I Didn't Fall Off the Edge of the Earth

I just landed in sunny, warm Arizona last Saturday night!  And have spent hours upon hours catching up on my family blog.  It had been since the end of January when I last posted on there with pics of the kids and updates about what our family was doing each week.  I was sensing a planned revolt and flogging from some of the grandparents.  I spent a good two hours on the flight editing pics, cropping them down to size and adjusting the exposure if I had blown it in the sun on the playground. 

Every night since Monday after we got wireless internet set up, I have spent 2-3 hours adding posts to the family blog.  As of 7:30am Mountain Standard Time (Arizona doesn't follow daylight saving time), I am caught up with all of the pics that were on my laptop.  Now, I can breathe.  I still have hundreds of pics on my camera that I need to upload of our vacation so far.  But I can breathe.  I am caught up with everything loaded onto my laptop.  And now turn my attention back to my beads blog.  Yay!

A couple weeks ago I asked if anyone had any questions for me and you guys came through.  I'm starting with Tari's from Pearl & Pebble: I wouldn't even know where to begin with specific glass questions!! You play with fire and I am afraid of playing with fire and so I never learned how to speak "glass." My adjectives include smushed and swirlly! Although you've probably already blogged about it,because you ARE a fantastic blogger, how long does it take you to make a bead like that big swirlly one with all the colors. (The one you have been hoarding)And do you have a varigated glass stick or do you lay each color down individually? Can you completely control glass, or will there always be that element of suprise? Ok so maybe I had a few!!!

Tari, I don't think you would be as scared of playing with fire if you were in my studio.  Here's your open invite to come sit with me if you ever venture as far South as Atlanta.  It sounds scarier than it is.  The torch is stationary.....it is screwed in tight to the torch counter, so it's not moving.  And the flame points away from me, so my whole body is behind with my arms on either side and really only my hands come close to the flame.  The flame is approximately 1500+ degrees hot, so my hands feel the heat well before coming close enough to get burned.  If I take my time to slowly warm up rods of glass, it is unlikely it will break and fly back at me from temperature shock.

My adjectives are the same. :) I don't know the technical, glass terms that are used by the masters.  I have read very few books on lampworking and have had only a handful (okay, maybe three) informal lessons at the torch between my Aunt Gail and my friend Diane Kovach when I first started lampworking in 2005.  I have seen perhaps a dozen demos from highly respected artists at various monthly bead meetings between the Southern Flames in Atlanta and now ASGB in Arizona this past weekend.  I like swirly, smushed, smashed, squashed and any other term that literally refers to a bead. :)

It took me probably close to 45 minutes to make this big, swirly, hollow bead.  This was an all ivory hollow to start with before I decorated it with Striking Color glass that turns all these different colors through a heating, cooling, re-heating, re-cooling (over and over. and over).  I also added silvered ivory (which is made by melting sheets of 99% pure silver onto ivory and then pulling it out into long, skinny rods of glass called stringers...one of the few technical terms I do know!) between the shocks of Striking Color.  The more heat applied to silvered ivory on a bead, the more it expands and spreads little cracks and veins over the surface.  I didn't get a picture of the rods of glass before I left, but it's initial appearance is very underwhelming.  I still look at it and wonder how such a vomitous color of a brownish glass rod can turn into such stunning blues, greens and purples.

 
Most of the silver glasses (many are made by Double Helix and have names like Aion, Gaia, Ekho, Triton, Psyche, Kronos, Terranova or others) have these wonderful color-changing reactions, or can take on metallic appearances if reduced in the flame (a flame that has more fuel than oxygen because most lampwork is made in a neutral flame with even amounts of fuel and oxygen).  The rods can be clear, black, transparent blues or greens or that ugly, brownish/vomitous color.  After the silver glass is worked in the flame, it looks dramatically different from the original rod of glass.  Most of the other glasses, whether opaque or transparent, will look very similar to the rod form after they have been melted to form a bead. 

Some color changes can occur due to chemical reactions between glasses/colors, but most of the time I have a very good idea of what the bead will look like using the glass colors/rods I choose.   I feel like I do well at controlling the glass to make it do what I want it to do.  I can make the shapes I want and 99.999% of the time the colors and the beads turn out exactly how I want.  With some glass colors, they change or strike in the kiln.  So there is some surprise with how those look when the kiln is opened. 

Normally, my biggest surprises are how many beads I pull out of the kiln.  I'm shocked at how many I have made.  Time flies when I'm having fun.  I lose track of time and count of the beads I make.  Sometimes I only make a dozen and other times I am surprised with almost 90 beads like this weekend when my husband helped give me hours upon hours on the torch.

Thanks for asking so many questions, Tari!  My next post will answer Erin's questions. :)