Hot Mess Part Forty: Thirteen Sundays 7 and 8

 

Sunday Morning View

Week Seven

17 March 2024, 3:17 p.m.

The day started off well enough and then went to hell quickly. 

First, CP and I got a lip wrap onto a tall drinking glass I'd rolled in the bed of nails. 

My next piece, a square mold cup with a lip wrap and a pitcher lip, fell to the floor before CP could bring me a bit for a handle. We rescued it. I put the handle on. It's easier to line it up when the piece is square. I didn't like the shape of the handle or the mouth much. When I found the rescue punty had glued itself to the bottom of the pitcher, I didn't mind much when the whole bottom broke off.

Next, I went into the big oven to pick up one of last Monday's cracked bed of nails glasses that I'd filled with scraps. It was tall. My bubble was short. I couldn't manage the heat well enough to get the bubble to move, and the whole thing became a long, skinny, work of let's-call-it-art. "This is a hot mess," I said, and then the whole thing shattered when I tried to break it off the punty.

There are two boxes of discarded work in the classroom. The items within are up for grabs. I'd found a plate with some dichroic swrils in it. The colors looked like something Low Key would have used. I'd put it in the big oven. Now I made a bubble of white frit under some clear glass and went into the oven to pick up the plate. I let it collapse around the bubble. It didn't go evenly. I worked it in. Once I got some air into the thing, it told me it wanted to be a bowl.

I made one bowl last semester. Before that, years. I kept this one relatively unopened so that the overlay would show. 

Rummaging through the discard box some more, I found another plate. I cleaned it off and set it aside to use tomorrow.

24 March 2024 6:33 p.m.

I broke my slump on Monday. Rose very generously poured out a pile of her Jewel Mix frit for me to use. She likes large-sized frit, #3 at least. I'm always ordering powder, #1, and #2. The smaller the number, the finer the pieces and the denser the coating. I used my fine Enamel White frit on my core bubble, then rolled my second gather in the Jewel Mix. I made two long-neck vases this way, figuring two was better than one, should one of them turn out wonky.

The first one was a keeper.

The second one was irreparably wonky.

I put it outside, the latest addition to Saint Miscellaneous.

The big oven reached 1050 degrees around the time CP arrived. With his help, I used the second plate Low Key had discarded. I melted it in as an overlay on top of more Enamel White.

30 March 2024, 6:12 p.m.

Where were we? Oh, right. I was melting something I made earlier in the semester. I'd made a thick, clear, square mold thing, didn't like it, cut the top off, tossed a bunch of blue aventurine frit and scraps into it, picked it up with a yellow bubble, and made a very thick, uneven, glob of something. It sat on the Window Sill of Judgment until I decided to cut the top off again and pick it up with an Enamel White frit bubble. This stretched it out some, so that the frit, scraps, and yellow bubble became more pleasing.

At the end of the night, I went back into the square mold. CP brought me a lip wrap and, with minutes to spare, a bit for a handle. I nearly got it centered, with the help of the straight sides of the square mold.

We got talking about all the goofy mistakes I've made while working with him. He's good at encouraging me to keep going when things go off the rails. I went home and took pictures.

This one, from the second semester of my first year, went south on me when I got it too hot and I lost control as it stretched. All The Glass looked over from the other bench and said, "It needs a foot." We put a foot on it. We wrapped it with a spiral thread because that's what I was doing a lot of at the time. (Behind it is another mistake, when I was practicing drawing with stringers and then lost control of the shape while the piece was on the punty.)

Same semester, I think: I had a long, thin thing going that collapsed in the glory hole. Hot, the blue was green and the red black. "It looks like a pickle," CP said, right before he had to leave and it bent over on itself. 

It's actually one of my favorite pieces.

One Thursday night that semester, CP was guiding me through a drop vase as Our Instructor and some classmates looked on. I had a lot of glass. I let the bubble drop as instructed, and lost control. The thing stretched, off-center. When I put it on a punty, I could barely keep it level. CP ran with me to the glory hole in case it fell. It didn't. We put it away, and I was laughing. The thing is ridiculously ugly, but it lives here because I crack up whenever I think about that night.

This is the "Apple-Cherry." I was trying to make a shape I had no business going for in my first year. We decided it needed as stem. It lives on my office window sill, a testament to never throwing anything away mid-creation. (The cat off to the right was also a mistake, when a crack in the blowpipe meant that I couldn't blow out the core bubble and I made a cat out of despiration.)

While I was at it, I'd cut the top off of the Gold Ruby Extra square mold vessel I'd made earlier. Now that I had better ones, with lip wraps and all, I figured I'd sand the cut-down vessel to a polish.

I now have a collection of sawed-off bits. I want to make a mobile of sorts, or to somehow link these together in a grid. I've since sand-blasted them so that the rough saw marks are gone. This will be a summer project.

Week Eight

30 March 2024, 8:52 p.m.

Registration for the fall semester was set to go live on Monday, March 25. Some of us, worried that all the spots would be taken in the first day, were ready to stay up til midnight tonight in order to secure a place in class.

Last week, Murano said I could use his pineapple kick-mold. This contraption is a mold with handles, like the square mold. Inside is a cone shape with regular indentations. If one drops a gather of glass into it and then blows it out, one gets a diamond-like pattern all over the glass, which looks extra-snazzy as an ornament. If one gathers over it, as I did, the indentations trap air and one is left with rows of bubbles.

I ground the bottom down a little, but after I took it home I realized it was still crooked. I brought it back and ground it down, then got the bottom to a near polish so as not to detract from the bubbles. I didn't take a picture of the finished product.

I was helping Sage with a vase, and CP was finishing a heart, when Dale and Sean stopped by to watch. Sage and I had to do what we're calling an "All The Glass Jack Line," which means dumping a waterfall onto a bad jack line to get it to break off the pipe. We succeeded. I made CP do another heart so they could watch the drama. There's lots of swinging, including the final swing, where he slumps the tube of glass over a pipe, which I'm on a step holding, with a face shield on. I know he's not going to hit my face, but I'm sure he's going to hit my face. It was fun narrating. They had to leave before I took my next turn.

Which is just as well, because the old cup, made from scrap threads years ago with a different cullet, that I blew a white bubble into, ended up with too thin a bottom, and it broke out in the glory hole. I let the whole thing collapse onto itself and made a paperweight out of it.

After the collapse, I realized I was sleep-deprived and should probably not be so ambitious.

Earlier this month I made a tall drinking glass with a skewed lip wrap. I kept looking at it, liking it less and less each time. I finally cut the top off and saved it, and cut it down to a size I could manage when I filled it with scraps and dichroic shards. 

This one wanted to be a paperweight when I blew a mixed frit bubble into it. The frits reacted with each other, under a hood of dichroic gold and pale purples.

The last thing I did was use the pineapple mold again. I blew a small bubble into it and shaped it into a paperweight. The trapped air bubbles stayed small and spiraled up.

Meanwhile, down the hall, somebody had put names and numbers on all of our lockers. This had something to do with the locker-clearing edict, but we were as much in the dark now as we'd been when the order came down.

I went out for a solo bike ride when I got home. In the evening, I logged into my student account to make sure everything would be set for registration at midnight. And there it was, the "register now" button, a day early. 

Take my money!

And take they did, $500 more than a year ago, the materials fee having gone from $475 to $975. I would now be paying more for one slot in the fall than I was paying now for two slots. 

After I put my credit card away, I contacted everyone to tell them to register now. There were 20 spots open; I took the first. 

As of right now, there are 7 spaces left. All The Glass signed up last night when I let him know the glass was more than half full. It hasn't even been a week yet. If only getting people to join the workshop had been this easy!

There's a problem, though: the semester begins while I'll be in Canada. It's starting so early that I'll miss the first two weeks of class. We usually don't start our lab slots until after the second lecture; I'll be getting home just in time. But we choose our lab slots on the first day. All The Glass wants me to be his partner again. He's going to bat for me when choosing time comes. I hope others in the class have my back too, should the Colonel give me a hard time. If I can, I'll try to call in from Canada. I think the first day coincides with the day we'll have climbed two mountains. I'll be exhausted, and relieved, and, if I get an evening slot, will sleep well. 

So I arrived at last Monday's class more awake than I expected to be, not having had to stay up til midnight. 

I had a bunch of rod slices left in the little oven from yesterday. I picked one up, a cherry red, and rolled it over the bed of nails. I was just ready to transfer it to a punty by myself when CP came in and saved me from messing that up. I made a sort of vase thing.

"That was too much glass," I said after I put it away.

Sage grinned. "You forgot who your partner is."  Poor All The Glass. I suppose I'll have to tell him how much we're roasting him behind his back.

With the next rod, I used some of Rose's gold aventurine on the core and then attempted an overlay. Thinking the rod was a reducing color (one that would take on a silvery sheen when hit with a flame), I realized I'd made a mistake in overlaying the rod right onto my core bubble. I'd have to make something tiny. I did. I made a little cup, something like a shot glass, only taller. Only when it didn't change color under the flame did I remember that the rod wasn't a reducing color after all. We put it away.

I liked how it looked. 

Anything can happen in the annealer. When I retrieved the cup two days later, it was craked throughout. Did I mess with the heat when I hit it with the flame? 

I smashed it up so that I could use the colors again. That's when I found out that the bottom was very thick, much thicker than the top. Maybe the unevenness of the glass caused too much stress as the piece cooled down. 

The next thing I did was use Murano's pineapple mold again. I haven't figured out how to use it with less glass. The vase I made was too big and heavy. I had a sort of out-of-body experience while I was making it. I was going slowly, doing my best to control the weight of the thing. I saw myself working and thought, "She blows glass."

Once again, I flubbed the top. I realized just how crooked it was once I took it home, so I've packed it up again to grind down tomorrow.

I had two purple frits out that I hadn't used all night, so I mixed them with white on the core bubble, twisted the glass around, reshaped it, and made a little cup. With five minutes left, I asked CP to bring me a bit for a handle. I think I got it centered this time. Now I need to work on a better attachment. Baby steps!

So that's it for weeks 7 and 8. We're in the downslope now. Five weeks left. I've packed up some rods. I'm going to get way out over my skis tomorrow and try to make bowls with lip wraps.