This and That

This has been a fairly eventful week - I've been applying for more jobs and venturing further into the crafting frontier, not to mention doing a bit of traveling around NY state. No source of income as of yet. Hopefully that will come together sooner rather than later... In the mean time I've been keeping busy making things like these quilted coasters. I personally have something of an aversion to (more or less) unnecessary items like coasters, but I think these are kinda cool-looking and hopefully someone will want them or be able to use them. With the help of some family members, I dug up a good amount of fabric with great colors and patterns. The craft sale's in November, but I'm still trying to decide if I can produce enough to justify getting a table.

I also got some exciting mail this week:
The fall issue of The Flow arrived, and I spent a solid five minutes staring at/drooling over that chandelier on the front cover. Good stuff. It's too bad the magazine only comes out with new issues quarterly, cause I eat it right up.

Speaking of eating, I just want to share with the world that I made hummus for the first time ever this evening and it tastes spectacular. I think the reason I'm not so much into baking, but very into cooking is that I dislike measuring things. I will occasionally work from a recipe, but if I do I doctor it relentlessly and dump in lots of miscellaneous things until it tastes exactly how I want it to. Or close. To this particular hummus I added (beyond the basic chick peas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and cumin) sun-dried tomatoes, plain yogurt, chili powder, rosemary, tahini, whole sesame seeds, and salt. It came out a very nice orangey color because of the sun-dried tomatoes, and a near perfect consistency with the occasional un-blended chunk of tomato. Awesome!

Blast From The Past

Last night I went over to my friend/senior-year-of-high-school-glass-teacher's house to catch up and make some beads. It was awesome to see her again! (She literally changed my life. I probably would not have gone to Alfred, had the best four years of my life, or even been an art major if it wasn't for her.)

She has a Bethlehem Barracuda torch and a Nortel Mega Minor. (I used the Barracuda even though I was only making soft glass beads. I did test out the flame capabilities though, and I bet that thing could melt some good sized boro.) The Barracuda is the torch I started out on in high school.

The beads I made are hopefully going to go toward a Christmas Tea & Craft Sale in November. It's still up in the air whether I'll have enough sellable stuff. I'm sort of low on ideas, and I don't really have the means to make jewelry other than hemp, so if you have any ideas please feel free to comment. I was thinking of making little quilted coasters or something. I want to make more pendants too. I'll have to see if next time I visit G I can work boro, cause I bet those would sell.

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...