Hot Mess Part Thirty-Eight: Thirteen Sundays 3 and 4

 

A Tree Grows in Glass

Week Three

18 February 2024 5:40 p.m.

"We worked without the glory hole yesterday," Pumpkin Master told me as I walked in at 8:15. "I cleaned the ports, turned it on, and flames shot out the front."

It was all fixed now. Our Instructor had come in to lend a hand. Again. "He thinks we need new controller boxes."

"How much would that cost?" I asked, figuring there's no way the department would pay for it.

"About $800."

"Club money?"

"Yeah."

Yesterday morning saw a flurry of texts as people were trying to figure out whether or not the school was open after the overnight snowstorm. I'm the one who set up the initial text group. I mistyped New Grace's number. Some poor sod has been getting barraged all week. I fixed it yesterday afternoon. 

Sage, CP, and I had another mellow Sunday morning. "I like it like this," Sage said. "It's peaceful." She added, "If they do this again next January, I'm signing up."

Before week one, I jotted down some ideas on a sticky note of what I should make this semester. Today I tossed it into the recycling bin, two of the four notions left unaccomplished. 

I'm stuck on the square mold. I want to make a drinking glass. That requires a round top, a tall form, and light weight. I can get two out of three. The weight is always the problem. 

Having sawed the top off the first blue square mold piece, I set about making a new one. The top is more even on this one, but something happened to the bottom while it was in the mold. It seems to have collapsed in on itself on the corners, so that the vessel now has little feet. We'll see what it looks like when it comes out of the annealer.

(22 February: What it looks like is this. I ground it down so that it would stand evenly, and in doing so, put two holes in the too-thin bottom. I used UV-curing adhesive to plug the holes, and sandpaper to smooth it flat again. I'm torn between keeping this and sawing it into pieces to be reused later.

)

These pieces don't take long to make, so CP told me to go again. After four days drinking from the yellow lip wrap cup I made last Monday, I decided I can do better. The way the top curves in annoys me. I tried again. Maybe it's the yellow frit that's stiff, because I had trouble with the wrap again. I almost put it away with the top curved in before I noticed the problem. I heated it up again and fought with it. Now the top flares out a little. 

The wrap is still too thick. So is the cup. It feels okay to drink from. I can do better.

CP made one of his famous sculptural vases, the ones where we have to get out of the way as he swings the molten goo until it hardens. This time, he set it up slightly differently. When he took the piece out of the glory hole to swing it, little pink threads flew out and down, well beyond the top of the vessel. It was as if a pink spider web had exploded onto the floor. After we put the vessel away, we spent a good five minutes picking pink scraps off of the floor. He gathered them up to use on his next two pieces, the hollow tube hearts he started making last year.

I helped Sage with a piece she'd blown so large and thin at the bottom that I told her she was getting into Glass Ninja's territory. "I forgot the jack line," she said. "We'll have to punty up All The Glass style." In other words, a waterfall on the pipe end, where the glass was thick. Miraculously, it broke off cleanly. Unfortunately, it fell of the punty just as I was about to slide it into the glory hole. Fortunately, it didn't break. I quickly gobbed some more glass onto the rod I was holding (Sage has her own rod, which is why I did this unorthodox thing). I slowly attached the punty to the bottom of the piece. CP helped hold it steady as I carefully introduced it into the glory hole. I guess that heat wasn't enough. When I brought it back to Sage, we heard the crack at the lip before we saw it working its way down the piece. "I'm sorry," I said. She shrugged. "Glass breaks." This is why I hate making punties for other people. I can't live with the guilt when the piece lands on the floor. Sage trusts me, though. I've been bringing her punties for three weeks. Every time she asks, I say, "Are you sure?" She made another one with the same colors, better the second time.

Meanwhile, I was experimenting with the sawed-off bottom of the square mold vessel I made two weeks ago, the one with the thin but wonky top. I made a thin, blue core bubble and blew into the square. My pipe was off-center. I evened it out as much as I could, fusing the bubble onto the square edges. Once I got the thing onto a punty, I decided that I should try to spin it out. What I got was a four-sided floppy bowl with a square base. I couldn't tell when I put it away if the clear outside was distinguishable from the blue bubble inside.

(22 February: It's not. It's just a messy, heavy, badly-flopped bowl. Worse, it's a dreaded "hat bowl," a sign of underheating and inexperience.)

Then I tried something I came up with two nights ago: I blew a clear bubble into the sawed-off top of the blue square mold vessel from two weeks ago. I managed to get the inside bubble all the way to the bottom of the blue collar. I flattened that and kept blowing, giving myself what looked like a wonky cup stuffed into a blue bag. My jack line was tight enough to try a lip wrap. It wasn't perfect. It didn't matter. This was an experiment. 

(February 22: It looks like a mangled beer cozy. I totally missed on the lip wrap. It's on the side of the opening, not the top.)

We were getting towards the end of class. I went into the square mold one more time. I didn't have much glass between the corners and the top on this one. I decided not to try to pull it because I didn't want to distort the shape. The top was a little off-center and thick, but at least I got it round. It's probably still to heavy for a drinking glass.

(22 February: There's always a bad side.)

CP made another heart with fifteen minutes of class time left. "They're better when I'm rushed," he said. I'm so the opposite of that. 

It doesn't take Pumpkin Master much time to recharge the furnace with cullet these days. Two scoops and the crucible is full again. I used that time to polish the top of the sawed-off square mold. There wasn't much surface area, so the steps went quickly. By the time Pumpkin Master was ready to close the room, I had a shiny top, save for one little corner (upper right in the photo below). 

"What are you going to use it for?" he asked. I shrugged. I needed to bring it back to fix that corner. "You can leave it here," he said. "Nobody's gonna be here until tomorrow night anyway." I packed it up so that I could decide later.

I'd also sawed down last week's reworked Junk in the Trunk, saving the slivers for a mobile. What was left looked like the top half of an egg with a riot of color and a spot of green inside. The cracked top had held while I was cutting it down (I'd covered it in masking tape so that if it had broken I wouldn't have bled). I packed it up too.

Now I'm thinking I should bring it back tomorrow and stick it in the ground somewhere outside the classroom, the way Tall Vase does with our discards. I wonder how long it would take him to notice.

22 February 2024, 10:33 p.m.

I stuffed the sawed-off Junk in the Trunk into the mulch next to the vase, under the metal spider.

I was very early on purpose. I wanted to grind down the blue square mold top again and get the polish right this time. I went all the way back to the 360 grit disc. I'm pretty sure I made it worse before making it better again. I was still on the 360 disc stage when Rose arrived. I sanded a little while longer as she set up. I didn't get to the bench until close to 6:00.

"I'm awake today," I told her, and set about trying to make witch's balls again. After I failed a few times, Rose came over to show me how she does it. That one failed too, but this time I realized why. I decided not to stop until my success rate was greater than my failure rate. I made a few one-gather balls, then switched to two gathers so that there would be more glass to push against and more time to work. "One more," I kept saying. Half an hour later, after four more one mores, it was 7:30 and I had 8 witch's balls in the annealer.

My favorite was one of the later ones, where I kept stabbing at the hot glass and wound up with a tangle of threads. "This one is insane," I said, showing it to Rose before I put it away.

When I retrieved them on Wednesday evening, I found that half of them had cracked. The ones with the largest cracks went into the re-melt bucket. A couple had smaller, internal cracks. I brought them home. One of those was thick and heavy.

Another, while not cracked, was one I did at the end of the night. I tried color. I guess I didn't put enough on, because the pink completely disappeared and the green only showed faintly in the threads.

They never made it to the Window Sill of Judgment when I got home. They're destined for discard.

Another one has only vertical threads, which is what I was after when I was trying to make Tree of Life ornaments.

Obviously I have no real control over this process. I'm still trying to figure out the timing. Stab too soon and the sphere won't happen. Stab too late and the threads disappear. Stab at the right time, when the bubble is about two thirds of the way there, and maybe the threads will stick around. It didn't help that the calipers I was using -- which are too big for my hands so I wrapped the sides with athletic tape for grip -- would sometimes stick in the closed position. I think the tape got in the way.

In the end, I kept three of the small ones and two of the large ones. Only the insane one warranted a permanent place above the Window Sill of Judgment.

Instead of heating up the big oven, I put the sawed-off top of a square mold reject in the little color box and hoped it wouldn't shatter. I blew a pale blue bubble into it, flattened the bottom, and opened the top into a vase shape after mangling it by pulling and trimming. The jury's still out on this one. (February 29: The jury has ruled it too ugly to live.)

Rose wanted to try threading. I was glad to help her out. She turned the pipe and I brought the thread. She was excited by the result. I didn't use the threader at all last semester, and I hadn't feathered in longer than that. I got a clear gather, had Rose babysit it, and made a Cranberry Pink thread. At the last minute, I decided to feather it, but only in one direction. I made a drinking glass out of it. I didn't pull or trim the top because I didn't want to mangle the pattern. The lip turned out thickish, but it has a good enough feel when I drink out of it.

At home on Wednesday, I set out the three cups I wanted to try drinking from. The mangled beer cozy cup was the only one that stood a chance against Glooskap (seen here inspecting my work), who takes it upon himself to tip over every cup of water I dare set next to me when I'm sitting on the sofa watching TV with Jack.

Empty, the beer cozy cup is plenty heavy. Full of water, it's heavier still. That didn't stop Glooskap from attempting to tip it over. We paused whatever it was we were watching to witness the cup versus cat contest. When the cup was almost empty, I let him try again, and he succeeded. Weight is no issue when all you need to do is stick your fuzzy foot inside. The cozy went back to the Window Sill of Judgment. 

The yellow lip wrap cup is in the display cabinet with the other lip wrap cups, for now. It displaces the one I made last week, which is going to be filled with scraps on Sunday and put in the big oven.

The feathered cup is currently my regular drinking glass, not as aesthetically satisfying as the thin-topped lip wrap cup that I've been using since Decmber, but definitely prettier. This one will probably end up in the cabinet too. It's too pretty to risk being broken.

Low Key texted to ask if she could make up a class this Sunday morning. I told her sure, but she has to show me how to make witch's balls. She's good at making a single, controlled, colored thread, straight across. Sage texted back that she wants in on the lession. Then CP said she has to teach him too.

Week Four

February 29, 9:35 p.m.

There's no more room above the Window Sill of Judgment for all the witch's balls I'm bringing home. They're balancing on the tops of the vases and cups still being judged. 

On Saturday night, I got into a text conversation with one of my biking buddies, during which I tried to describe the square mold. I promised him a picture, which I took when I got into class on Sunday morning.

Before class started, I sawed last week's blue square mold into three pieces and chucked the bottom. I set the middle and top into the big oven, along with the yellow lip wrap cup that I filled with scraps from last Monday night. CP put something in the oven too. I fired it up.

Low Key was setting up too. We're never hurried these days. Low Key's regular partner, on Saturday afternoons, is an OG from back in the days when the classroom was in "the barn," somewhere on campus that might or might not still exist. I've seen his work in the cabinet, and there's one up on a high shelf in the classroom. His work looks straight out of Murano. 

"He made this piece," she said, "and threw it out. I asked why. He said it was crooked. It wasn't crooked! He said it was. I told him he's like you and Glass Ninja. Very precise."

"Wow," I said. "That's high praise to put me in the same category as Glass Ninja!"

"You're very precise," she said. I try to be. I didn't think anyone noticed.

While we waited for the oven, CP made one of his signature pitchers. I brought him too much glass for the handle, but he went with it anyway. 

I made yet another Capri Blue square mold cup. It was heavy again, too heavy for a drinking glass. At least the top was round and the bottom square. 

Sage called out sick, so she missed Low Key's witch's ball lesson. Her style is to pick up a dab of color on each side, then have an assistant help her poke in at those points so that the colored threads join in the center. It's simple and elegant. Her threads are horizontal. I'm aiming for vertical so that I can make tree trunks. When she tried vertical threads, she found herself in the same gummed-up situation I do: too much glass pushed to the top. 

I set about making witch's balls using my calipers and two gathers of glass. Rose came in while I was stabbing away. I put three in the annealer, not really happy with any of them. I rejected a couple while they were still on the pipe. I walked straight to the re-melt bucket and knocked them off there. Rose looked at me with dismay. "Why'd you do that?!"

"I don't like it."

"It was fine!"

"Not round."

She told Rose the story she told me an hour ago.

Three out of five, none of them great, but at least my success rate is increasing. 

With the big oven up to temperature, I went in and picked up the lip-wrap cup. I blew another cup inside of it. "That's sick!" CP said as we put it away.

It's far too heavy to drink from. I guess that means it's art.

CP made another one of his sculptural pieces. Low Key was working on something that collapsed. She saved it anyway so that she could break it up and use the colors again. 

I went into the big oven with an Enamel White bubble to pick up one of the Capri Blue square mold pieces I'd sawed off earlier. I had a bad jack line. The top broke off so unevenly that, if I'd cut it down, there wouldn't have been any of it left. I liked the shape. I decided not to pull it to even it out. Instead, I heated and swung it until the jagged edges became smooth waves.

I still had a Blue Jade rod in the small oven and another piece of the Capri Blue square mold in the big oven when class ended. I let Pumpkin Master know they were still there. "I'll use them tomorrow," I said. I like having back-to-back sessions like this. It keeps me in the zone.

Where Sundays are collaborative and creative, Mondays are more stressful. I have to think of things I can make by myself. Rose, for whatever reason, has learned, and become quite happy, to work by herself. I try to be self-sufficient too, but the things I want to make require a second pair of hands. Or, at least at my skill level they do. 

I came into this workshop afraid to punty up by myself. Now I can do it successfully most of the time. I never used to break pieces off the punty to put them away by myself either. Now I always do. 

After Sunday's session, Low Key told me that I should try using color in my witch's balls. I decided to try to repeat the first one I ever made, which was one gather and two colors. I succeeded the very first time, almost got it the second time, and failed utterly ever since. 

I spread some green in a line on the marver and some brown in a small pile a few inches away. I took a single gather, rolled the top half in the green, melted that in, dabbed the bottom on the brown, melted it in, shaped the gather again, heated it up, and went back to the bench to make a bubble. I used the calipers to pinch the bottom and the top off to one side to avoid poking the bubble back into the pipe.

I did this four times successfully and twice knocked the bubble off into the scrap bucket. 

The first three I put away had thin, brown "trunks" reaching up to the green "leaves."

But the fourth one worked! I stabbed that one from the same spot twice. Noted.

Rose asked me to bring her a bit to stick on to the top of a cylinder. Low Key had done this last year, carefully placing three colored bits evenly around the top of a bowl. When she spun it out, the bits, being heavier, spun out wider, creating fingers. Rose, who had seen a video of something similar, spun hers out, the single bit pulling longer on one side. I stayed with her from the bit to the end, so that I could open the glory hole doors when she needed it and catch the bowl when she broke it off the punty.

Now it was my turn to ask her for help. I needed her to open the big oven door so I could pick up the last of the sawed-off square mold pieces. I made my Blue Jade bubble too thin at the bottom. When I picked up the square mold, I hoped it would help stabilize the bottom. It didn't. The bottom kept nearly blowing out every time I tried to lengthen the piece. What I needed was a "button," a little smear of clear glass on the bottom, to give it extra stability for the punty. All The Glass and I made buttons for each other a lot. Now I needed one. But Rose was in the middle of a pumpkin. I would have to try to make one myself.

It was a right mess, but it did the job. Unfortunately, while I was getting the punty ready, the piece, still hot, sagged a little on the pipe. With a partner, this never would have happened because my partner would have kept the piece on center by rolling the pipe. I just learned the hard way not to get the piece too hot for a self-punty. The shape was now a slumped mess, the punty a little off-center. There was only one thing to do. Spin it out.

Somehow, the bottom sides retain hints of having been square once. 

It's a wonder this thing survived at all. When I looked at it, I thought, "Y'know, I coulda done an overlay instead." So maybe that's what I'll have to try next. 

Rose wanted to thread. This is a two-person activity. I walked her through threading and one-directional feathering twice.

Then I wanted to try. As soon as she was finished turning the pipe while I brought the bit, she went to get a gather to make something for herself. "Wait!" I said. "I still need your help!" I'm not good enough to feather at the bench. There's too much time for the glass to cool during the trip from the glory hole. Instead, I feather at the glory hole. It helps if there's someone holding what we call "the pizza," essentially a flat piece of metal on a pole like one would use to ferry a pizza in and out of an oven. For us, we use it as a heat and light shield for the glory hole. One person shields the hole while the other, just outside of the glory hole, pulls the glass for feathers. Pull, flip, pull, go back in to warm the piece again. I can do this without the shield if I'm pulling towards myself, but when I pull away, I have to get closer to the glass and the hole. I only pulled towards myself this time, but later maybe Rose and I will both be feathering in two directions.

I made two feathered cups. Neither was as tall nor as thin as the one I made last week.

I'd used thread scraps. I wasn't sure what the colors were going to turn out to be. Topaz and purple?

Nope. Green and pink.

I went back to witch's balls. I asked Rose to help me do what Low Key does. I picked up four little scraps of color, two blue and two orange. We simultaneously poked at the orange spots, then the blue (only I mistook one color for the other and missed a spot completely). It was heavy and not round, but I kept it anyway, it being the first of its kind in my collection.

With five minutes left, I tried a one-gather with purple frit. I stabbed and blew and stabbed and blew. The piece was thin, with multiple threads. I sensed I might have blown a hole in it, but I couldn't see the hole when I put it away. (It did have a hole, and several cracks, and barely held together when I took it out of the annealer and carried it to the waste bucket two days later.)

When I got home after retrieving all of work on Wednesday night, I had to get creative in finding a place to house all the little trees of life while I track my progress. Fortunately, I have a cheap lamp with five bendable arms next to the Window Sill of Judgment. 

The one on the left is from last semester, one of only two that came close.

The one that really worked earned itself a permanent spot among the other ornaments above the Window Sill of Judgment.

Late this afternoon, I checked the school's website to figure out when fall registration begins. I sent the information to our text chain: 

"FYI: Fall registration begins March 25. Courses become fully visible (whatever that means) on March 3."

Rose responded with four thumbs up.

I added that the class was "up there now, but without any details. I guess that's what 'not fully visible' is." I was hesitant to add this. It would be perfect conspiracy fodder for those convinced that the school was going to pull the rug out from under us again.

But then Pumpkin Master wrote, "It's running. We are ordering glass soon."

I won't fully believe it until the school takes my money.