Here they are — the best posts from the world of lampworkers’ blogs for the week ending 3/16/2008!

• Lori Greenberg has just set up The Glass Directory, a free directory of all things glassworking-related. List yourself in it; use it as you plan your next trip and add on some glassy goodness!
• Does one’s Muse keep to a regular schedule? Deborah Gregory isn’t sure, but she’s trying to work one out with hers.
• It’s always fascinating to hear about someone’s journey to glass. This week Suzanne Tate shares hers with Collective Creatives.
• This week’s Flaming Hot! asks lampworkers to blog about bead photography. Susan Sheehan and Amy Kuzcewski have plenty to say on the subject.
• Last, but far from least, we can’t melt glass without sustenance! Try these cinnamon spice muffins to fuel your next glass-melting session. Nom nom nom!!!

I took Marjorie Langston’s glass beadmaking classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in western North Carolina. Yes, I could have stayed home all week and torched, but I would have had a multitude of distractions and no feedback. This way I learned new techniques, played with new ideas, fed off of my classmates’ work, and had a wonderful time (except for missing DH terribly, though we did talk twice a day). My classmates were, for the most part, wonderful women and we really did spend the week feeling family-ish.
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Nothing here for the next week — I will be up at the John C. Campbell Folk School taking lampworking classes with Marjorie Langston. I promise a report when I return!

I spent the last two days in Statesboro at the state CS committee meeting. The meeting itself was really dull. Things just haven’t been as lively since Chuck and some of the others retired and Laurie went to Mercer. The drive down and back was boring also — what did I expect, I-16 is one of the most boring stretches of road imaginable — but Becky and I rode together for the company. I also got to show off beads, and Dee even bought a few :-).

Of course, it is nice to go somewhere once in a while where I feel appreciated by my professional peers!

I haven’t been as good as I had hoped on the Daily Devotions project. It was tough getting started, since we were on the road on January 1 coming back from Melbourne. With DH doing most of the actual driving after I couldn’t keep my eyes open after lunch, I got in a nap and then did a journal entry for my Capricorn New Moon Wishes.

(That’s one of my goals for the year — to be more conscientious about the NM Wishes and do them every month.)

Since then I have gotten on the torch three days, but didn’t really produce anything particularly good at any session. So instead I will have to count the many, many hours in the past two weeks of setting up the Art of the Firebird Gallery and adding images to it. It’s a start — I will have to go back and resize many of the images to reduce their size or I will run out of web space far too soon. I also have quite a number of items still to scan/photograph and add in. But if I recall, I have done something on the website nearly every day, so I intend to count that for something.

Incidentally, all of the images I post from DD365 will be in the Gallery, not the blog, though I may post the occasional thumbnail here.