Imploding Beads and Frozen Roses

“America is a place where Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas.” -John Burton Brimer

As usual, no real news on this front. We’ve gone from 90°+F days to barely into the sixties days. It’s made for a truly peculiar spring. This uneven segue into summer has most of the plants totally confused. The early roses have been joined by the June roses in gardens and hedges throughout my area, and I suspect both are regretting putting in appearances at the moment. Ironically, I cooked most of my four o’clocks by leaving their covers on during a day that wasn’t supposed to exceed the low seventies. By the time I realized it was approaching ninety and went outside to rescue them, the majority looked as though they’d fought with a microwave and lost. Even the ones that have since recovered have a slightly sick, mutant look to them. I purchased another packet, and will plant the seeds along with whatever seedlings survive into next week (our official frost-free date).

I have some promising leads for jobs, but no responses yet. I was slated to go to a job fair on Monday, but cancelled out on it at the last minute. Sunday night I hit the web to find out who would be at the job fair so I could study up a bit on the more promising companies. I discovered that there were only going to be eleven companies there. While I recognized a couple of the names, most were unfamiliar to me. I Googled three of the names and they all came up with pages of scam warnings. A local university was going to be there, but when I checked their website they only had three jobs listed and all were outside my specialty; I suspect they were at the job fair only to attract potential students. The Army was going to be there. I didn’t feel like going down to The Big City only to be rejected by the Army, so I slept in instead.

I keep active with bead making. My last class is Thursday, so after than I’m on my own to either teach myself or find more advanced classes. I’ve come a distance since those first off-center and slightly peculiar efforts. Below is the first string of beads I’m attempting to put together:

This technique starts with a straight center line on the bead, and then uses melted in dots to achieve a wavy effect. It’s been good practice for me because it not only requires good eye-hand coordination, but a good sense of what part of the flame to be working in. Too far out of the flame and the bead will crack during creations; too far in the flame and the thin glass stringer that creates the center line and the center swirl dots will fry before it ever reaches the bead surface. All the time you are working the bead you must keep it in motion to keep it as evenly heated as possible. It’s like trying to poke a tiny moving target with a stick in just the right spot.

I have also been playing with a trick called “wound implosions”. It’s difficult because you have to start by creating a thin disc of glass and then place dots on one face before melting it down into a bead. The thin disc cools rapidly and unevenly, and while I’ve learned a few tricks to help keep the bead from exploding before I implode it, I still lose about 1/3 of my attempts. I suppose that is what being a novice is all about, though.

Implosions, and implosions with lilies.