Glass Blowing So Far
Cats: Blowing|Buenos Dias.
This will be a super long post so bear with me. It’ll cover from the second week of blowing to today.
Basically, until the 4th week of class (it’s been about 9 hours) we worked with just the punty rods. Gradually the amount of glass on the pole shrunk and the amount of workable glass grew. If that wasn’t exciting enough, we got to use the glory holes which are basically the re-heating furnaces, designed to keep the glass at a safe working temp.
The first pieces that we boxed — i.e. we put them into the annealer to cool down to room temp slowly so they don’t suddenly explode and pierce somebody’s eye — were so weird. They looked liked some form of moldy plant life if you can imagine that, really bulbous and curly, but to us it was the sweetest thing ever. Now we finally got to blow the stuff! It was soooo freakin’ hard. After three hours, the best all of us had was something like a deep ashtray, which was absolutely useless because I don’t smoke. It still reminds me of how completely sucky I used to be.
Anyway, that semester of classes got even better because all but one other student dropped out. So, instead of making 3 pieces, I got to make around 15. They remained the same as the first, but they got bigger and more wobbly looking. After the first 12 or so, the glass felt more natural to my touch and my confidence had grown, blah, blah, blah. But seriously, folks. It still held my attention and Monday was still the best day of the week (with Saturday a close second). Now my pieces were huge compared to the first 8! Slowly a more barrel, cylindrical shaped and started to sit on-center. My pieces now don’t do that very well yet…
The last day of class came and after it I was totally bummed. The two months between semesters seemed like, well, I can’t really say it, but it was pretty freaking bad. I sat around on my butt for 3 hours on Monday night and did waste-of-time-things like homework. But all was not lost because the Xmas season goes by super fast.
So, a month after Christmas I got back into the studio, but now it was Saturday morning. The pieces I made that day were worse than my very first so long ago. Luckily it comes back to you fast. After 3 more days it had all come back to me and I started making colored pieces, yeeehaaaaw! These are soooo awesome!. Granted, there’s nothing like a sparkly, shiny, clear vase but the color is just kicked-up about 100 notches. BAM! But it’s not all fun and games…wait a minute, who am I kidding? But it is a lot harder because the color makes the glass softer and stiffer based on the shade. Blues and greens heat up super fast and cool even faster. Reds, oranges, yellows, and browns all heat up really similar to the normal glass, just slightly slower. Whites and blacks heat up slowly.
Anyway, it’s been awesome and now my pieces are on-center and colored and the size of big-gulp glasses. But, hey, I’m tired of writing about all this and I have more stuff to do.
