead of time. We have to get in and get out. I'm here early enough to gather everything I made on Tuesday and pack it, hastily, into a bubble wrap-laden bag. Then I scurry off to the classroom to set up.
The light in here is strangely yellow.
I'm convinced he's going to tear apart my floppy bowls for being asymmetric. He'll think my color combination vessels are lacking in control. He'll think the spheres are pedestrian and the giant ornaments silly. I'm nervous. When he comes in, fifteen minutes late, I brace myself.
There's no need, it turns out. "I like asymmetry," he says. "When the bowls get too symmetrical they look molded." Well, hooray for the Angry Starfish then!
I explain my multicolor experiments, and we look at the ones that worked and the purple one that didn't. "I like to use white underneath," he says, "to improve the contrast. Not white-white. That's too harsh. An off-white." Looks like I'll be buying some frit over winter break.
I tell him about the charity sale, and how people bought my not-quite-good enough seconds. He seems to like the idea and reminds me that, while I see everything I wanted to do but didn't, people only see the final piece. This is when I remind him of what he told us on my first day of class two years ago: "You're going to make a lot of crap. Your friends will think it's great. It's not. It's crap."
He bursts out laughing.
We go over some technical stuff: how to prevent scarring on ornament tops, how to get them to blow out evenly, how to put my punty on center (progressive lenses distort, apparently), and how to keep the punty from moving around (less glass).
I admit that I like making spheres and ornaments, that it's like dessert after trying the main meal of floppy bowls. "Spheres are easy," I tell him, sheepishly. He says, "No, they're not." Well!
"Next semester, remind me, and I'll show you how to make a marble." Okay!
It's now well past the time that Clasmate's Partner should be set up for his crit. "He canceled," Our Instructor says.
"Would it be okay if I ground a few things down then?" I ask. "Sure," he says. "I'm gonna go."
Wait. This means that, out of all the returning students, I was the only one to go through crit.
Their loss. I get to use the sander!
With the thread fail from Tuesday alone, I'm going to need at least ten minutes. Plus, I want to knock the hook off of one of the big ornaments I made on Tuesday; I didn't cover the hole completely, and the hook is on lopsided.
I get to work while Our Instructor putters around in the hallway. He sticks his head in. "Turn off the light and close the door when you're done."
"Okay," I nod.
"Have a good break!"
"You, too!"
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