All In a Day's Work
I: Dreaded Warmup Exercise
I'm looking at the lab schedule, still hand-written and posted on the classroom cabinet with magnets.
I scan the days for regulars. Missing from the spring lineup are Grace, who is meticulous and perfect, and Extra, who I learned a lot from last semester. Back after a two-year absence is Prodigy. There are ten beginners this term, twice as many as last term, and five times as many as when I started. EDM, my assigned partner from last semester, is not anywhere on the list.
The lab schedule is full, mostly, which is a good thing: I don't need to be jumping into so many open slots. I have too much work to get rid of as it is.
Our first hands-on day is always for the dreaded one-gather-one-reheat exercise. With Omicron in the air, we're signing up for Thursday slots again, two four-person sessions. Only three of us bothered tonight: me, Tall Vase, and Classmate's Partner. They work together without even considering me, leaving me at the kiddie bench.
All the first-time advanced students get an hour and a half of instruction before the rest of us can show up. Prodigy, who is with that gaggle, wants to stick around anyway, so we work together.
I send my first two pieces to the floor. "I can blow glass, I swear!" I tell Prodigy, and show him pictures from last semester. He was an astounding beginner; I still think I have to prove myself to him.
I have better luck on my third try, as the steps for how to do this come back to me. This is the first time I haven't seen a demo; I'm rusty. I keep going at it until the score is 5 successes and three failures. I don't keep any of them. I have enough crap at home.
We're about to go over our hour and a half, but Tall Vase is working on some big thing, so I dip in for a pulled-neck vase. It's while I'm shaping it that I remember why it is I do this.
The breakoff from the pipe is bad; there's a dent in the neck. We like how it looks, though, so I keep going, and by sheer luck it releases from the punty without effort. Any colder and it would have been on the floor.
It even stands straight without my having to sand down the bottom! (That's a sanding disc in the background.)
II: Deep Freeze
We get our first real snowstorm of the season Friday night into Saturday. After digging out, I do my usual routine of trudging around with my camera.
I like the shortened bottle tree. When the ground thaws, I'll put the top into the ground somewhere else in the yard.
The wind was so strong this time that it blew enough snow into the porch for me to leave footprints. The giant ornaments all have snow caps, which somehow accents their otherwise subtle out-of-roundness.
I can tell class is in session again: I'm noticing imperfections.
Speaking of imperfections, my friend in Massachusetts sends me a photo of two of my rejects, now mounted on driftwood, which makes all of it so much better. That ornament still bugs the crap out of me, though.
The bowls I strung together in December haven't crashed to the floor yet. If they survived this storm, I guess they're good to go.
Even the cats are covered.
Later in the day, the sun comes out, and the deck ornament grows its own icicle.
By late afternoon, the icicle has quintupled in size.
The cold air is going to stick around until Thursday, which is fine with me. I like it better when the classroom is cold.
III: First Lab
Sleepless is back! Her hair is all the colors it wasn't the last time I saw her. After a semester's absence, we're partners again.
Thread Sherpa is back too. Apart from the last two years, when he was away, he's worked with All The Glass since the dawn of time.
So that's the four of us on Tuesday nights, "the best night," All The Glass says.
The corrugated metal door is all the way down. All The Glass opens it a little bit. I can feel the cold air swirling at my feet as I watch Sleepless do her dreaded warmup pieces.
I ask All The Glass if he's threading tonight. Mercifully, he's not, which means I'm off the hook too. "Next week," he says.
I'll start with a pulled-neck vase in clear, I guess. We'll see how that goes.
It goes.
For Christmas, Jack gave me two gift certificates for raw glass. It was enough not only to resupply, but also to get a little bit of a lot of things. By the time it all came in, I had to make a list.
Now I'm looking at that list. I dash back to my locker to bring out some colors to test. I'll leave the rods where they are and play with frit. It's easier.
First up, Gold Amethyst, a color from Gaffer (now sold to Reichenbach, so who knows what it'll look like next lot). I know from experience that, in my hands, especially with frit, these colors never look the way they do
online. And when the glass is hot, it's harder still to know what anything looks like.
Having worked with Extra so often last semester, I'm blowing thinner pieces now. This one comes out a pale amethyst.
I completely forgot to even out the lip! Oh well.
Next up, Gaffer's Cherry Red. Their bar, which is nowhere to be found for now, is a Charms lollipop red. I had to settle for frit, which I know I can't make look as red as the rod. I try to make a different sort of vase, like the ones Extra made last semester. Only I don't get the body long enough, and the proportions are all off.
Seems a bit off-center too. Fail.
Sleepless once brought in a color called Cranberry Pink. I liked it so much I bought some for myself. I blow out a little bowl, being conservative with the shape after my last failure. All The Glass watches me get ready to put it away. "Nice shape!" he says.
Making up for the disappointing red, this pink is definitely lickable.
One frit color was sent to me by mistake, one catalog number over from the one I wanted. Out of stock of the one I'd ordered, they gave me the option to mail the wrong one back. Called "Reddish Aurora," it looked tempting in the bag. I decided I might as well keep it.
Sleepless has the first go at it, making an ornament from it. My first try blows out weird so I go again. At this point, we're getting close to the end of class, and I feel tired. All The Glass is making some huge thing over at the glory hole, the doors wide open, dumping out so much heat that I decide to use the furnace instead.
I'd wanted to try the Extra-style vase again, but I put the lower jack line in too low, didn't stretch the piece enough, and blew it out round, the jack line becoming a faint indentation. Standing at the furnace, the piece on the punty, I'm not sure what I want to do with this. I could go back and open it up into some boring vase-cup hybrid, or I could try to spin it out into a floppy bowl.
It's difficult to manage the heat at the furnace door, which makes a spin-out that much more likely to fail. What the piece needs is concentrated, even heat. What one gets at the furnace door is pretty much not that.
But I try anyway because I'm tired.
The piece immediately flies off center and folds itself into a clamshell. I shrug and put it away. I take a picture of it in the annealer. The bottom of it is off to the back, not quite flat. I don't know how it will sit when it comes out.
IV: More Spinout Fail
It's near 50 degrees and raining, melting the snow into backyard ponds. The orbs have survived another freeze-thaw cycle.
It's class night. First thing, I retrieve Tuesday's glass.
Our Instructor says, as I bring the clamshell out of the cabinet, "Those are my favorite pieces!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! I have a few at home." He shows me how he hung his up on a wall with ribbon. "They only happen by accident," he says.
Pumpkin Master suggests I could grind the bottom down so that it sits flat, but then the ground glass would show and I'd have to spend way too much time grinding it to a clear finish, which I've never had the patience or the time to do.
I wrap it up and pack it away with everything else.
My partner tonight is another one of those guys who comes in and gets it right away. I'm trying to think of a good nickname for him as I type this.
It's been a long week of getting up too early to exercise before work, and now I'm at that stage of caffeinated exhaustion where I feel as if I'm floating above my lead feet. Oh well. I'm going to practice spinning out bowls because This Kid is good at it.
He doesn't end up giving me any advice; he's off grinding a half dozen pieces when I go to spin out a Honey Yellow bowl.
It doesn't flop. I always take them out of the heat too early! I keep it angled downward and spin it into a shallow bowl. It's embarrassing to fail in front of Our Instructor, even though by now he knows how glacial my learning curve is.
"Nice bowl!" he calls out.
Really? "It's crooked," I say, still spinning.
"They all are." That's what he likes about them.
I put it away. Someone's got some grinding to do.
This Kid makes a little, clear drinking glass sort of thing and then goes straight back to grinding.
I try for another floppy bowl, this time in Aqua Metallic, a greenish blue that reduces to a sheen, but I like it better without reduction. I haven't used this color in a long time. It's getting late.
Our Instructor, taking a break from loading the furnace with tomorrow's glass, watches me when I get to the final heat before the spinout. This time it does flop, but narrowly, into a saddle shape. He locks the annealer door after I put the piece away, so I can't get a picture of it to stare at all weekend.
He gives me some pointers for next time, telling me to open it up more so that it will stay centered more easily in the glory hole and not go all lopsided on me when I try to spin it out. He likes to let us make our mistakes. At first this annoyed me, but now I appreciate it. I think I learn better this way, even though it takes me forever as I make every mistake possible, one or two at a time.
At home, I balance the clamshell against the corner of the glass case, with a wad of poster putty to keep it upright. I'll let it live here for a while until I figure out how best to hang it.
As for the cherry red vase fail, it looks much better upside-down. We'll see what else emerges from this semester to go with it. Then I'll bring out the drill.
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