Bam.

As long as I'm unable to do anything with glass, I've been working on this quilt - my first one ever - which I fondly call my Ugly Quilt, since it's made with scraps of fabric that I inherited (rather than picked out myself). I figure everyone needs a nice warm shabby-looking blanket. I don't know what it is about quilts but they always remind me of family and Thanksgiving and Grandma's House. The uglier, the more at home they make me feel. It doesn't have sides or a back yet, but it will soon enough. Then I have to actually quilt it. Should be interesting. It's definitely the right time of year to be making a quilt, I just hope I have it finished before it gets cold enough to need it.

I don't know how people make those crazy geometric quilts with teeny triangles and have everything line up just right. Despite the fact that I measure everything, it somehow ends up wonky still. There's also the fact that I can't sew a straight line even on a sewing machine. Half of the squares on my Ugly Quilt quilt are unevenly matched up.

I did set out to make an ugly quilt though. I wonder what is it that makes ugly things endearing?

Peace,
Ruth

Checklist

Done:

• Cleaned the piles of junk out of my to-be studio space in the garage. Hopefully that will move forward soon.
• Visited Steve at Kent State and helped him make a piece in their hot shop - which, for the record, is intolerably hot! I was dripping sweat in under ten minutes. We were only working for about half an hour I think, and I was feeling faint and nauseous after about 20 minutes - I got chills I was so hot. I can't fathom how people can finish pieces in there, but I have tremendous respect for them. That must be what it's like to blow glass in the Middle East or Australia... HOT.
• Taken cards from glass artists at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Next step, send emails!

To Do:

• hand in all my job applications and land at least one of them within the next week or two
• sell the rest of my textbooks and other stuff on Amazon
• make a quilt

Lack of Posting

My lack of posting is due to the fact that I am visiting family in Minneapolis, and have been away from home since last Monday. Checkin out some sweet glassblowing though at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival...

The glasswork there beats the pants off the glasswork at my local Renaissance Festival - there were at least six different booths that sold just glasswork, (tons more if you count the jewelry that incorporates glass and the mosaic and stained glass work) three of which did live demonstrations where they actually made cool stuff instead of dumb bottles or simple cups and vases. I saw a heating technique I'd never seen before or even thought of, where a guy that was making a goblet rotated the object on the blowpipe parallel to the glory hole so that the top of the object got heat but the hot bottom cooled off a bit, to even out the heat.

It seems like there are definitely some options out here for pursuing glass. I took some cards...