This was a very productive weekend. I attended another training session at the
local library for
adult literacy tutoring, learned how to hook up the
trailer by myself, practiced backing into a parking space with the trailer (no easy task I might say) AND finally, at long last, finished the Hawaiian Quilt, hereafter to be know as "Blue Ocean".
Now that Craig is working nights, going to school during the day and sleeping any other time he can, I often find myself the only one awake in the house (the dogs sleep all night with me and then all day with Craig, lazy mutts).This has been strangely liberating, don't get me wrong I love spending time doing just about anything with Craig, but now I must ask only my own self how I want to occupy my time, rather than "what would we both enjoy doing together?"
I have started volunteering at the library doing one on one tutoring with a nice lady who wants to improve her basic English skills. I was very nervous about taking on this responsibility, worried that I wouldn't know what or how to teach English or really any subject at all, let's just say I'm not known for patience. But the Solano County Library has an awesome Literacy program and they really take a lot of time and effort to help tutors put together appropriate materials and provide lots of information and techniques for working with adult learners. We meet twice a week for 1.5 hours at the library in a quiet study room. It's been about 6 weeks now, I'm not sure if my learner and I have made much progress yet, but we are getting to know one another better and communicating in English.
I am also becoming quite obsessed with the idea of working with hot glass to make marbles, beads, wine stoppers and other small glass objects. The last post showed way too many pictures of my first ever marble (and the only one) made at a 2 day course in
Lampworking, which I attended last month
at Public Glass. This is the perfect combination of working with fire and glass. It's done with a torch that is mounted on a bench, so it's possible to set up your own "studio" in the garage. This technique is great for making small solid or nearly solid stuff like beads, marbles, etc and can be also be used for making larger hollow items like goblets. I have been researching like mad on everything to do with this and how to safely set up my very own studio. The big deal items to take care of first are creating a safe and well ventilated work area. Then the fun can begin in getting the torch, tools and melting glass. Here's a picture of someone doing lampwork:
but first, I have soberly committed to renting some more time on the equipment at Public Glass before investing in this seriously. My first rental time is next weekend, which brings me to "the practicing with trailer" part of this past weekend. As the glass place is in San Francisco and any newly created glass objects will need to be
annealed before coming home, the torch rental also implies an overnight stay nearby.
In my quest to keep the challenge level high, I rashly decided to make this my first solo jaunt with our
travel trailer (affectionately named Shelly, for obvious reasons). I'm not sure what the heck I was thinking when deciding that my first solo should be through one of the busiest cities in the WHOLE WORLD! Craig, bless him, stayed up late (for me early morning) to patiently explain the whys and wherefores of hooking the truck to the trailer, while stopping frequently for me to take photos, ask dumb questions, etc. Then we drove off to the local
Camping World Store, which oddly enough had none of the items we wanted. No rear brake bulbs, no hitch helper flags (I hope the ones I ordered online from
Garage Toys get here in time), but of course they had plenty of brand new, shiny RV's which they were not shy about telling us about ad nauseam.
We escaped from the showroom and then I tried my hand at backing up the trailer. I thought I had scouted a nice empty area in back of the Camping World parking lot to practice in, but it turns out I needed A LOT MORE space than I thought so the whole thing was kind of stressful; Craig trying his best to explain the physics of backing a trailer on a pivot point while I nervously under and then over corrected while keeping a wary eye on the very, very expensive RV's parked all around us in the lot. We finally bailed out of the lot, both of us silently, but fervently hoping the RV park in Pacifica has pull through spaces.
must stop now, hand cramping, next post I'll show you the completed Blue Ocean Hawaiian quilt.
