The Way

Hammer Time #4

It loaded! It loaded! The little mac that could, i knew you had it in you. i eat very little sugar. today i had a lot, and then the dope, the sugar crash, and the absense of any caffieen has resulted in me wanting to go tobed at the regular time, dispite having woken up at four pm. which was not bad for going to bed at seven thirty am. maybe i should have a nap. i did just break something pretty. maybe my coffee will be cool enough to drink when i wake up...

The nap was a bad idea. it is fricken freezing in here, and then i slept too long. Then I ordered more gas which will be getting here tomorrow, so i have no choice but to call in sick and blow through the last of this tank. My camera is ass, but i hope to have some pictures to post after the show so you can see what i have been up to. I suck at making bowls or at least the holes at the bottom of them. Unfortunate that it would be the focus of the whole piece where my tallent would lacked, but, the fucking things close, or strech, or are on the side, or it was heated funny and warps. If you do not get it right the first time, you have maybe a 25% chance of being able to fix it. 4
Then when you start running lines of colour all over the place you have to now worry about the clear glass between heating up twice as quickly, which will make things inflate irregularly, or if a small spot gets too hot and you have the pressure just a little to high, you get this thin balloon suddenly expand and shatter sending snow flakes of glass through the air. thats bad. the trick is being able to get everything up to the same viscosity so it expands evenly, but keeping it looking like an orb of glowing glass requires you to be spinning it with out shaking it with one hand while the other hand fumbles around for a reemer. My hands are covered in little white spots (a few black ones) where the skin is getting ready to fall off, and they are all super sensative to heat. which sucks. My years of avoiding labour class employment has done me little good as my hands are losing their baby softness to the hard leathery burnt cracks of a lampworking.

Less is more, more is less. If you need it to melt, get it hot enough to melt. Do not waste yourself with a flame that is taking its time, you will use less gas in the long run if you let go on the throttle. Do not let any one talk you into a two stud torch, you cannot use a foot peddle with them, so make sure it has at least four. I got a lot of really bad advice when i was starting. I do not like to mention names, but it was John at Phatty glass. Guy must have no fucking clue. I am not saying you should not order through them, just make sure you know what you want.

Well back to work.

Made something pretty, and decided to take a step back before going ahead, to avoid ruining it. Sure i am on a roll, but rolls end. So when i go back i will do something easy and then get back on it. Buy expensive colours. They look amazing and often times will make up for you lack of tallent, just by looking amazing. Cover in glass and set out to display! It annoys me that most seem more intrested in my scaps of glass than my work. I do have some pretty intresting looking bits of useless glass... when i have free o2 i will melt them all down to marbles, or strech the colour back out into rods. I want to get a mold to slump plates on. How much of this do you understand?

Some colours have to be worked out side of the fire. Which means you will spend four hours spinning that thing as fast as you can trying to build a coil or the thing is going to turn brown. These colours are ofcourse some of the nicest. Not all, but anything with the word Crayon in it is bad news.

Throw out your cell phone. (in a safe and responsible manner) Studies show the bees will not come home so long as your squakin, talkin, and killin your brain cells. Evidance is mountaining that our teenagers are going to go senile in their late twenties. Ring! Ring! Melanoma! Einstein once said that with out the bees, we humans would live no more than four years. Fucked upier, is the bees all leave never to return, but unlike normal abandon nests no other bees are showing up to raid. Perhaps it is because seventy percent of the bee population vanished, and there are no bees left to go out raiding. Maybe you should get rid of your cell phone. Do not believe me? Type bees into google news. Every one is poo pooing the whole thing because the cell phone industry is worth so much, you know the same reason you never hear reports on how cells cause canser. It is not because they do not cause cancer. It has long been known that bees start acting funny near electrical poles, and studies on their ablity to communcat have shown they have a sort of beesp.

Well back to work.

Well that was not very productive. It got rid of a lot of pieces, so there is more room in the kiln... you can always put it in thekiln, you cannot always take it out. So i am nearing the twenty four hour mark on my at the gallery odessy, and with only five hours of sleep and a dozen mocah under my belt i am glad to be nearing the end of this last tank. So that i am ready for the new tanks tomorrow. With a little luck i will show up and they will tell me i am fired. So i can get back to work.

I think you will like it.


Uehen

Down Payments or No Java, No Spell Check

It is two am, and i am on a semi planned over night stint at the gallery. I have enough pomegranet/pear/apple/blue berry juice (from concentrate) to last me well into the morning, as well as a half a packet of fudge, and several packets of instant mocha. I went to the store with the intent of buying some thing 'bad' to distract myself from work when it got to much, but had to stop myself from walking away with nutragrain bars. I arrived with the intent of working here for a while, then realized it was time for the last bus before it was time to stop playing with fire. I have to stop making marbles.

i just broke something pretty due to thermal shock (lack of experiance) so i decided to take a rest for a few moments to say hello. I have not been doing anything simple and easy in weeks, and as a result I have not compleat anything. it all keeps fucking up right at the end. Sometimes duing the very last step. lessons in zen. so i made a few colourful spoons to remind myself that i can indeed make something. I think I will stick with simple things for the next few hours.

I need more tools. Like a puffer, and an octaganal reemer. I am running low on my colour, and starting to bite into the samples, which sucks cuse i only have tiny bits of each sample, so any one colour will apper no more than twice. If i stretch it. Some of the colours need special treatment, like being heated, cooled, and then heated before they turn into a colour, and will most times look hazey grey until it is done, so you never really know what you are dealing with. Or it might be made with a special metal, and needs to be coated in clear or it will just boil and turn burnt (i did just find a pretty cool way to coat it tho.) Some need to be preheated. Some cannot be covered to thickly, or they will break out while in the kiln. It is colour!

I got my business cards monday, and they look pretty sweet. I wrote it all out with a marker, then got the lady to scan it and put it right on to the cards, so it looks i hand wrote each one of them. Trying to push the 'amature' look. The plan as it stands give them out hand by hand during the holy day, while every one is at the ledg. Should be like shooting a french man in the bushes. So long as it does not rain.

Work has been slow and crappy. I did just get a three dollar raise, but it would be really nice if i started getting fifty orders a week for twenty dollar spoons and could quit my job. I would not even need fifty. Most blowers who do orders for distributors are moving at least $10,000 at a time... which is any where from two to five hundred pipes. What do you want to do with your life? Blowing glass still sounds fun. It is just starting to sound like a lot of work. Because up to now has been a cake walk...

My torch is not big enough for some of the things i have been trying, which is sad. Because it is big, and the next step up costs twice as much as this one, and would use way the hell more gas. It was too hot, or it was too cold, but heat control is the most important part of this oppeation. It stuck, it will not stick, it slumped, it cracked, it is all an issue of heat control.

Well enough talk, more spinning.

Uehen