Have Glass, Will Travel

We are officially blowing glass again! We got the whole set-up running in time for a blowing session on Christmas Eve, and have also blown glass on the last two weekends. Leah, Dad and I are all a little rusty, but getting the skills back pretty quickly. And it is nice to practice without it costing $35/hour and having to drive up to Vancouver. I will post pics when I get off my butt and upload them.

Mom and I will be merchanting at 12th night for Historic Workshop, and we will have a bunch of glass. A lot of the glass we will have is older stuff that we are selling to help pay for the glass shop, and a few of the new things that turned out all right. So if you are interested in buying glass, bring your $$, we will have lots of neat stuff!

If you are someone to whom I owe glass, please remind me about it and what you want... I offered a bunch of bribes last year, and now is the time to collect (or soon). If there is something you like that we are selling, and if it is mine to trade, you could get something right away, or I can keep you in mind while practicing over the next couple of months. I imagine it will probably be a month or two before my work is really consistant again, right now it is sort of hit or miss depending on how focussed and/or tiered I am. Plus we are still getting used to a pretty different shop set-up, which can make things interesting at times. If you are interested in a commission or trade I should be ready to deal with new commissions in a couple of months. I am particularly interested in bartering for some new garb.

If you want to come check out the shop, talk to me. We are limited on space right now, since we still have a lot of our metal working equiptment in the shop. Hopefully we will get that moved this spring/summer. We plan on having an open shop once the weather gets nice enough to open the garage doors up, so people can stand outside and watch.

Better late than never...

I ordered my embroidery sample kit from the embroidery people at Plimoth Plantation. I had seen the project a while back, not really registered what it was, and then re-discovered it in December. And of course they were closed when I tried to order my sample for the first time. But it is now ordered! I am considering using one of our free tickets to go out there and visit and embroider if they are still having sessions after the plantation opens again at the end of March, since I have never been to either there or Williamsburg, and have always thought it would be cool to go to at least one of our big historic sites on the east coast. Considering the amount of time I have nw spent on this type of embroidery due to the endless embroidery project, it would rock to be able to go out there and see how it do it the "right way." While my sleeves look pretty sweet, I have known for a while that they had quite a few shortcomings. I made the same mistake they made when drafting out their first trail motifs - mine are too large (I apparently looked at the same picture that was supposed to be shown at real size that was actually larger than life). Sadly, I didn't know anyone at the V&A to correct me. I also used cotton thread because I am poor and didn't attempt to keep my colors accurate to the various types of flowers because I lost my color key while in Washington DC and decided to just use whatever color I felt like. I knew my mistake about size after visiting the V&A and the Bath Costume Museum - my motifs were definitely too large. But at least I have the look down, and the plaited braid stitch. Since my visit to England I have been struggling with the desire to start over on a new project and use the endless embroidery as a pillow cover or something. When they finally come out with the historically accurate silk twist threads I may give in and start the endless embroidery mark 2...