Glass Class, the finale !

Here it is! Isn’t it fabulous!

I didn’t really feel the least bit attached to my project. Not until it was all finished and as I was heading out the door with it and I was stopped by my teacher so she could hold it up to the light, in the big door way of the workshop, for me to see. That’s when the sunlight ignited the colours in the glass, and I suddenly felt really proud of it. Up until then, I didn’t even think I’d keep it. But now I’ve propped it up on the window sill in the lounge room, right beside the air conditioner. And I’m enjoying watching the light dance through the glass, as the sun moves over the sky throughout the day. In fact, I find it catching my eye all the time. I especially like it in the late afternoon when the last rays of the day seem to come straight through the little pink pieces, while the dark colours are almost in shadow. And even at night the pearlescent colours ripple in the low light of nighttime.

My teacher said that the look of my project, in particular, will evolve throughout the day, and through the changing seasons.

I’m meant to clean it up of all tiny smudges from the putty and black stain, but I like the gritty goth look of it.

Anyway, I’m to return with it on Monday evening so it can be hung with my fellow students’ work for an exhibition. I’m curious to see what the other class have made. But, even more so, I want to take a little break and then start a new project next year. The other students are moving on to mosaic, and I have an idea for that too, but I’d rather get better at stained glass, and that takes practice.

PS. I am having trouble with adding images to my posts in WordPress (maybe my computer is buggy, not sure) anyway, just letting you know why I am using msn to post to the blog.

I came, I saw, I conquered, and is there more?

 

This is what happens when you are quietly inspecting the state of your veggie garden, on your own, whilst also enjoying a refreshingly cool chocolate coated iceblock. In our house we joke about having to pay the ‘dog tax’… but after all, they do say that ’sharing is caring.’

 

Glass Class Update

I went to my stained glass class yesterday and it is getting very exciting now because the end is in sight.

With my lead in place and all the pieces of glass securely fitted together, this week saw me trying my hand at soldering. Soldering is the delicate art of applying heat from a soldering iron, to the lead strips holding the glass project together, whilst also melting solder (a coil of metal stuff) to the lead, making a join at every glass piece intersection.

Have I lost you, well, perhaps a photo of the process might help. This is not my project but it may give you the right idea.

And this is a roll of solder.

I think you’re meant to make dainty dabbings of joins – A delicate dot  at each join that  will hold everything together.

While I. Well, I was enjoying the process, got a little over-excited and put enough solder on there to make any onlooker think that my glass project was erupting with the stuff. Like it had an internal volcano inside making plop, plop, ploppings of solder escape it’s crusty surface, to cool and harden over the last millennium (last 10 seconds, more like it).

What to do, what to do. Well, I tried to slow down, and  to spread the solder out a little at each join. This helped, so I did it some more. And more.

My project looks like I was applying solder like I was icing a spectacular cake with a wide warm spatula. It looks a little like this cake below (recipe available at the link).

Cool, hey? I was loving it then, while doing it. Enjoying spreading it all around, thinking “Lah, lah, li, lah”. It was quite a focused, yet soothing activity. And since then, I just can’t stop laughing at my attempt, every time I think of it.

Only two weeks of classes to go, and not much left to do. It’s all fun and games, and I’ve signed up to do some more classes next year. Bring it on I say! I’ll get my spatula now.

A little place to call my own

Ouch! It’s hot.

It’s been hot here. Hot enough to feel like I’m swimming in a goldfish bowl of cool air around the air conditioner vent, while the rest of the world (or my part of it) bakes under our blistering sun. The temperatures are high, but not too bad so far. The thing is, it is just so dry here. Dry enough for any spark to quickly become an emergency.

First there was dust storms and now there’s days and weeks of smoke from the nearby national park as it burns out of control. Luckily it’s over the river and away from most homes. But the flames have driven more wildlife in our direction. For the second time in a fortnight, we’ve had to swiftly dodge a huge kangaroo bounding across our main road in to town.

The news reports predict a bad summer for fires here in Oz, and so far it has proven true, even in our little street. There’s been two fires on our lane so far, as well as the national park fire. Two fires may sound dangerous, and it could have been – seeing as the flames licked at the backdoor of  neighbour’s house. But the local rural fire brigade patrolled our road all day, each time, and kept the fire from jumping the road onto our property.

Thankfully, this makes things safer during the rest of our summer, as it will provide a fire break on that side of us.

These photos are of the first fire. It burnt three neighbours’ land and almost took out a home (third picture below), but luckily the worst damage was only to their fences.

 

Look at the size of it. We were surprised  that the fire which at first seemed some distance away actually turned out to be two houses down, and fast approaching.

 

Here it has caught up with us, and is lapping at the road’s edge, hungry for the fuel  or wind, needed to cross over.

The flames came right up to our neighbour’s backdoor, it looked like his house would be consumed for sure, but the firefighters were able to beat the flames down by back burning.

 

These photos are just opposite to our letterbox, on the land of the best neighbours ever – the ones who supply us with all the wonderful eggs.

 

The fire encircled our neighbour’s house, but all was well by this stage. The fire fighters were very friendly and quickly called for back up when needed. Four crews fought the fire, and so it was all over in a couple of hours.

 

Watching the fire and chatting to neighbours was certainly was a dramatic way to spend a quite  Saturday afternoon. I’m glad it is a rare event, and that the right people were on the scene.

Life can be pretty crazy in it’s extremes sometimes, for here I am writing about fires, and heat… when my twitter pals in Cork are completely swamped by flooding. Hope you’re all ok, and keeping dry and safe on higher ground.

 

Join me for Breaky

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Come join me for a banana, watermelon, and passionfruit yogurt smoothy, mmm, yummy. But I forgot to add the mango-oh! Never mind, as it was, it made up a perfect amount for two glasses. It felt like a healthy start to the day and was surprisingly filling.

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Crumple petal Cosmos Flower, from my garden