Only nine days until Christmas. I’m starting to feel excited again. It will be great to be home with the family for a whole week just hanging out, catching up (a little crocheting), and all-in-all relaxing. I need it. The last few months with work being so busy, Elliott’s health, and a few personal stresses… I need down time. I need to regroup. You know – get back to the real Charissa.

I decorated my apartment tonight – nothing fancy – actually quite minimal. But when you live in an apartment and only feel the Christmas spirit a week before the actual holiday, then this is what you get.

So far, I’ve decided on the following for the car ride home this weekend:
- David Sedaris, Holidays On Ice
- Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner
- Dane Cook, Retaliation
- John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

I am also downloading Janis Ian’s CD, Between the Lines. A friend at work recommended this one. For my holiday selection, I now have a few Christmas albums to choose from including: Billy Gilman, NKOTB, Classic Christmas songs, Martina McBride, Josh Groban, Michael Ball, and Enya… just to name a few.

What am I missing?

I have wished for this day for months now, and as much as I’ve wanted the election to be over recently, today was a day worth remembering. I shared tonight with a group of friends as we played with puppies, babies, ate good food, and watched as the polling data rolled in. It’s a momentous time for ourselves and for our nation, but the true test will come in the days, months and years ahead. Can we rely on Obama and our elected officials to make the changes they’ve promised? Can electing the first black President have a lasting affect on racism and minority opportunity in this country? Only time will tell, but for now I will be hopeful. I will try to embrace unity, sacrifice and continue to work hard for myself and others, but most importantly, I will attempt to place put patriotism ahead of my singular needs. It will be hard for us all, but it will be worth it.

Congratulations, all. Today has been a good day for America.

And Antonio looks just a tiny bit worried…

So it only took two weeks, but I finally brought home my projects from the second day of the glassblowing workshop.

The first one is a little practice glass that I made when I first learned glass blowing technique. As you can see it’s a bit wobbly-looking, but glassblowing is hard! I included a book of matches in the photo for size… it’s about the size of a shot glass. So if anyone adores me enough to want to have a handmade, wobbly shot glass to drink from so that you can think of me fondly… let me know.

Next is the piece de resistance – a huge drinking glass. This is my pride and joy. The shape isn’t perfect, and it’s a little thicker than an average drinking glass. I so desperately wanted to make a glass in this class and this was only my second attempt at blowing glass so I am actually really proud. Neither glass is dishwasher safe, though, so I will get to use (and handwash) with love.

We had just a little time left at the end of the second day, but not enough to blow another glass or vase, so I made another paperweight with a cooler technique that the one I made on the first day. This one required twisting the glass after you’ve colored it, and then stabbing the center with a tool to make and indent and bubble. It’s very pretty.

And as a bonus… the girl at the gallery found Jess’ and my Christmas ornaments from the 20 minute workshop we went to in December. If you remember, Jess had Bella in December, so we completely forgot about picking up our ornaments, but the instructor went on a hunt for them last week and they were still around. Yay!

So my plan is to take another class in the fall. The instructor said that there’s a group planning on evening classes, and once that is scheduled, she’ll let me know. I’m not sure I can pull off evenings, but I’m willing to consider it. This glass blowing is just entirely too cool to never do again.

I’m showered and in pajamas (surprise). I am tired. My legs are tired from standing on a concrete floor for two days, my arms are tired from spinning pipes during the workshop, I’m still dehydrated, and my belly is burning – probably from the Indian food we ordered for lunch.

But boy was the class fun! Today I got to bring home the flowers that I made on Saturday. Pretty, right?
I also have this beautiful paperweight that is going with me to work tomorrow. Isn’t is cool?

Today we actually blew glass. To make a very complicated process as simple as possible, it requires multiple gathers of molten glass, lots of blowing into the glass to trap air, lots and lots of spinning, lots and lots of marvering (shaping/flattening on the marver surface), and lots of bench time spinning, using tools and spinning. (Did I mention spinning?) My body is tired, but I actually made three things today: a little practice glass, a huge drinking glass, and another paperweight with a cooler technique than yesterday. But because it needs to cool overnight, and because I have a busy week, I won’t be able to get today’s work until Thursday or Friday. *sigh*

I highly recommend this class. Now that I have taken the Introductory Workshop, I’ll definitely be going back for more – I caught the bug. But what’s neat is that you really do feel more and more comfortable and get more and more confident after every piece that you make. I felt ten times better working on my own today that yesterday, and we could all feel ourselves getting better at the basic skills.

This is the place:
Corradetti Gallery
2010 Clipper Park Rd, Suite 119
Baltimore, Maryland 21211
410.243.2010

More pictures – these are LOADS more interesting!

A clear drinking glass. Here he is dripping water on the joint between the glass and the pipe to make a clean break.

You have to shape the glass quickly as it cools.

This looks to be right after a second gather. That’s a lot of glass!

Firing a vase to keep it hot enough to shape.

This is cool – the glass on the right is being blown and shaped on the marver. The vase on the left is being shaped using a tool to flatten the base.

Once this vase was shaped on the first pipe, he had to transfer it to a second pipe to complete mouth/opening of the vase. This shows classmates fusing the new pipe to the finished vase bottom so that the vase can be removed from the first pipe.

A paperweight on a pipe – straight on. Cool pattern, eh?

My two new glasses and paperweight in the kiln. The colors that you see aren’t the real colors. As they cool they will becoming the color I added to the glass. (Tune in later in the week for the finished products!)

Update! One of my classmates just sent me pictures of me!

Here I am gathering glass at the furnace.
Me cooling my pipe.
Some marvering at the marver table.
Benchwork! Don’t I look knowledgeable? Haha.

I am tired. Not exhausted, but tired. Today we made caterpillars (which are just bumpy glass things we learned technique on), flowers (three!), and a paper weight. Crafting with glass is so cool. Like Guitar Hero, I found that I was not immediately good at glass technique, but there’s nowhere to run in a six hour class, so I had no choice but to get better.

My class is really great. We have three men and two women (including me), two trainers and one intern. We get a long very well, and we’re all quite positive people that it’s fun to help each other out. I’ll probably have more to say tomorrow after we actually BLOW glass (today was more working with glass, sans blowing), but I’m excited about tomorrow already. It’s all completely outside of my comfort zone, but just so much fun. Here are some quick pics so you can get an idea (none including me).

Gathering glass on the pole.

Cooling the pole so that you can work – it gets hotter each time you gather glass.

Twisting the glass as it cools – this is the inside of a paperweight. You have to gather glass three times to make these paperweights.

Making a paperweight (color has been added).

I forget the term, but smashing the glass on end is one step in the process of making a flower.

Pulling the glass with special tweezers to make petals.

A very pretty flower right after breaking it from the pole (unfortunately, not mine).