An Afternoon At The Bayou
First and foremost we are losing Ann as a student. We wish her well and will all miss her very much as she was one of our founding students who was here with us from the start. Ann says that she may return when things settle down in her life and we hope that happens soon. Her plan for today was to just show up and enjoy the company but we put her to work right away. Rather than waste a class we managed to use up some of the spare glass she had left over from her first window and make 2 Christmas Stockings complete with holly leaves. This is what she took home at the end of the day. Again, we’ll miss you Ann!
Kim ground, wrapped and soldered another butterfly but this one was different in a BIG way: her daughter Jessie had cut this one at home. Good job Jessie! Right after Kim called it a day and left, UPS delivered her bevels that she’ll be using in her project next week. Kim’s decided to join the ranks of the ‘big window makers’. Her bevel cluster is beautiful but we still haven’t really decided on a design yet. She’s given me an idea of what she likes and I’ll draw something up from there for her. Luckily, since she lives across the Bayou she can come over easily to see how things are progressing on her design. Here’s the butterfly that she and her daughter made today:
Julie worked up a storm today cutting, grinding, wrapping and soldering. We were originally planning on her grinding as much as she could and then taking that home to wrap but when we had the first of her eight panels ground we decided that the best thing to do would be to wrap it and solder it while it was all in place. Numbering these little pieces and trying to keep the numbers on them while she wrapped the glass would be next to impossible. It may slow us down a bit at first, but it will more than make up time in the end since we won’t be trying to guess where all these nearly identical pieces go. To the left we have her first panel all ground. To the right we have it wrapped and soldered together. She got 2 panels done today out of a total of 8. I’m guessing that as she moves along she’ll get a little faster. Not that she moved slowly today, but even I was having a bit of trouble figuring out just what goes where on this complex pattern. The sad part is that when she finally becomes completely familiar with the pattern she’ll most likely be on her last panel. Maybe when she’s finished she’ll want to do another one! 
Ellen finished up the hand mirror that she came so close to finishing last week. Rather than covering the back with felt as I normally do to protect the back surface of the mirror, Ellen decided to cover it in foil and then try some decorative soldering on it. I didn’t think to snap a picture of the back side of her hand mirror but I have to say that I liked the look. I hope she did too because the front of the mirror is stunning.
After Ellen finished her hand mirror she moved on to a matching fan lamp. No one has done one of these yet in class so Ellen is a bit of a trailblazer here. We took one of the flowers from the hand mirror then mirrored it and changed it a bit so it wasn’t and exact mirror image. We wrapped this flower and leaf image across the middle of the fan lamp background and then she set out cutting and grinding. She’s taken it home to wrap it so it will be all ready for soldering next week. Don’t forget to look for her completed project here next Wednesday.
And that pretty much sums up what went on here this week. We all hope Billie is doing well. Even though she’s not here with us during class her name pops up frequently (and not in a bad way! ) Next week we have two new students starting and we look forward to getting to know this mother and daughter team.
Paul