Archive for April, 2008

I have set the second week in June as the drop dead date for being out of my house. I have scheduled my vacation and my Mom is on standby to come and help me get the house ready to go on the market. What that means is, over the next 7 weeks I am going to be SUPER busy packing and moving. Yes, the glass studio is moving too. The new studio will be bigger and better. However, my studio time will be very limited over the next several weeks I hope you can all bare with me while I go through this transition. If I can manage to get through it with my sanity intact there will beads-o-plenty on the other side!

I have decided to do a set of goddesses based on the 9 muses of Greek mythology:

• Calliope (the ‘beautiful of speech’): chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry
• Clio (the ‘glorious one’): muse of history
• Erato (the ‘amorous one’): muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs
• Euterpe (the ‘well-pleasing’): muse of music and lyric poetry
• Melpomene (the ‘chanting one’): muse of tragedy
• Polyhymnia or Polymnia (the ‘[singer] of many hymns’): muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric
• Terpsichore (the ‘[one who] delights in dance’): muse of choral song and dance
• Thalia (the ‘blossoming one’): muse of comedy and bucolic poetry
• Urania (the ‘celestial one’): muse of astronomy

I am posting the first one out on Etsy today. She is Thalia: Muse of comedy and bucolic poetry. I think she came out really nice. Her body is a DEEP purple color and she has multi colored hair.

I just have to blog about this real quick and then I am off to make some beads. I’m kinda getting into this blog thing…scary.

I saw these when we were in Italy but I guess they have them everywhere since I just found tons of them on Amazon. PURSES HANGERS! Some of you may be thinking “Duh, those are so last season” but I am always a few seasons behind so bear with me. If you haven’t heard of them…these little gadgets hang on the edge of a table with a little hook hanging down that you suspend your purse from. No more kicking your purse under the table on the dirty, nasty, wet and gross bar room floor. No more piles of purses on top of the table to spill drinks on! What a Concept!

Check out Amazon they have a whole bunch. I saw them in a restaurant in Milano and I made Stefano take me shopping all over the place to find them. He asked a very nice lady in a SUPER expensive purse shop where to find them and she gave me a free one! Its so good to have a man that speaks Italian.

OK, Off to make beads!

Its good to be home. I had a great time in Italy and really enjoyed my glass classes but theres just no place like home. I especially missed my cats, my shower, and my own bed! I missed my feather pillows to be exact. Its hard to travel with your own pillows, I need to get one of those space age vacuum bags they sell on TV infomercials.

Anywho, since getting home I have developed a wicked cold. I have been sneezing and blowing my nose for days now, and frankly I’ve about had it. I must have picked something up in the airport or on the plane. I am super happy I got it on the way home and not on the way there, but this still sucks. After two weeks on vacation I feel bad taking sick days so I have been coming in to work…and then leaving early to go home and lie down. Plus I have not felt like lighting up my torch, which is way more distressing than leaving work early.

I will be heading to Chicago this weekend to pick up the Maxie dog who has been staying with my parents while we were in Italy. I think my parents will be more than happy to see him go. Max is a really good boy but he has a little “gas” problem. Yes, my dog stinks.

I was kind of excited to see my very first opera. Well…as excited as you can get about opera. If you have to see an opera, I guess seeing it in the Teatro alla Scala, the most famous opera house in all the world (or so I am told), is the way to go. Although, I probably wouldn’t have found a production at Bobs Old Time Opera House any more boring.The production was a collection of Giacomo Puccini: Il Tabarro (The Cloak) – Suor Angelica (Nun Angelica) – Gianni Schicchi. I actually knew one of the songs from Gianni Schicchi (Skee-Key). It is quite popular with music box makers throughout the world. I can’t Google the name of the piece at the moment since Google is only giving me results in Italian…go figure.
One thing about Opera…it doesn’t move very fast…since the actors are singing everything, it takes a mind numbing amount of time to say one line of dialogue. I knew this thanks to the state-of-the-art translators built into the back every seat. Without those, I would have thought an awful lot more was going on than what actually was. I still can’t decide if they were a blessing or a curse. I will say that the sets were really cool and quite elaborate. At least I had something entertaining to look at.

Well my classes are over and we are back home in Milano. I had a great time in Murano and learned a lot.

There was quite a cultural mix in our classes. There were folks from Australia, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland just to name a few. Most folks had been there since the beginning and they had quite a little family going. I felt like that weird cousin from Iowa that no one has seen in years but has to be nice to There were Minor torches set up for everyone and it was a treat to be working with tanked oxygen again. I have one oxygen concentrator at home, and don’t get me wrong I love it, but it just doesn’t have the UMPF that you get from tanked oxygen. I was cooking the crap out of everything at first. Thanks to Quinton for bringing a veritable Vegas buffet of glass to choose from. I didn’t even get to use most of the colors I picked out. So I placed a huge glass order to make up for it!

Making use of some of Sarah’s techniques I was able to make some pretty cool beads. I probably won’t sell ‘em cuz they are near and dear to my heart but I will make some cool ones using the techniques that I learned as soon as I get home.

Some cool pics from around Venice and Murano…

Venician Doorbell

Moorings for boat platforms…I like the colors.

House in Murano at sunrise.

This next one is for my mom..she LOOOOOVES birds!