14+ Hours

This is what a somewhat neurotic (ok, ok, totally nuts) mother does while her baby is driving 14 hours (in good weather) across icy roads,

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through sleet and snow,

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in a high profile vehicle, with winds gusting 45mph.

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single digit temperatures,

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from IL to PA through highly populated deer country

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at night.

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Sexy Vest almost done.




Non ravelry link here.

She made it safe and sound. Me not so much, all that driving can really get to ya. Did I mention, I wasn't actually in the car with her, I was here at the Hermitage the whole time? Um yeah, I'm a total nutzoid freak.

So Gillian is gone, off to spend Christmas with her bf's family. (sniffle, sniffle) She/they have been here since the day before Thanksgiving. I really don't think I'll be able to make it until next Christmas before I see her again. (sigh)

Sunday we had a just-us family dinner, just Joe, the kids and I. And darn if the weather didn't turn bad. Rain, to sleet, to snow, with minus 20 something wind chill. It was a crazy day, high of 53 degrees, which is crazy in and of itself in December around here, dropping to 9 degrees in a matter of a few hours. Needless to say no one was going to be driving home in that weather. I bet it's been over 10 years since all my babies were sleeping under the same roof. To say I loved it would be an understatement. Lots of food, laughs, games, and teasing. Ha, I even made doughnuts the next morning and I know it's been at least 12 years since I've made doughnuts!

By the time the plows and the salt trucks came by the next day (yesterday) the oldest kids were itching to get back to town and get to work having missed half the day already. While Gillian and Nick finished packing up the jeep for their journey eastward (following the bad weather I might add), I finished Fences another vest Gillian had picked out from my Ravelry queue. No photo of that one, they literally walked out the door and got on the road the second I clipped the very last end. Maybe she'll send me a photo after she has blocked it, IF she remembers how I told her to do that. :o)

To answer a question or two regarding the video of Hiram and Bart working glass....

The long "rope" or "snake" of glass they are pulling at the end of the video is how a "cane" is made. Canes are one method that can be used to add color to the glass, and there are several ways to go about it. I'm afraid to explain it any further cuz I might tell you something really wrong! I can get mixed up fairly easily, Bart began working "hard glass" on a torch, what the video shows is the guys working "soft glass" from the furnace. There are some techniques which can be used in both torch work and furnace work, and there are some that are used with one and not the other. If I told you anything more I'd prob'ly get it screwed up. Suffice to say the rope thingy they are making is a called a cane and it is one of the ways they can add color to the glass cuz all the glass in the furnace is clear. Another way to add color to the glass would be rolling the hot glass in "frit" which is crushed colored glass that comes in many grades of coarseness (fine almost talc like to pea gravel size) In the video at the 5 second mark there is a shot of a several canes they had already made. They look like multi-colored Barber poles. One of the end shots is Bart cutting the long cane they had just made into lengths that are easy to handle.

Here are a couple pix of some pieces Bart brought with him on Sunday.



I'm fairly certain my vase got it's coloring by rolling the hot glass in frit. The rock glass on the top right is a different coloring technique but I can't remember what Bart called it.



I'm pretty sure canes were used to add the color in these paperweights but I could be wrong. Exactly how a straight, long slender cane becomes all these magical swirls, loops, and zig zags engulfed within the depths of a solid glass dome is a mystery to me.