random thoughts – Day 2,427 (Monday 11/9) – glass and faucets

Student show at
Worcester Center for Crafts.

Monday funday was a little bit less fun today. I had a vague plan of goals for today's glass class which was the last of the session. First, I couldn’t find the image I thought I had saved for a twisted wire edging I wanted to try. When I found another similar image, I learned it would require a drill to evenly twist the length of wire and keep it straight. I have a drill, but it was at home because I didn't know I would need it. 

We had a chance to see the student exhibit that is in the gallery. It was an impressive array of works in photography, pottery, jewelry, and glass. Gorgeous and inspiring stuff. Two of my classmates had work in the show, but I didn't enter anything. 

When I got back into our glass studio room, I didn’t have anything to work on due to the drill thing, so I flipped through class patterns (time consuming), changed my mind three times (a sun, a star, a moon) and ended up starting yet another crescent moon from scrap glass. 

Fighting with the moon.

That got complicated really quick as there were no scraps large enough for most of the pattern pieces as drawn. I was altering the pattern on the fly, cutting (and breaking) glass, grinding for hours, and leaving with a pile of pieces that didn’t really fit each other. Kind of frustrating, and fully my fault for not having a Plan B.

After class it was a dash home to meet the plumber who was coming to change out the faucets in both bathrooms, clear the drain in the main bathroom, and install a garbage disposal. The clogged drain was liberated of about 20 years of muck. The new faucets and drain plugs are shiny and fancy compared to the 40-year old leaky units with plastic knobs. The disposal needs a part and will be dealt with another time.

Fancy new faucet.

While the plumber worked, I tortured myself trying to finish the cutting on the crescent moon. It was not successful. The pattern alterations mandate totally new shapes and there is one crazy shape left to be cut. I didn’t have it in me to keep drawing and cutting. Maybe tomorrow. I can’t go too far with any pieces right now as I am out of solder. I have used everything I had on hand and need to restock. I will use the supply interruption to shift gears and focus on practicing the dances for the performance on November 22.

random thoughts – Day 2,426 (Sunday 11/8) – unplugged and under observation

Leaves on a skylight.

It was a gray morning and the leaves are still falling. The new skylights that were installed with the roof are not a bubble shape like the old ones, and the leaves and pine needles are sticking to the windows instead of sliding off. I guess that means the snow won't slide off like it used to, either. 

In keeping with a longstanding habit, dance bestie and I met this morning to dance. We ran through our duet and two group dances we are performing in a private event in a couple weeks. We looked at a cool construction detail on a recent addition to her costume collection and talked about how it could be incorporated into costume elements we make in the future.

When I was home, I decided to start working on the window insulation film I bought weeks ago. I chose the bathroom window to start with because it’s smaller than all the other windows and if I screwed it up, it wouldn't be as visible as a dining room or living room window. The double-sided tape was applied. The window film was cut closer to the window size and applied. The third step was to heat it with a blow dryer to tighten the film and remove wrinkles. Easy. Except the blow dryer wouldn’t turn on. I don't always blow dry my hair and tried to remember when I last used it. The best I could get to was early last week, because later in the week I had definitely let my hair air dry. 

The reset button on the dryer was tried. It was plugged and unplugged and turned on and off a bunch of times. I was about two minutes away from heading out to buy a new dryer when I decided to try it in another outlet. It works in a kitchen outlet so it seems the bathroom outlet has a problem. And it’s the only one in the bathroom.

There is a plumber scheduled to be here Monday to deal with the leaky faucet and the slow drain. I hope he doesn’t need an outlet, or that I can find a decent length extension cord to get to the next closest outlet. 

Under her eye.

To get my mind off the outlet, I started cutting glass for new pieces. The first was a heart, and like most of the previous hearts, it turned into a pain in the arse and I abandoned it. Then I took the bin of clear scraps and designed a small rectangle piece. It took a lot longer than I thought it should, mostly because I was truing to do it without cutting any glass. That became unwieldy and I ended up cutting several of the scrap pieces to fit. 

Somewhere in the outlet situation which was followed by making ramen for supper and then working on glass, I had set the phone down and forgot about it for several hours. When I remembered the phone, I got to play another exciting round of "where is the phone?" which is the only game I play more than "where are the keys." This time the phone was on the white cutting board in the kitchen, and once I hit the correct room it was easy. Usually, the dark phone is left on a dark piece of furniture and is hard to see.

Miss Kiki sat near the couch, supervising me as I applied the copper foil. She let me pet her when I had a free hand. She has been positioning herself for pets a lot more frequently and I am happy to oblige. I am often under her watchful eye. She watches me from across the room and then does her ninja move and suddenly appears at my side. 

Kiki also likes to sit across the room and meow, and when I meow back she trots over for a head rub. If I call her name, she comes to me. So cute. I’m sure she will eventually become a lap cat someday, which isn’t exactly a day of the week or specific point in time, but I’ll take it whenever it arrives.

random thoughts – Day 2,425 (Saturday 11/7) – labor and leisure

Pumpkins and gourds.

It’s been raining for several days. The day’s plan included apple picking, decided mid-week when the temperature was in the high 60s and 70s. The rain, which was just a light drizzle by then, did not get in the way of the orchard labor. 

A driver hauling a wagon took us past fields with pallets of pumpkins and gourds and beyond the now empty pumpkin patch, to the picking trees. From the wagon stop, it was a short walk to the Pink Lady apples that my friend wanted.

There were plenty of low hanging apples, but there were also ladders nearby so of course, I climbed once or twice. There were a couple lessons learned. For one, there are a lot more varieties of apples than I ever imagined. Snapdragon? Mutsu? Empire? Until now, my apple familiarity has been largely limited to the grocery store offerings of Granny Smith and McIntosh.  

Apple trees and a tempting ladder.

Another lesson involved my jacket, which was warm enough for the weather, but not exactly waterproof. The sleeve of my left picking arm got all wet, then my pant legs were wet from wiping my hands on them in an attempt to dry them. My hair became bushy with waves and frizz from the wet air and I felt like a tumbleweed by the time we were done. It was fun. All of it.

On the way home, we passed a store emblazoned with a sign that read “EC Thrift.” This was not a store with which we were familiar, which felt like all the more reason to go in. Wow, what a store. It is large, clean, and well organized. Prices on a lot of the housewares seemed insanely inflated ($79.99 for kitchen knives in a thrift store?) but the clothing prices were reasonable. Even though I didn’t find an Irish knit sweater (my current thrift holy grail), the store was still the cherry on top of an already great day.

random thoughts – Day 2,425 (Friday 11/6) – rain, patterns, wildlife

Turkeys in the rain.

The weather was cloudy and then it rained most of the day. It was perfect for staying indoors (not that I ever need a reason). It was a surprise to see turkeys walking around in the rain several times throughout the day. Maybe I just haven’t paid attention before.

It was a second day of not working on cutting glass. A large chunk of Thursday was spent reviewing and reorganizing the binder of stained glass designs. The binder is now so full the rings are about to pop.

I was surprised by how many designs I crafted so many years ago and it was a fun stroll down memory lane. There were also more photo prints of completed works tucked in with the patterns than I remembered, which was a nice surprise. One photo shows the first piece I ever made, but I have no idea where that is now. Some of the geometric designs had been drawn in a computer program, but many are hand drawn on either graph paper or brown packing paper.

Pattern organizing.

Multiple copies of patterns were found in different files and folders and now they are consolidated. I could tell if I had executed a pattern in glass by the presence of pushpin holes from pinning the glass pieces together on the pattern.

There was an angel design I had forgotten about until I saw the pattern yesterday and then I remembered standing at my worktable in Tennessee cutting the hair and face pieces, but not what happened to the piece.

In addition to several designs based on quilt squares, there were more flower patterns than I remembered. I did a commission piece with five purple tulips and a piece for a gala donation with violets and another with a rose, but I had also drawn designs with three tulips and single tulips.

The original fragment of an idea for the day was to pick a pattern from the freshly organized file and work on some glass. That didn’t happen. Instead, I finished reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. I had read to page 38 years ago and then life got in the way and the book was shelved. It was nice taking a break from fiction for the past week or so.

In exciting neighborhood news, someone posted on the Nextdoor app that three police cruisers and three animal control vehicles were on the street  that is one street over from me. The poster asked if anyone knew why. Someone else posted a screenshot from a scanner app that there was a verified coyote behaving strangely in a backyard on that street. Dang.

random thoughts – Day 2,424 (Wednesday 11/5) – shine and flashback

Sequins! Gaudy?

Yesterday may have been a full day, but not a lot happened today. As a result, I am taking the easy route and re-posting a piece from November 2020 (with a couple updates/revisions) when I was in the early days of genealogy research and discovering all sorts of fun things.

Mummu used to tell my sister and me, and our mother before us, cautionary tales in an attempt to guide us, or maybe to control us, depending upon your viewpoint. 

When shopping with her in the local ladies fashion stores, I would gravitate towards the adult cocktail dresses festooned with sequins and rhinestones. When I was about ten years old, we were shopping and I wandered away from her to stroke the fancy evening dresses, mesmerized by all the sparkle. Mummu suddenly appeared at my side. As she steered me back to the department specializing in age appropriate boring clothes for kids she said, “It’s important to keep children away from sequins or they will grow up to be gaudy.” Nice try, Mummu. 

Shiny Pink! (2019)

It turns out that despite her attempt at guidance and direction to conservative attire, my closet has been the recipient of an ever-expanding collection of beaded, sequined, and shiny garments. She probably would have choked if she saw the amazing sparkly everyday outfits available for kids nowadays.

Oh, if she could have seen me dressed in some of my favorite special occasion outfits and themed event ensembles. For a fundraiser event in 2019 with a pink theme, I got a pink and gold metallic tuxedo jacket. For another fundraiser with a black attire theme, the ensemble was black sequin shorts and a black sequin baseball jacket. In 2024, I bought a silvery sequin full blown game show host pantsuit that is still waiting for an event.

Sometimes, her tales involved horrific warnings of terrible potential consequences for noncompliance. My sister and I had long hair when we were kids. My sister’s hair was (and still is) waist-length and dark brown-black, straight, and silky. Mine was a mousey brownish reddish color with weird waves, bumps, and cowlicks and was never as long, straight, or as pretty as my sister’s. 

With our long hair, we would do silly things like twist locks of it and hold it under our noses like a moustache. I would pretend a lock of my hair was a paintbrush, or pass it between my lips and blow my warm breath through it. Mummu would see this and tell us “Don’t put your hair in your mouth, you’ll get a hair ball in your stomach and you’ll die.” The absurdity of the comment would have us rolling our eyes and thinking, “yeah, right.” When with my friends, I would tell them Mummu’s crazy story about the hairball.

Sequin suit, 2024.

Today, while adding family members to my Ancestry.com family tree, I added Grandpa Ray. One of the sources in the search results was a front-page newspaper article from January 6, 1926 about Ray’s parents, Hilda and Oscar. The story, titled “Hubby Charged Wife for Rides in His Machine” with the subtitle “Mrs. Kask Gives Divorce After Testifying She Walked to Work While Mr. Kask Rode”, described a court appearance where my great-grandmother Hilda testified before a judge that she walked seven miles to work while her husband rode around in an automobile, and, here’s the kicker, if he gave her a ride, he charged her 50 cents per trip. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also testified that he made her sleep in the woods near their home and threatened to beat her. This story appeared prominently just below the masthead, and directly above another riveting story titled, “12-Year-Old-Boy Siphoned Beer at “Speak-Easy”.”

Can't make this stuff up!

As if those news stories were not exciting and dramatic enough, I browsed the rest of the front page for entertainment, and two columns to the right, sat this gem of an article: “Ball of Hair Found in Stomach of Girl.” Hot damn. Mummu’s story about the stomach hairball was not nonsense fabricated to scare us after all. It really happened to a real girl, when Mummu was 10 years old. It was so shocking, so astounding, that I called Mom immediately to tell her the hairball story we had endured and rolled our eyes at, was actually real, and in 1926, a 15-year old girl from the nearby town of Ashby had a stomach ache that resulted in surgery and “A ball of hair was found in her stomach.” 

Now Mom and I have so many unanswered questions. How much hair? How big was the hair ball?  Was it accidentally ingested and accumulated over time or was there some ailment that caused her to literally eat her hair? And we will never know. 

The weirdness contained in that newspaper front page keeps on weirding. That story my grandmother preached to the three of us during our formative years appeared on the same front page of the newspaper as the story of the seemingly dysfunctional family she would marry into some 10 or 15 years later. I can’t even make this stuff up. But damn, it sure explains a lot. 

random thoughts – Day 2,423 (Wednesday 11/4) – breakfast, brakes, buddies

Kiki in her own little world.

The day was full. And beautiful, with temperatures in the 70s. In November, in New England!

The Jeep had an appointment for rear brakes, so Mom followed me to the garage and then we decided to go for coffee which turned into delicious breakfast at Westminster Café. We were both admiring the weather and wondering to what degree we will be punished for it later. The weather can be erratic and extreme here and it feels like nice weather is often eventually followed by brutal weather. Moderation is rare.

Back at home, the wait for the call that the car was done passed quickly because I was working on the glass panel, which, in years of cumulative glass work, is the first piece I’ve ever made with the intention of keeping it. Well, at least until I make the larger one, anyway. Two pieces of glass were replaced with newly cut pieces to remove some gaps. As I was finishing applying solder to the second side, the call came that the car was ready for pickup. I called Mom to let her know, washed the piece to remove the excess flux and then my hands and walked next door to meet my transportation coordinator.

Glass panel, soldered.

Fun note, I have blown through a one-pound spool of solder in just two or three weeks. The copper foil method uses a lot more solder than when using lead rails and only needing to solder the joints. I wish I had tracked how many pieces I made with the spool. I need to start noting how much time and materials go into each piece, which sounds like a great reason to start a new spreadsheet.

The mechanic said my rear brakes were basically shot, but I didn't notice that the Jeep handled any better (or differently) with the new ones. My wallet certainly felt lighter, though.

After the car business was completed, I took a walk to the mailbox and took a couple pictures of the glass panel while trying to decide if I would frame it in zinc rails. The zinc rail decision needs to be made before I can attach hanging rings. That’s when I noticed I hadn’t applied the solder to the outermost edge in my haste to get to the garage. 

The evening featured duet practice where I also got to pet three cats and one stretched out almost in my lap and it was lovely. Kiki is not a lap cat and I am deprived of that type of feline affection at home. She might sit an arm’s length away from me and stare at me, but that is as close as she gets. Usually she is across the room or hiding somewhere.

random thoughts – Day 2,422 (Tuesday 11/3) – glass and freetirement

Finally ready for solder.

It was Election Day and I voted early to make sure nothing got in the way. That left me free for the day to work on stained glass projects. The heart that had a couple pieces on the grinder Monday was soldered today.

The success of the small project propelled me to work on the problematic larger stained glass panel. The background pieces to the design were foiled, and the pins and metal rails holding the pieces were loosened so I could reset my assembly error.

Beginning from the from the top of the design, each piece of foiled glass was reset in the design. One small square at the bottom had to be swapped out from a bevel to another piece to resolve a fit issue. The pieces fit together much better now. There are one or two pieces that I may recut because they are a smidge smaller than they could be and I don’t like the gaps but I do seem to like torturing myself. Having the pieces fit better than they did yesterday is a relief. The plan for tomorrow is to solder at least one side of the panel, but the car is due in the shop for a brake job, so the day could be a bit wonky.

And that is how I spent the day until it was time to go to belly dance class. Freetirement is turning out to be pretty great. It helps that I am able to entertain myself.