In the “it’s a small world” category, DH got an email yesterday from his daughter.  She’d posted some of the pictures from our wedding on her MySpace page, and had gotten a message from one of her friends:  “Hey, I think I know your stepmother.”

Yep.  My stepdaughter’s friend B is a long-time co-worker at the college, having started as a student assistant in the Math department shortly after I started teaching there.  She became the department secretary, transferring to the Science department shortly before I moved to the Business department (which became the Business/Computer Science department).  We used to live not too far from each other, so during the last few years of the starter marriage she would cat-sit for me when we were all out of town.

I knew that B regularly attended the Georgia Renaissance Festival, but of course a lot of people do that.  Why would I ever think that she and my stepdaughter had connected several years back (perhaps even before DH and I met), as fans of the same band?

Just another odd coincidence in my life!

Lifehack.org was hosting a contest this week asking people to write blog posts on relationships Though entering the contest doesn’t float my boat (the prizes either don’t do anything for me or I already have ‘em!), I was still thinking about relationships, specifically friendships.  Lately I’ve had the unpleasant experience of finding that some people aren’t the friends that I thought they were.

Read the rest of this entry »

Time for another Flaming Hot! Blog It!

You fall asleep and think you are dreaming. But really, you have just traveled through time forward 5 years. What does your glass world look like? Blog it!

Hmmm.  Well, I think it looks, ah, full of glass…

Seriously, now.

Honestly, I’m not sure how different the studio, at least, looks from today.  More glass, perhaps.  I hope I’ll have decided by then whether I’m giving up the Bullseye or the COE104, since I already do mostly boro and two soft glass COEs is probably unnecessary.  There’s always the possibility that I’ll have a bit bigger torch by then, too.  Though since I’m leery of going with tanked oxygen, it wouldn’t be a whole lot bigger.

Outside the studio, though, I can see a successful little business on the side, making a modest profit every year with online sales and the handful of shows I do, and a nice collection of happy customers that are always glad to see me at those shows.  They eagerly inspect my new lampwork and purchase the perfect treasures for their creations.  Every time I have something new and different for them, as well as old favorites.  My style continually evolves, but is always my own.

Most of all, though, I still have my wonderful glass world friends :-).

Part 1 is here. 

Frostfire found Gwacie’s email in her inbox. “SILLY Gwacie!” she thought to herself after reading it. “How could I not like it??” And she awaited her package’s arrival with eager anticipation.

Late Friday afternoon, after a morning of teaching and an afternoon of working on her friend Mincot’s computer and playing with Mincot’s cats, Frostfire arrived home to find a box carefully placed on her desk. “It’s here!!! It’s here!!!” she exclaimed, eagerly reaching for the scissors to carefully slit open the tape. After gently removing the top layer of bubble wrap, she found not one, but three items tucked amongst the padding. “Oh my, whatever has that Gwacie done??” she thought.

She pulled out the largest item, knowing it had to be the candlestand. She carefully removed layer upon layer of bubble wrap, delicately slitting the tape apart to avoid any chance of scratching or damaging her treasure. As the bottom of the candlestand came into view, she smiled at the little blue flower attached to the spiral. Another couple of layers of bubble wrap, and the rest of the candlestand was revealed. “Oh, how wonderful! Gwacie had no reason to think I would be unhappy with this! I know exactly where it will go, in a special place of high honor in my studio.”

Gently setting it on her desk, Frostfire unwrapped the tissue around the second, cylindrical item. As she looked at it, she laughed. It had started life as a pink pencil case, but now bore the words “emergency chocolate” on the lid, and contained three chocolate bars inside. “Ha, how did Gwacie know I didn’t have a special place for my emergency chocolate stash? I can definitely use this,” she mused.

The third wrapped object was square and flattish. “Hmmm. This must be what Gwacie said she was doing with the original piece that cracked. I wonder…” Indeed, the tissue paper parted to reveal a square fused tile? candle stand? plate? or…well, who knows what myriad of things it could be used for? “Oh, yes, I can think of so many ways I can use this. I will have to try them all out to see where it goes best.”

As Frostfire looked at the fused tile, she saw the meandering line where the original crack had occurred. It reminded her of how she had learned, in her own past days as a weaver, that the Navajo rug weavers would always leave a deliberate flaw in the design of their exquisite rugs. The “spirit trail,” as it was called, in no way detracted from the beauty of the rug, but left a path for the spirit of the rug to find its way from the center to the border. It also served as a reminder that nothing in the world is perfect, and what some might consider flaws in no way detract from the beauty of the world and all within it.

Frostfire was happy. Gwacie was happy. And the world was a good place for glassworkers and friends.

The End.

Once upon a time, there was a glassworker named Gwacie. Gwacie liked to try different things with glass, and to fund her habits (and pay her bills) she often tried to sell these different glass things. One day Gwacie listed several unusual little candle stand items for sale on an e-marketplace called Etsy. She was very happy (traalaalaaa).

Gwacie had also posted pictures of her candle stands at her favorite forum, The Glass Haven. Her friend Frostfire saw the pictures and said “Oh! Oh! These are beautimous! I must have one for myself!” So Frostfire waited and waited, and as soon as she saw her favorite candle stand in Gwacie’s Etsy store, she POUNCED on it and purchased it. Gwacie was even happier (Laadaatralaa!!).

When she was packing up the candle stand for her friend, Gwacie noticed that some of the fused glass seemed a little too sharp. “I can’t send this to another glass person, for by these errors they will know all my inner flaws, weaknesses and personal short comings when they see this piece. ” she thought. “No problem, I will just pop it back into the kiln and soften those parts up a bit.” And so she did.

“CRACK!” went the kiln. “What was that?” wondered Gwacie. The piece had cracked in half! Tsk tsk, stupid Gwacie. Why must she always doubt her work and allow her ego to run her actions? Gwacie worried. Should she just tell her friend? She had an idea. “I will make another one, a BETTER one” she thought. And so she did. “CRACK!” went the kiln again. “Good grief, ” thought Gwacie “this could make a girl say bad words.” She tried again, this time with success.

But though it was very nice, this new candle stand, in the same colors and the same patterns as the first, it was not the same. Gwacie knew she would have to tell her friend of her foolishness after all. “But what shall I do with these cracked pieces?” she wondered. Then Gwacie had another idea. “I will make a surprise for my friend and I will send it with her new candle stand.” she thought. “Perhaps she will be so pleased by this extra surprise that she will not mind too much that her candle stand is a little different from the one that she originally ordered!”

Gwacie excitedly worked and worked on this idea for the cracked pieces and she eventually finished, but it was now one day later than her planned shipping date. Gwacie knew, that once again, she would have to confess her mistake and tell her friend that she was tardy on the package shipping. Poor Gwacie just kept facing one self-created trial after another.

After much bubble wrapping and taping and padding, Gwacie loaded the box and weighed it. “Oh my gosh” she thought, “I can send this for less than I charged in my listing!” She felt her face going red. “I will simply have to refund some money to my friend and explain the difference in shipping.” Would the list of needed explanations to her friend ever end? How many mistakes would poor Gwacie have to tell her good glass friend that she made? “Oh dear” she thought, “surely my friend will see me for the true fool I really am now. I shall make elaborate plans to move to the Netherlands and take up a quiet life of goat milking. It’s the only way my fragile ego will survive this disaster.”

(to be continued…)