Murano

it's been a long time friends!  Some of you (well, one of you anyway) requested an update and a sharing of my recent travel adventures to the lovely island of Murano. 

Murano is a small island near Venice. A little history: in 1291 Murano became the only place in The Most Serene Republic (Venice area) authorized to manufacture glassware.  This was largely due to a well founded fear that the glassworks on Venice could result in fire and great damage, but also as a means for Venice to control their virtual monopoly on fine glassware that they traded around the world to great financial benefit.   They managed to protect their exclusive trade in, at that time, the world's finest glass by closely controlling and protecting their glassworking trade secrets for many, many years and even today there are still a few Muranese who strongly feel that sharing glass working techniques with foreigners is somewhat treasonous to their livelihood and traditions. Luckily for me, Lucio Bubacco is not one of them.

The centerpiece of the trip was a 5 day workshop with the incomparable Lucio Bubacco, a world renown glass artists (click on his name to see the gallery on his website) at Scuola Bubacco.   The trip was arranged in the States by one of his long time acquaintances, Ofilia Cinta.  It was quite an international group. We had people from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey and the US in the workshop.  Below is one of the pieces he made to demonstrate his techniques for making sculpture with "soft glass" (as opposed to "hard glass",  borosilicate which is what the majority of American glass sculptors use).  I could go on and on about the differences between the various glasses, but I won't bore you with all that now.

In addition to learning a tremendous amount with Lucio, we also had an incredibly unique opportunity to visit many other glass artists in their private studios and talk with them about their art and see them work up close.  Below is another fabulous artist, Davide Salvadore, creating the latest in his series of almost life size human/animal busts at the furnace.

He is carefully aligning all the separately prepared murrini (cut cross-sections of patterned cane) that have been wrapped around a core of molten glass.  They will spend many hours carefully reheating, then gently melting everything to a uniform finish and shaping it into the final desired form.  This process takes many hours of intense labor in very hot conditions, but the end results are worth it.

Ok, that's it for tonight, but rest assured I have lots more stuff to write about and pictures to share. 

Ciao

Treasure

Money is not the true measure of success in life, but rather the experiences one has that are the true treasure.

I recently encountered a very dear friend from the past and the encounter triggered flashbacks to some of our experiences together and from there to just general reminiscences on life experiences that make up my personal treasure.

These are some of my favorites:

1. I've danced all night in a Tokyo nightclub
2. I've walked over a bed of hot coals
3. I've climbed Mt Kilimanjaro
4. I've wrestled Komodo dragons (onto an X-ray table)
5. I've snorkeled off the coast of Zanzibar
6. I've eaten seared foie gras in Paris
7. I've sailed under the Golden Gate bridge at sunset
8. I've climbed naked through the Exploratorium Tactile Dome (it was a "sanctioned" event)
9. I've talked a suicidal young woman off a bridge
10. I've seen flying fish and bioluminescence in the middle of the ocean

what are your treasured experiences?

Old girl needs a facelift

We have been in our home for 10 years now, and she is due for a facelift.  Phase 1 is painting the exterior.  Before we can start on that there are a few items that need some work.  Craig already busted his butt trimming all the bushes surrounding the house so we can actually access the side of it now.  The porch railing is rotted so we made a good start replacing that today before it hit 100F!

Of course, it was much harder to actually do than how I imagined it my head, LOL!  Craig was a good sport and tolerated my need to measure and measure and measure again before, during and after each post was put in.  I think the end result (first of 3 railings) looks pretty good. 

Aidan even helped by using his little remote control dump truck to deliver nails as we needed them. Go Team Dauch! 

Keeping our fingers crossed we can keep the momentum going, I have a rather long "honey do" list for Craig this summer.

Little bit o this, little bit o that

Slowly working away at different projects as my fingers have healed and time permits.

Here is a delightful little lunch bag just completed yesterday.  All this fabric was left over from a shower curtain I made many years ago with my good friends, Mary and Yvette.

Aidan has requested that we save this until he starts kindergarten and needs his own lunch bag. 

Speaking of Aidan, he is quite crafty too, especially if it has anything to do with planes, trains or automobiles.  Craig and he recently completed a Warhawk airplane model.  We just got it hung up in his bedroom yesterday.  Everyone is happy about the way it looks silhouetted  against the gigantic wall map.

Some aquatic beads I've been working on lately.  I have made quite a few of these trying to get the jelly fish to look "right".  

this last one has a glow-in-the-dark bell on the jelly for a special surprise

And finally, one of nature's lovely creations feeding on the honeysuckle as dusk falls. These moths are so large, Craig mistook them for hummingbirds at first.

Striving for Ambidexterity

The crafting has taken a big hit as I recently broke one of my fingers.  It's the middle finger on my dominant hand, darn it.  This is what I have learned so far:

• Lots of people have broken their fingers.  I get to hear all the stories and it's kind of a strange, but not unwelcome, bonding moment with people.
• Brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand is comically difficult.  Go on, try it, you know you want to now.
•  I can use this to get out of washing the dishes, woo hoo!
• Several folks have pointed out that this may make me smarter by forcing my brain to learn to do things with my left hand.  I dunno, it's probably gonna take more than that to rewire this noggin.
• X-ray techs don't feel comfortable removing or re-applying the splint.  Each time I have done it myself, literally single handedly.  I find this a bit baffling as this must be a daily occurrence in their profession.
• Small boys and dogs get over the novelty of the splint pretty quick and just want you to throw the ball or crash the toy cars again, sore finger be damned.
• My co-worker had a cut on his nose and so when people would ask how I broke my finger, I would reply "did you see XXX's nose?".  Strangely, no one questioned this answer.
• I get to flip to bird with impunity and just blame it on the splint.

OK, OK enough about the stupid finger.  I just want it to heal up quick so I can get back to knitting, flameworking and maybe some gardening.

Happy New Year

It's a new year again and you know what that means, yup, resolutions.

This will be the year of de-stashing.  I will be finishing projects started long ago and using the materials I have on hand as much as possible for any new projects.

To that end, I made this little dust cover for the sewing machine. I have had this beautiful patterned fabric forever, saving it for something "special".  Well, today was declared Special, because, really, isn't every day special.  Actually, this started as a cover for the Kitchenaid mixer, but on a whim I tried it on the sewing machine and viola, a perfect fit, plus it matches the decor in this room.

 On a roll now, I gathered the supplies for my next project. I recently developed a bit of an obsession with the idea of making a terrarium. I found a nice glass bowl at Goodwill and a few little succulents from Lowe's.  A brief search of the homestead turned up the rest of the items as well as some glass critters as potential candidates for a new environment.

I have no idea what varieties of succulents these are, but I'm especially taken with the one in the upper right, it looks like weird tentacles with cup-like indentations at each tip, very alien.

The arid landscape in miniature proves to be a perfect place to catch a glimpse of the always elusive Black Dragon.

It was a fine day of football for the guys, but before the sporting excitement started they took care of a little household repair.

Great job guys, no more leaks!

Sisyphus shops at Target?

Sisyphus must have been shopping Sunday, leaving his boulder parked in the Target lot.  Alas, the guys don't posses the strength of the Greek gods required to move it, but they gave it a valiant effort anyway.

In other news, I've been experimenting again, this time with  electro-etching, which is using electricity to move metal ions from one electrode to another.  If you use something to mask part of the donor electrode surface, it is possible to etch a pattern in the metal.  I believe print-makers sometimes use this technique to create metal plates for a printing press.  Electroetching can also be used to make printed circuit boards as an alternative to the more traditional chemical (Ferric Chloride) etch method.  In my case, I am interested in trying this out to to create patterned metal for jewelry components.

A really great gentleman I know from work is an electronics whiz and is quite an experimentalist himself. I should mention that he built his very own pipe organ, BY HAND, every single metal and wooden piece he carefully designed, fabricated and assembled in his workshop.  So I was thrilled when he agreed to help me put together a "proof of concept" experiment to try electro-etching at home.  This is him using a portable, butane fueled, soldering iron to make the connections to his flea market sourced power source.

While he was working on the power source, I was prepping the etch bath and copper blank.

I had a few pieces of flat  copper sheet shapes left over from the patina experiment (Laura was kind enough to leave a few pieces for me to play with).  I measured the thickness as 1mm, which equates to 18 gauge sheet metal.  The piece I wanted to etch was then scrubbed with a green sponge scrubbie and soaked in a hot vineagar and salt solution for about 10 minutes.  After carefully drying and being sure not to get any skin oil on the piece I applied a couple of press and stick vinyl stencils to the copper as a mask.

There are many and arguably better ways to apply a pattern mask for this type of application, however I already had these on hand and haven't found a good use for them for at least a year now, they just sit on my desk taunting my muse with the smell of unused potential.

The etch bath was simply a salt saturated vinegar solution.  This is not the best recommended solution, but this was just proof of concept and again, I had the ingredients on hand (are you sensing a theme yet?, it's "what I had on hand")

  and now the fun begins, yippee!  We connected the positive side of the power supply DC output to the "donor" piece of pattern masked copper (the crescent shaped piece in the container photo above).  The other, negative, side of the power supply was connected to a scrap piece of stainless steel (the thing that looks like a small ladder in the container photo below).

 We also put Andy's fabulous vintage ammeter in the circuit to measure how much current the circuit was producing, just about 2amps.  By adjusting the power supply voltage output, we could get it to about 1amp, but not much lower.

 

and now the magic begins, there was immediate evidence of electro-etching as the donor piece fizzed away and greenish goo started to collect on the recipient piece (the stainless steel piece connected to the negative side).

we left it going for about 45 minutes or so, then pulled the plug.  Definitely a successful proof of concept.  It didn't produce a deep etch, or "bite", however it clearly worked.  One of the stencils came loose about halfway, so only one pattern is apparent.

A very promising technique.  Next time I will use a copper sulfate solution and take better notes about amperage and time to try to dial in an optimal set up.