Hot Glass and Cold Beer

A friend and I went to a fun event at the Public Glass studio last night, Hot Glass and Cold Beer.  It was quite a scene, for the $25 door charge we got to pick our very own keepsake hand blown glass, as much beer and wine as we could stomach (which in my case was just 1/2 a glass, lightweight!) the fun of watching real glass artists design and create glass sculpture right in the midst of everyone and enjoyed it all to the rockin live band, Jabberwocky.  What a thrill.  I didn't take many pictures of the glassblowing stuff because it was quite crowded and I was a little afraid of getting bumped and, heaven forbid, somehow getting burned or messing up the artists at work.

below is the unique hand blown glass I chose, it is rather large and heavy, so I think it will make a great flower vase.

 we also were treated to a demonstration of superb lamp working, this is a slightly different technique of glass working using a torch to melt and work glass rods into smaller scale pieces, like glass beads. The artist we saw last night was creating the most amazing glass flowers in clear glass to be made into pendants, earrings, door pulls, etc.

 

The best part of the whole night, for me personally, was finally getting to see my very own, first ever, glass creation.  When last I saw this, it was a dark, shiny lump that was too hot to handle.  Now that I can see it, especially in the sunshine, I am most proud!! 

 

I think I might be hooked and will just have to take more glass working classes.

Sewing isn't for sissies

The Hawaiian quilt is coming along. I have made it through several nerve-wracking steps.  As I get further along, the stakes for messing up get higher.  The progress to date now represents hours of precious time. I constantly have to remind myself to just keep going, that if it gets messed up, SO WHAT! Every success, but more importantly, every failure is a learning opportunity.
It took a few tries to figure out how to cut away the turtles shell pieces after the main body was all sewn down.

The quilting kit instructions were basically incomprehensible on how to cut out the little pieces before any quilting was actually holding things together and appeared to be written for hand applique.  I am simply against hand sewing on principle, I mean this is the whole reason sewing machines were invented anyway, to free us from the tedium of hand sewing.  So, left to my own devices to make this work for machine sewing, I first copied the pattern and traced over it again, eliminating the seam allowances.

 then I tried copying the design onto water-soluble Solvy (looks sort of like Sarah Wrap), and free motion sewing over the cut lines onto the turtle.  This turned out terrible, the Solvy just didn't have enough body to stay exactly in place and the stitch lines distorted everything as I was sewing.  Note: just now in my quest to find the hyperlink to Solvy I actually read the directions for use, which suggested putting everything in an embroidery hoop, maybe next time.

Next, I created a little template, sort of a reverse stencil, of what would be the cut out portions, laid this over each turtle and traced with a chalk pencil.

and now for one of the "not for sissies" parts, actual cutting.  Slowly, slowly, ever so carefully feeling underneath the fabric to make sure I wasn't going all the way through and thus make a BIG HOLE in my lovely work, of much lesser concern in my concentration was taking care not to cut off my own fingertip as I gripped the fabric, but couldn't see through the fabric to exactly where my finger was in relation to the scissors.

Whew, made it through with the quilting backing AND all my fingers intact.

And now onto the basting step, I just love this Quilting Basting Gun from Dritz, it puts little plastic T-bar tacks through the fabric, very similar to how store tags are attached.  This is a real time saver over putting in safety pins or heaven forbid, hand basting.

there is a small drawback to this unit, the tip of the gun is a rather large, hollow needle and to properly set the tag you have to really press the whole fabric sandwich (top fabric, batting and backing fabric) up against the nose of the gun or you get misfires. Misfires are no big deal, you just clear the jam and keep going, but it's a waste of tacks and time, so it pays to be careful to really press the fabric up to the nose of the gun from the bottom.

 Yet another operation that involves sharp objects above and invisible fingers below.  This time my finger didn't remain unscathed, and in true hobbyist fashion my first thought was "oh no, I hope I didn't get any blood on the fabric". Luckily, no blood stains and only a really minor injury, but this proves my point that sewing isn't for sissies.

The All-Time Coolest ( or maybe Hottest) Class Ever!

I had an opportunity to take the most awesome class ever called "Playing with Fire" at Public Glass, San Francisco's Center for Glass Arts.  I was feeling a little intimidated by the idea of being a complete neophyte in the middle of a "real artist's studio" and then I rolled up to this rather unassuming building in one of the rougher parts of town,

The whole experience was different and much better than I expected.  The guys teaching the class were really relaxed and having a good time, which put myself and the other 5 students immediately at ease. I expected some crazy, super safety lecture and rigid rules of behavior for using the equipment.  We merely signed a single sheet release form, grabbed some scratchy safety glasses and pretty much immediately started playing with molten glass. 

 We newbies were allowed to walk about freely and look at anything, and it became clear very quickly that everyone was VERY AWARE of where the red hot glass was AT ALL TIMES.  The very real and apparent danger kept everyone on their toes without need for a lot of discussion of safety rules.  One of the teachers likened it to the sort of dance that food servers naturally fall into when it's busy, calling out "behind you" and sidestepping around moving obstacles. 

We set out to make simple, solid paperweights, actually blowing into the glass is another class entirely.

Step 1: The process begins with selection of a pipe, a 6 foot hollow metal rod to gather and work the glass with.  The pipes are kept hot in a gas burner.

 Step 2: Gather molten glass from the 2100F furnace, using the pipe to dip into the liquid glass, which is about the consistency of warm honey, gently rotating the pipe until a goodly size blob of glass has coated the end of the pipe.  This was somewhat challenging as the furnace is so blasted hot you can barely stand to be in front of it and without dark glasses it was pretty much impossible to see where the glass was so this was somewhat of a "do it by feel" process.

Then cool the pipe in the former beer keg turned circulating water bath so it's possible to hold the pipe with bare hands

Step 3: shape the molten blob on the steel "marver" table to make the glass blob more cylindrical. 

Step 4: As the glass is cooling it becomes harder going from the consistency of cold honey to taffy, so you have to keep the pipe turning at all times to keep the blob symmetrical and reheat frequently to keep it workable.  The reheating is done in the smaller "glory hole" furnaces at each of the 3 workstations.

Step 5: Add color by patting the molten glass into various bowls of colored glass granules, sort of like adding a peanut coating to candy apples.

Step 6: Shape the colored glass so it creates swirls of color in the finished object, reheating as needed to melt the colored bits and keep the glass soft enough to work.

 notice how the glass is getting darker as it cools off.

Step 7: add more clear molten glass from the big furnace to create a nice globe of clear glass around the swirly colored center.

Step 8: shape into final form using a wooden cup shaped tool that has been saturated in water to keep it from bursting into flame from the red hot glass.

Step 9:  Create the "jack line" to separate the glass from the pipe.  This is done by creating an indentation using giant metal tweezers in the blob close to where it is attached to the pipe.  Then carefully dripping water onto the indentation to cool it down quickly and start micro fractures in the area.  After that you suspend the pipe over something soft to catch the piece (someone with fireman's mitts for large delicate pieces or a padded cradle for the smaller pieces like the paperweights), then use the metal tongs to rap on the pipe which feels like a giant tuning fork and the resulting vibration causes the glass to crack apart at the jack line, thus separating the glass from the pipe.

Step 10: Gently place the first glass creation in the annealing oven and sadly wave goodbye as it takes 24 hours to cool down and I won't be back in SF for at least a couple of weeks.

Mine is the smaller, darker one on the right, it should be kind of blue and purple when it's all cooled down.

The Hopeless Handypeople Strike Again!

We went a couple of rounds with the dishwasher recently.  It was doing a crappier job than usual cleaning the dishes, the glasses were getting opaque with hard water build up and then they started coming out with soap granules on them after MULTIPLE CYCLES!  It was clear at this point that something had to be done, this would not stand, not handwashing, oh noooo!
So we put on our figurative gloves and entered the ring, first we determined that the pump was indeed running and inspected the clear drain hose for signs of blockage.

After determining that while the pump was running, no water seemed to be exiting the machine and the drain line looked clear.  We next set about investigating the underbelly of the beast. 

nothing obviously wrong. For good measure we back-flushed the drain line, which seemed to clear.  We replaced everything, bandaged our bloody knuckles and ran it successfully a couple of times.  The third time was NOT the charm, dammit.....still not draining.

Round 1 goes to The Dishwasher

Literally, rinse and repeat.  This time we did the smart thing, super handypeople that we are, and flushed the drain line in the actual direction of flow, VOILA, lots of slimy fish skin popped out, and then the satisfying sound of water draining quite normally, each and every time we ran it.  Happy dance, happy dance.

Round 2 goes to The Hopeless HandyPeople

Tour De Cluck

A few weekends ago, Craig and I went on the annual Tour De Cluck, a fundraiser for the Davis Farm to School Connection.  It was a lovely day to take a bicycle tour of various backyard chicken coops.  There were a ton of people who signed up, in fact we ran into one lady who drove in from the Bay Area only to find out all the tickets were sold out!  Craig was quite the gentleman and offered to share his map/ticket with her so she could at least see some of the coops.
The tour started at the Davis farmer's market, which is a great market, runs year round and always has a large and interestingly diverse attendance.  We go occasionally to eat hotdogs and gyro's and people watch.

We got the day started off right with fresh omelets and feeling up cute chicks, you know, the feathered kind.

Our out of shape butts couldn't make it to all 16 coops, but the ones we did see ran the gamut from the most darling little cottages to more traditional coops.

yes, this is a chicken coop.

while the coop above wasn't as fancy as the first one, it did have a feature I saw repeated throughout the tour, an attached compost pile.  The chickens are allowed to get into the compost and actually help it along by scratching it up for bugs (introducing more oxygen to the mix) and helping to keep the overall population of bugs to a tolerable minimum.  Seems like a good deal for everyone, the homeowner doesn't have to turn the compost pile, the chickens get to eat the tasty bugs and all that good protein goes into making tasty eggs for the homeowner.

This chicken kept a close eye on all the visitors.  Perhaps they are not as dumb as I always thought, being a city slicker and all, I was surprised how genuinely curious this one seemed about my camera.  And staring into those vaguely reptilian eyes, I could not help but think about the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, which were frighteningly smart critters.

My favorite coop, below, reminded my of something from Tolkien's Middle Earth that Hobbits might build.  I especially loved this coop door made of gently curved wood and sticks.

This was the largest of the coops we saw, about 20' by 6'.  There was enough room for rabbits and chickens to peacefully co-exist.

all in all, it was a relaxed ride through pleasant neighborhoods and the people were very nice to let all these strangers into their backyards.  We are now considering whether we could somehow turn our little finch aviary into a bigger chicken coop.  Time will tell if my new, maybe temporary, infatuation with the idea turns into a City Biddy.