Comment Spam
We’ve recently had a flood of new comments come in on finished windows that were made a year ago and the addresses that the comments came from were awfully strange. After looking into this we discovered that the latest thing for spammers to do is leave comments on Blogs that will redirect you to offending sites if you click on the comment. We’ve removed all the spam comments we could find and hopefully the problem is solved. Luckily it’s been happening to older posts rather than the newer ones . Still, if you happen to see a strange comment with an equally strange email address (usually a string of random numbers and letters) next to one your pictures, don’t click on it. We’ll try to keep up on removing these nuisances but the only way to be sure that nothing gets through would be to turn the comments off (which I’d rather not do). Now that we have that out of the way let’s get down to what’s been happening this week.
Ellen has completed her Fireplace Screen and the end result is wonderful! It took a lot of work and patience to complete this but, as always, it pays off in the end. The picture below has the screen opened all the way so we don’t get the optical illusion of the water running downhill on the two end panels. Delphi is getting ready to do their next catalog and is having a contest where you can send in a picture of yourself along side one of your windows (it must be an original design). Ellen will be submitting a picture of her screen in hopes of making it into the next Delphi catalog! I hope she manages to get in to it. Her work would fit perfectly into the Delphi’s next catalog!
Mark continued working on his Birds and Flowers window and is still moving at a break-neck speed for a beginner. Look at the design and the workmanship that he has demonstrated and you’ll see that he’s already in league with our regular long-time students (who I think all do work well above what would be considered to be ‘average’). Mark has about half of this window ground and has taken the pieces home with him to start wrapping throughout the week.
Gerald finished cutting and grinding the rest of his Pelicans Window. In fact, the only thing left to do is cut the background and then the border. I suspect it will be ready to be soldered by the end of the next class. I have had an idea (something that Gerald did got me to thinking) for a way to help keep the two overlapping birds separate and will run it past Gerald next week to see what he thinks. We’ll keep you all posted when we see how it turns out. I still love the look of the wood posts in this window. They already look very real and have a 3D quality to them…
Joey almost finished cutting out his Rooster Window this week. He only has the face of the bird left to go and then he’ll be grinding (and he may get some grinding finished while he’s at home before the class next week– you never know). I was very impressed with his cutting this week as he got a lot of very difficult pieces cut out without ever asking for any advice on how to go about cutting them. In fact, I barely got to talk to him at all during class as he diligently worked away the night. The cutting on this project will most assuredly be finished next week. It’s colorful, complex, cocky and a great example of what Joey is able to accomplish on his own. I love the colors he picked AND the color placement. Great job!
Cheryl was hard at work on her Street Address Window. With her corners finished (and now wrapped) she set about grinding the numbers and then cutting and grinding the white background in the center of the window. The pattern has two borders but instead of having them next to each other they are separated by about 4 inches which leaves room for the borders to swing out toward one another and then intertwine in between. She’ll do the center first and then tack it together before joining the last border so she can easily transport the window. The center section is all cut but she’s in the process of grinding it. Only 5 of the white pieces are in place in the picture below…
There’s always someone who ends up being written about last but we certainly don’t want that person to feel like the odd man out (or in this case the odd woman out!) After finishing the missing pieces of her horse’s mane Jessie wrapped all the border pieces of her window and got the zinc channel put around the edges. From that point on it was a refresher course in soldering for her (it’s been a few months since she’s done it last). It was a little rough at first but she’s getting a steady, smooth bead again after a little practice. You can certainly see how the window is going to look when it’s complete as it is practically finished at this point in time. She has to solder the back side and it will be ready to go home next week. Don’t let the numbers in the picture fool you into thinking there’s something written on the glass– they are actually on the board that Jessie’s working on which is showing through through the clear background that she used!
And that’s it for this week. We’ll be back again next week with at least one completed project.