Chinese Proverbs and Lampworks

There's a Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times."  I have had just enough interesting stuff going on in my life.  I need more boring days.  This is Ben's tooth before the dentist.  Luckily, it was just a small chip and the dentist was able to file it down so it's now smooth and looks good as new!  He didn't even need to put in any fillers since it would likely chip and flake away.  Quick and painless.  In and out--nobody gets hurt.

Wednesday marked a momentous event...I cleaned out the linen closet (sound scary music).  The pile of debris was almost up to my hip (there were boxes underneath), but nothing had been put away properly in weeks.  I gutted the closet and spent a couple hours tossing a few things, refolding everything else, and stacking into logical piles.  I still need to cull a few more things from the piles of towels and sheets.  We really don't need more than two sets of twin sheets for each bed, and maybe three for the king.  We've got about 50 pillowcases and two large piles of towels...some of which are ready to be donated to the local animal shelter.

One thing I did find in this mess was a basket that contained these 49 Civil War blocks!  I started sewing them into pairs to make a quilt top.  I'm debating whether or not to make 15 more blocks to make it bigger or to assemble a lot of 6" half square triangles for a border.  I'm leaning towards the triangles.  I still have a quilt on the frame that needs to be quilted, and another quilt top that is up next for the machine.

Bekah came over on Thursday and we each made one bead.  We would have made many more, but I needed to run a packet of fabric down to the meeting, and we ended up having dessert and listening to speakers describing some of their programs they run for the needy in our community, and thanking our guild for our generous donations through the year.  The guild meets in the church, but it really doesn't have any religious affiliations...but one of the speakers went on and on about the power of God's love and sharing fishes and loaves.

Worked on a bunch of beads this last several days.  I needed to get these ones done before an event in January, where I will hand them over to the lampworkers guild for stringing.  I still need to clean them, which will take some time...lots of scrubbing.  The metal rods are dipped in a ceramic slip called bead release, and when you make the bead, the release sticks to the glass but not the rod.  If you were to make the bead right onto the rod, it would stick to the rod...becoming a sort of hat pin.  I have a couple of those, which happens occasionally when the bead release cracks and the glass oozes and adheres itself to the rod.  Sometimes you can pry it loose if it's just a small spot.  If not, the only way to get the bead off is with a hammer.  They're not nearly as easy to string in that condition.

This first string is for the SCA's Kingdom of Calontir, which consist of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and a bit of Arkansas.  All 20 beads will need to be cleaned and strung as a gift to the King and Queen of Calontir.  They will receive it at the annual event in Pennsylvania, called Pennsic, this August.  Unfortunately, they didn't photograph very well.  I think it's the fluorescent lights in the dining room that cause issues with the camera.

Purple glass is hard to come by...or rather, the right shade is hard to find.  The two yellows I had were either a tad too bright or too school-bus orange.  The yellows both bled into the purple really badly, making everything look fuzzy or muddy.  Yuck.  It was frustrating but I finally found an acceptable combination of colors for these beads, along with a trick of using clear glass to add a buffer between the colors, which seemed to help.  

These are the final beads in the sunlight, which look much more like what the colors look like in person. The white and orange bead at the bottom is an attempt at making a giraffe bead.  Bekah was trying to make a pair of them for a co-worker.  I was trying a combination of a couple different amber colors.  I think the colors are right, but the amount of glass added needs to be increased to better fill the white areas.

The second string is for the Kingdom of Drachenwald, which covers a lot more land mass:  Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  The colors were a lot more fun to play with and the yellow worked perfectly with the black and red.  I made a couple new beads since my last photo to replace a couple that just weren't working for me and made a big fancy "Queen" bead with flowers on it (far left).

Now that I got all those done, I figured it was time to make a few beads for myself.  I really love oceanic colors, so I pulled a bunch of blues and greens and made a couple for myself, as well as experimenting with some unusual colors.  I ran out of gas on the third bead--the one on the far right--so I had to pick up more on the way home from dinner.  Sushi...mmmmm!


I don't have any plans this weekend...that's a first!  I think I'll catch up on my quilting.