Missing A Class
We were a little short on students this week due to vacations and the fact Russ had surgery on Monday which was supposed to be an out-patient situation but we managed to stretch it into 2 days when they finally admitted him and made us spend the night at the hospital. He wasn’t admitted until 8pm so it was pretty late when I began scrambling to cancel the Tuesday morning classes. And I say ’scramble’ because I discovered on Monday night that most of the phone numbers I needed where on the computer at home rather than in my cell phone. Luckily I had Jane’s number and she was able to help me get in touch with everyone before they made made a trip out to the Bayou Tuesday morning to discover that we weren’t there. Russ was released around 8:30am on Tuesday morning and by the time we got his prescriptions filled we had arrived back at home around 11:00 or so.
That night I had a class with Jimmie, Tiffany, Mary Lynn, Janice and Grace who all made great strides in the completion of their windows. Grace finished cutting the bottom LSU section of her window and then moved over to the grinder to fit it all together. Once it was all ground she joined her mother and Mary Lynn and began wrapping her pieces. Pictured below are the pieces that she has completed (ground and wrapped). Grace took the parts that are missing home with her to wrap during the week and we’ll see them again during our next class when this gets tacked together and she then begins working on the harder ‘eye’ section of her window.
Janice finished all the grinding on her oval window and spent most of her class wrapping her finished pieces. It was slow going at first but she got faster as she moved along until she had a good three quarters of it wrapped before she left. What she didn’t finish wrapping here at the shop went home with her so she can wrap it throughout the week. We’ll end up tacking this all together next week and then begin working on the remaining pieces to square the window off.
Mary Lynn was moving along at the same speed that Janice was and as a result of that she has all but a quarter of her window wrapped. Like Janice, Mary Lynn started off slowly but I think that by the end of the class she was amazed at just how much she got accomplished. Wrapping those first 3 or pieces makes you think that you’ll never get them all finished, but Mary Lynn easily held her own throughout the night. Look for this to be tacked together next week when we’ll be able to hold it up and really get a good feel for what the colors look like. There’s only about 16 pieces left to cut and grind before these oval Iris Windows are completed.
Tiffany and Jimmie were busy grinding all the pieces they had cut in the past 2 weeks and they made terrific progress. They easily have about 80% of their window finished and took most of what they ground home with them so they can begin wrapping. There’s a good chance that we’ll see this tacked together next week which means that they’ll be deciding on a border color so we can finish off this window.
Jane, who’s normally a Tuesday morning student, was able to show up for class on Wednesday morning and came in with her second Birdhouse Window completed save for the border. After we cut that out on the strip cutter we added wire feet to her birds and then finished up the small amount of soldering that was left. She’s going to color this at home but you can’t tell from the picture below that it isn’t already colored so we’re giving it the full scale treatment here in the Blog this week so you don’t have to click on it to see the large picture.
Joey and Cheryl were in on Wednesday night but as soon as they arrived Cheryl found herself called back to work. I did see the progress she made throughout the week on her Hot Air Balloon Window but for some reason I didn’t remember to snap a picture of it before it was carried back out the door. Cheryl has all but one of the balloons ground, wrapped and tacked together and it’s really taken shape.
Joey stuck around and we did our best to figure out the best way to lay out all his pieces for his 5 cabinet windows on the glass so we could minimize waste. We were able to get it all traced out on the available glass and even got it all cut before the night was over. The only thing we’re short on is 3 or 4 of the peach/shrimp/pink color that he cut last week. After all the glass was cut Joey even managed to get one of the doors ground to the pattern before calling it a night and heading home with some glass to wrap. We won’t be seeing Joey or Cheryl next week because they’ll be at Niagara Falls but we will see them the following week. It was a fun class just having Joey here with me — we rarely get to talk so I enjoy the one on one time with him where we could actually hold a conversation that lasted more than a minute or two! Here’s his first door…
And that was it for this week. Things should be back to normal (for the most part) next week so expect a bigger Blog entry then!