Hot Mess Part Twenty-Five: The Perfect Game

Fall 2021 Final Critique

I: Feathering

Every Tuesday evening begins the same way. 

I arrive well before 5:00. Glass Ninja is already there, choosing the playlist from his phone, his color warming in the little oven between the glory hole and the annealer. I dig through my giant rolling toolkit for the colors I'm going to use. I pull out a couple of rods, ambivalent.

All The Glass comes in, wheeling his guitar-case-sized toolbox behind him. 

He asks, or I ask, "You threading today?"

He always says yes. 

I always groan. 

If he is, I am, and one of us drags the metal sawhorse with the pulleys on top to the middle of the room. I cut some slices off the rods and place them in the little oven.

Poor EDM, who always arrives after we're mostly finished setting up, has to watch me go through this every week. I let her go first while my color warms up.

I'm convinced that, despite Glass Ninja's ability to feather at the bench in under a minute, I need to do what All The Glass does: put on the barbecue glove and feather at the glory hole.

There are so many steps that go into this, so many places to go wrong. I've made all the mistakes. 

I'm still having trouble laying down the threads in thin, even strands as I deliver the bit to All The Glass, who is always the one rotating the pipe on the pulleys on the metal sawhorse. I need to pull away before he starts turning in order to control the thickness. This is best done with a pointy bit, and I'm not so good at getting the bit pointy. I deliver the glass in a blob, which, if I'm lucky, is far enough up the pipe to be cut off when I put the jack line in. We do this twice for each piece because I'm using two colors now.

Then it's time to make feathers. Pulling towards myself is finally easy. The trouble starts when I try to pull away, in between the towards-me pulls. Sometimes the thumb of my glove starts smoking; I've put my hand too close to the glass. Sometimes the glass is too cold and the tool stalls. Sometimes the glass is too hot and the whole piece starts to rotate, sending my threads diagonal. Each time, I think I've pulled all the way down, only to discover much later that I haven't.

(keeping)

(sold)

This is a blob that didn't get cut away:

(sold)

As I attempt to shape each piece at the bench,  EDM says, "It looks cool!"

"Yeah, but the feathers are crooked. They need to be straight."

"It still looks cool."

"It has to be perfect," I explain. "I can't break the rules until I can follow the rules." 

EDM doesn't care about rules. When I post photos of the finished pieces, my friends like what they see because they don't know that there are rules. But there are rules, and final critiques.

So I feather at least once, usually twice, every time I'm in class.

II: A Little Time for the Fun Stuff

I spend so much time feathering that the fun stuff happens mostly on Thursday nights, the official class night, when we work with whoever is around and the classroom is noisy chaos. 

One of those nights I play with colors, mixing three together, hoping they'll react with each other.

In a giant ornament, they sort of do:

(keeping for now)

The effect is better in the cat, where the colors are inside and not blown out as much:

(keeping)

III: Not Enough Time with Rods

One thing I'm neglecting is rods. On a Tuesday, after threading, I pick up a chunk and try to make something, anything. The opening is beyond thick on this one, so I pull it and trim it. I've got it entirely mangled, to the point that there's no way it'll ever look good as a straight vessel. When in doubt, spin it out. The wavy edges create a neat effect, but I'm not bringing this one to crit. It's a hat; Our Instructor does not like hats.

(keeping for now)

I'll take it home and put my cracked tomatoes in it.

IV: Yeah, No

On one of the many Monday nights I've filled the empty slot in, I watched Extra drop clear glass into a mold, then twist and pull into a tapered ornament. She uses two gathers; the final piece is heavy. We agree that if I try, I should use color so we can tell each other's apart. I aim for one gather to make the final ornament lighter. I fail spectacularly. They're all awful. I abandon the project.

(mailed to Massachusetts)

V: Ornaments

I have more success rolling clear glass over the scraps leftover from threading.

(outside on the bottle tree)

I'm getting faster at making ornaments. They're bigger, lighter, and rounder than the ones I churned out last year.

(sold two, kept one)

(on my Christmas tree)

VI: Tall Vase and the Pumpkin

On a Thursday night, about two weeks after Halloween, Tall Vase comes in carrying a carved pumpkin. He says he wanted to use it as a mold. Our Instructor is skeptical. The first thing he'll need to do is saw the thing in half to let the glass out. Tall Vase disappears into the bowels of the 3D Arts building and comes back with the pumpkin cut top to bottom. With Pumpkin Master as his partner, he gets to work. Classmate's Partner and I pull out our phones. Extra, at the other bench, tries to work during this chaos.

Tall Vase loads on a lot of glass. It barely fits into the pumpkin.

He adds air.

The pumpkin starts to split as the glass expands into it.

The hot glass pushes the halves apart to reveal something that doesn't at all look like a pumpkin.

The inside of the gourd is scorched.

Tall Vase dumps the glass and tries again, using less glass this time.

The mold emits a plume of smoke or steam or both. 

The hot glass has nowhere to go but up. Tall Vase ditches this one too.

The classroom smells like burnt something now, and we're all laughing. Our Instructor says, "You need to use less glass and have it almost all the way blown out before you go into the mold." That way, it would only push on the sides a little while maintaining its shape. 

The rest of us take our turns at the bench. After we've all gone, there's still time, so Tall Vase sets up for something not involving a burnt pumpkin. He's at the bench, shaping the glass, when Our Instructor says, "Now that's the amount of glass you should use." He walks out of the room, and Tall Vase takes his glass to the glory hole. He looks back at Pumpkin Master, gesturing towards the pumpkin mold in the back of the classroom. Pumpkin Master shakes his head.

I'm struggling too, trying to pick up a rod, blow it out evenly, and get a thin top. I'm using Cherry Red, my favorite color. The top is thinner than last time, for sure, but it's still thick. The whole thing is thick. But it's centered and very red, so there's that.

(didn't sell, might be a gift, dunno)

The thinner it gets, the more the red turns to orange. I like the red. I don't know what I'm going to do with this heavy thing. 

VII: Sending Off the Rejects

I have a very creative friend in Massachusetts. She can turn a pile of found objects in to sculptures and mobiles. She's turned two of the cups I'd practiced drilling on into chimes.

She says she'd be happy to take the rejects I've had hanging from the bottle tree outside since last spring. I put holes in the bottoms of most of the pieces to make her work easier.

While I'm at it, I drill three clear rejects and, taking a hint from her chimes, string them together. I make a mockup first. When it survives the night, I tidy it up and hang it for real.

That takes care of the rejects, but what about the pieces that are decent enough to set loose upon the world? It's time for the Hot Mess Fall 2021 Glass Sale. This involves lugging everything outside for a photo shoot, then uploading each one to my Etsy shop, all in all the better part of a weekend. After that, it's the shameless plugging on social media, with a charity sweetener for the cats and ornaments. Etsy and postage eat up about a third of whatever I bring in. I raise my prices.

VIII: A Storm in Glass

There's a color that the sky makes when the sun reflects off a storm front. I want that color in glass.

I don't have anything like it, but All The Glass and Glass Ninja let me use some of their gray frit. All The Glass has Opal Gray powder. It doesn't turn out the way I'd hoped, at least under these mercury vapor lamps. At home on a window sill it's less yellow and more gray.

(keeping)

Glass Ninja doesn't know where his gray powder came from or what it's called, but I give it a go. It's less stormy than the frit. I'm going to give this one to John K, my companion on the ride that inspired all of this.

(gave to the friend I was riding with when we got hailed on)

Glass Ninja suggests I mix black powder with the gray. The black I have is frit, so at home I grind it down with a hammer. There's as much newspaper scrap as glass when I'm finished, but I bring it to class anyway. The paper will burn off.

The result looks like a forest fire.

(present)

Okay, never mind the black frit thing. 

What if I try autumn under a blue sky?

(keeping)

I'm keeping this one! A friend likes it so much she asks me to make one for her. To prove I can never do the same thing twice, I botch it royally:

She says she likes it anyway, so I send it to her. She's less than happy with it when it arrives; I offer to try again next semester.

While I'm on this season kick, I spend a class period with Extra, trying to create a winter scene with snow. It does not go well. 

On my first attempt, I try to melt a piece of white rod onto the bottom of the not-yet-shaped piece. Having forgotten that the bottom needs to be what we call "cold," which means "it'll still burn you," I load the snow on and it doesn't spread, leaving a white puddle on the underside of the piece. I blow it out into a giant, heavy vessel that will have to spend the rest of its life as a planter.

Next, we try rolling the piece in white frit sprinkled onto the marver table. That works better. In the right light, away from the classroom, it does look a little like evergreens behind a snowstorm.

(keeping)

What if I used opal white instead? I try the next night. Nope. At home, it goes into the reject box.

IX: Other Stuff to Do When Not Feathering

I've settled into a pattern. Feather first, do whatever next.

Sometimes whatever is ornaments, from leftover thread scraps or colors I'd had out for the season vases. I've decided that the large scrap thread ornaments all need to live on the now-empty bottle tree. They're too big and heavy to sell or hang indoors, and the clear glass catches the morning light in a way that the previous crop of outdoor rejects never did.

(outside on the bottle tree)

Some ornaments are going directly into the fall sale. Others I'm keeping for myself. 

(on my Christmas tree)

Red and green look better on a white-champagne background:

(sold)

(sold)

(outside on the bottle tree)

(sold)

I make giant ones now and again.

(keeping)

(present)

(didn't sell, maybe keeping?)

(reject)

Glass Ninja leaves some dichroic scraps behind for me to mop up. He's disappointed in the black because it loses its sparkle. The same thing happens to me when I make a giant ornament.

(keeping)

(outside on the bottle tree)

(hanging in my office window)

(outside on the bottle tree)

X: I Hate It

I have to keep doing this feathering thing because sometimes I mess up so spectacularly that redemption is necessary. Like today, when I thought I'd get fancy and cut off the bottom to hide where I don't pull down all the way. I end up twisting the whole piece in the process, the top gets away from me, I try to spin it out, and when that only half works I put it back in the glory hole, where the inside cracks. It's off-center, uneven, and the threads are now on the underside. I put it away anyhow, but I know it's going straight into the smash bucket when it comes out.

I'm left with a wreck of a bowl and an off-center, squarish marble that I don't know what to do with.

(sitting in my locker)

(at Alchemy's house)

Gah. I take it home, but it never leaves the bag. It's going straight back to the smash bucket. I do this on a Saturday, making sure Our Instructor, who is working at the time, doesn't see it. Alchemy is at the other bench, assisting one of the beginners.

I place it in the bucket. Alchemy says, "What did you just do?"

"It was too ugly to live," I call back to him as I make my way outside to photograph the pieces I've just picked up.

When I turn around, he's cradling the disaster bowl in his hands. "I love it!" he says. 

"It's yours!" I tell him. Class is almost over, so I wait for him and we walk to the parking lot together. He opens his trunk and pulls out a dark, heavy, purple vessel. It has swirls over swirls that reveal themselves when I hold it up to the light. "I hate it," he says. "It's yours."

We agree that we should give each other all the pieces we hate from now on.

XI: Other Things I Forgot How to Make

Paperweights. Too much color left on the punty, no top color, but at least I trapped a bubble. Try again.

(reject)

That's better.

(present)

Try again. Ha! There are seven bubbles trapped in this one!

("I like this!" Jack says, so it's on our bureau.)

At the end of one class, I decide to mangle clear glass. I'm enjoying twisting and poking layer after layer of hot glass. It's a very satisfying feeling. Alchemy calls it "anger management." 

(on my office window sill)

It's so much fun, I do it twice.

(keeping)

Let's try that rod thing again. Let's try for a thin top. No? Okay. Next semester then.

(didn't sell; now a pen holder on my home desk)

This happened to me last semester too: I figure out how to make long necks, and then I forget how to make long necks. 

(gift)

XII: I Got a Locker!

I thought they were only for the hotshots. All The Glass says they're not. Two are empty. "Just take it," he says. 

I decide to ask Our Instructor instead, by text. He writes back that I can have one, and also could I give up one of the extra Mondays for Pumpkin Master since I've been taking so many extra sessions? I reply that it's no problem and apologize for being greedy.

But I have a locker! No more dragging fifty pounds of rolling toolkit back and forth from home. I can leave all my colors here.

Right. These lockers are hella skinny. It's all I can do to fit everything in. I've got freezer bags full of little containers, each bag sorted by color. I have a handful of rods. I have barbecue gloves, alcohol wipes, masks, several pairs of heat-shield arm protectors, my glasses, my notebook, scrap threads, stuff!

Glass Ninja shows me his locker and I feel better. He has a wider one and it's still a mess. My locker is next to All The Glass' locker, also a skinny one. His is chaos too. He brings his color with him each time, in a suitcase, in Gatorade bottles.

Glass Ninja, a carpenter by trade, says, "You know how long it would take me to build a shelf? Twenty minutes. But I still haven't done it."

I look to the Container Store and Amazon instead. I have six inches of width and about a foot and a half of depth to play with. There's a rod about five feet up, and two hooks on either side. What I find is something I'd never, ever use in real life because I'm not that kind of girl: a hanging handbag shelf.

It's perfect, and $17.

The rods sit on top, and I can get two color bags on each shelf. The bottom holds my box of scraps, and there's just enough room to cram the tube of larger thread scraps in front. The notebook slides along one side. The only thing that doesn't fit is a large tube of stringers Jack bought me last Christmas; I've barely used them anyway, so they go back home with me. 

All The Glass is impressed. 

XIII: I Am So Done With Feathering.

The one time I get it right I use a color combination that turns out to be invisible. I sand-blast the inside, which helps a little.

(foisted on Plain Jim)

On a Monday night with Extra, she tries the spots trick. I've already feathered for the evening, so I give the spots trick a go. We both end up with spots on the top and swirls on the bottom.

(gift)

But, hey! The feathers are pretty close to straight on this one!

(on my office shelf)

Next up is white on black. This one goes tilted on me.

(gift to the friend who sent me two kilos of glass)

I try spots again, and it's looking pretty good: there are dots all the way down. We're all excited. It explodes in the glory hole.

At the last minute, I jump into a Saturday morning slot with Tall Vase. I try using a rod for the core color. The feathers, bronze, go on straight, but, once again, I have trouble with the top. It's very thick and uneven.

(reject)

I try a rod again, for spots. Once more, it's spots and swirls.

(reject)

I try again, but the bottom cracks out. Class is over.

I'm running out of rods for feathering. Rods are better than frit: the color is even and the rod slivers heat up much faster than loading a punty with frit would. I've used up a couple of the blues that had been in my little box for years. Now I'm down to the end of the remaining blues. The slivers are so small I don't even know for sure what colors they are.

The last of a deep blue goes onto a white core for dots that go all the way down. I leave the dot thing here for now.

(keeping)

Two more blues see the end of the supply in a vase that convinces me I should stop feathering.

(two people wanted to buy this, but it's not for sale)

On second thought, that one line is crooked. 

Do it again.

But not on a Thursday night. We're getting close to the end of the semester. I can feel myself burning out. Working with Pumpkin Master, I mess up a scrap thread piece that I've put into a mold. He lets me try again. We get a thin-for-me cup out of it. I consider bringing it to work as a drinking glass.

(kitchen window sill, currently being used to root plants)

Two more blues see the end of the supply on my next feathered vase. I'd had a longer neck, but it broke off the pipe poorly, and now I'm stuck with a stubby vase again. At least the feathers are straight.

(keeping)

Really, I'm done now. No more feathers.

On a Thursday night, as I gather the week's feathering attempts from the cabinet in the hallway, I tell Our Instructor how I keep saying I'm finished with feathering but that I keep right on doing it. "It's becoming a running joke between me and EDM," I tell him.

Glassblowing, he says "is the perfect game. It's hard enough that you keep trying, not so hard that you give up, and not so easy that you lose interest."

He's got that right. Sounds like addiction. 

Which it is. 

My house is full of glass. The Window Sill of Judgment is full. It's spilled downstairs onto a Shelf of Judgment. I can't take any more extra classes. There's no more room for what I'm bringing home.

But the minute I walk in to the classroom, I check the calendar for empty slots.

XIV: The Glass Sale

I need to get rid of this stuff.

I start the sale the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which, in retrospect, seems to have been a bad idea. Nobody is online. 

But then I sell all three blue feathered vases, and a cat, and an ornament. My creative friend in Massachusetts takes a threaded vase I made early in the semester. A few more ornaments go out the door, including a couple of giant ones. Then two more cats.  

After about three weeks, I end the sale, leaving only one vase online because it's apparently in somebody's cart. 

It takes several days to sort out who is getting what for Christmas. Some of the unsold pieces get boxed up; others I'd set aside as gifts before the sale. 

The pieces that fall into the no-man's-land of too messed up to sell, too ugly to keep, but too pretty to smash, end up in a box that will go to Massachusetts once I drill some holes. 

That leaves the ornaments. There are more than what I'd put online, well over a dozen. I don't count. I pack them into two boxes and, at the end of a Sunday ride, sell them out of my car for a $5 minimum, all proceeds going to the Trenton Bike Exchange, which is staffed by bike club member volunteers. I'm too busy pocketing cash to take a picture; Plain Jim takes one for me.

Half an hour later, I'm down to five.

I round the $80 up to $100 for the donation. The Lost Dog Foundation and the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen get similar amounts from the cats and ornaments. 

The rest, whatever Etsy and the post office haven't taken, is going to pay for replenishing my supply of glass. If I can replace those colors at all, that is. We had three main manufacturers: two in Europe (Kugler and Reichenbach), and one in the US (Gaffer). Gaffer just sold out to Reichenbach. Neither has much in the way of supply right now. Whatever we can get, we get through Olympic (Kugler) or Hot Glass Color (Reichenbach and Gaffer), both in Washington State, both with massive shipping charges (glass is heavy). Pumpkin Master clued me in to a distributor in South Carolina called Spruce Pine Batch. They carry all three, but they don't have the full color range, and they're out of a lot too. But at least the shipping is half the cost, which is something. I place an order with them to replenish my supply of white glass; they send me two broken pieces of rod. I might have gotten the last of what they had. They're out of my favorite blue. Everyone is. I fill online carts with the Washington suppliers; much of what I'm clicking on is backordered or just plain unavailable. 

XV: One More Thing

A friend who got stung by jellyfish during her Ironman competition this summer tells me that the ornament she's buying reminds her of the jellyfish.

I can do her one better. If I can remember how. The last time I made jellyfish, all two of them, was in May of 2019, with Sleepless. 

One of them is on my window sill at work. I take it in my hand and stare at it, trying to piece together the steps and writing them down on a sticky note.

Using whatever thread scraps I have in my bag, and with the help of Glass Ninja, Classmate's Partner, and Our Instructor, I squeeze out two. This is our last Thursday night before our final critique. Whatever they look like, they'll have to do.

It's the white-topped one that's going to Buffalo. The other will live on the Window Sill of Judgment until I make better ones to replace it.

Before I pack it, I put a note on the bottom. She thinks it's hilarious and posts a photo on Facebook:

A friend of hers sees it, and I end up selling another ornament.

XVI: Last Class, Last Feathers, Burnout

I feel burned out, ready for the semester to end. It's the Sunday night before my last class on Tuesday. As I drift off, I see strands of green going onto a white base.

Damnit.

EDM is going to miss her beginner's class final crit, so Our Instructor is coming to class to evaluate her. My friend from California has sent me one kilo each of Honey Yellow and Emerald Green powder. I'm playing with those tonight for sure.

I'm going to play with the new colors first, while EDM waits for Our Instructor. I layer the new green over the bottom of the new yellow and try to spin out a bowl. The green all but disappears; the edges are thick and barely rippled.

(keeping for now)

I'll try again later, but first...

I'm up at the glory hole, pipe in one hand, feathering tool in the other, when Our Instructor comes back from the evaluation.

He looks over at me and says, "I thought you said you were finished with threading."

"I lied."

(keeping)

EDM leaves halfway through class, leaving me to fend for myself and ask All the Glass or Glass Ninja for occasional help.

I'm tired, and the scrap thread vase I'm working on snaps at the neck during transfer. I go with it, bending the long end to make a spout. It doesn't pour well. It goes in the Massachusetts box.

(reject)

A couple of scrap thread ornaments go better, including one that I layer the last of my threads onto a white background. I decide to take this one into my office, where I can hang it from the shelf over my desk.

I try the new yellow again. It's the perfect shape for spinning into a bowl. I lose it during the transfer.

I really am burning out. I try again. This time around, I remove it from the glory hole before it's ready, and the top doesn't flop well.

(keeping for now)

At least I know what I need to work on next semester.

XVII: Final Critique

Omicron is coming. Our Instructor doesn't want all us, as spread out, masked, and vaccinated as we are, to be in this room together for very long. 

We all have sample pieces spread out in front of us. Our semester's assignment, which we found out about after Thanksgiving, was to emulate an artist. Half of us did it; I'm not in that half. I've had my head down, feathering, feathering, feathering. 

Low Key didn't pick an artist either. She's been swirling rods together and trying to spin out. She says it hasn't been going well. A good setup for a spinout is screaming hot glass that's thin at the top. Her pieces are thick, like mine.

From the far corner of the room, behind a dozen perfect pieces, Glass Ninja says, "You're not hot enough and you're not thin enough."

Low Key says nothing. 

I look over to Glass Ninja and say, "Well that's an insult."

The room is silent for a second, and then everyone gets it.

If nothing else, my pile is the most colorful. I start by explaining that my learning curve is measured in geological time.

I've brought the stormy sky, the autumn scene, the dots, the yellow floppy bowl, and six "this is my last feather I swear" pieces.

Our Instructor hates working with aventurine. It's brittle, and can look muddy if it's used the wrong way. I point out to him, thumb on my masked nose, that my latest piece is made with aventurine. Up close, it sparkles. "I brought it in white hot," I offer.

After the critique, I go back to my locker to take home all my jars of glass. I need to figure out what I've used up and to replenish the jars if I have anything left at home. I have a little bit of a lot of colors. I take my notebook, too, in case I have any ideas.

Extra is still in the classroom when I'm finished, so I go back in. All The Glass and Our Instructor are there too. We get talking about next semester. I mention that All The Glass and Glass Ninja are okay with me being on Tuesday nights again. Thread Sherpa is coming back next semester. He's been All The Glass' partner for years. "That's gonna be one hell of a lab," Our Instructor says.

I agree. "Who's gonna sit at the kiddie table with me?"

Extra and I walk out together. She just got an electric bike and I want to hear all about it.