random thoughts – Day 2,406 (Sunday 10/18) – laboring

Pinned and ready for soldering.

The second day of the art studios event was today. Once again, I planned to go, dressed to go, and then got caught up in laboring in stained glass and didn’t go.

Today’s time-sucking, self-assigned task was drawing new designs and then cutting small red diamond shapes and then foiling and burnishing them. It took about five hours to do 29 diamond shapes and some random green scraps in other shapes.

After an early evening break for grocery shopping which marked my first time outside the house since Friday afternoon, another two hours were spent cutting and foiling tiny yellow circles and then burnishing and trimming back the foil to expose more of the glass. The various parts are pinned to the corkboard and will be soldered Monday after class or maybe Tuesday.

The benefits to working with lead over copper foil are more evident each day. Lead pieces work up a lot faster because they don’t require such precise cutting, the edges of each piece of glass don’t need  to be wrapped in foil, and there is a lot less soldering required. 

It’s quicker measuring and cutting a length of lead came, setting the glass into the rails and soldering just the joints of the lead rails. But I am getting better at the foiling, burnishing, and soldering. The glass cutting part is either great or a total pain in the derriere and there is no way to know in advance, but that applies in either method. I have a spool of lead came, so bounce back and forth between methods is an option.

random thoughts – Day 2,405 (Saturday 10/17) – breaking plans

Breakage on the design board.

The temperature was in the 40s and I dressed appropriately for a day out and about town in not too wintry gray pants and my current favorite gray patterned sweater. There were artist open studios in town and nearby in Ashburnham and Fitchburg, and I drank coffee and waited for it to be time to go.

Instead of sitting around idly, I started working on new glass pieces. There were more issues with a piece I’ve been fighting with and it was set aside. I decided to do a scrap work piece, but there weren’t enough scraps large enough and soon I was foraging for larger sheets to work from.

Ready to solder.

Suddenly, it was noon and the art thing was underway. Okay, no big deal, still plenty of time. Then it was 1:00, and I would leave after cutting “just one more piece of glass.”  And suddenly it was 2:00. Then 3:00. And that was the end of the day’s plan. So, I stayed home and kept working with the glass.

The new design was in red, orange, and yellow and today I learned that the yellow glass is the worst glass of all to cut (so far). It would score, then, instead of snapping on the score line, it would break on some wild other route and instead of having a strip to work from, I had a broken sheet of glass.

Partway through a rectangular design drawn earlier in the day, I decided it didn’t need to be confined by a box and changed the design. That meant some of the pieces needed to be larger to extend beyond the initial shape. Others needed to be adjusted to fit. Once it got going, it was fine, except for the part where my lower back was screaming because the dining room table is about 12-inches too low to be a suitable worktable.

The pieces were wrapped in copper foil, reset and anchored with pins, and soldered. At 8:30 I was finally done messing around with it and cleaned up. The craft room still isn’t set up, so I’ve been working out of the dining room and living room. Foiling and soldering tools are carried from the crafts room and set up in the living room, and then put back.

Overall, the house looks like a tornado hit it. The back yard is littered with siding, scaffolding, saw horses, and other construction stuff. Inside, the dining room table is buried under corkboards, containers of glass, a large corkboard with the large piece I’ve been avoiding working on and a smaller one for all the other stuff I’ve been doing. Boxes of glass and bevels are on the floor, creating an obstacle course. The chaos extends to the kitchen counter, which now holds the vase that used to be on the dining room table plus the old toaster oven. It’s feeling claustrophobic.

The hot mess and the angst it is generating may be exactly the kick in the pants needed to get the workroom set up. This will be less simple now that I know a taller and larger work table is needed. 

random thoughts – Day 2,404 (Friday 10/16) – lunch, shopping, char

Tackling the tall trees.

The day began as a blank slate, but it got interesting quickly. Two large tree trimming trucks rolled up the street and camped out in front of Mom’s. They got busy trimming branches that were close to the utility lines. A third truck arrived and leapfrogged up the street to the house on the other side of me. I wondered if the wetness from the rain would be an issue, but it didn't seem to be.

My front tree is too tall for it’s variety but not tall enough to warrant utility trimming. Darn it. Mom joked that it would have been great if the trees had been trimmed before all the leaves fell in her yard.

By 9:00 there was a plan with Mom and Sis for lunch and Dollar Tree. Duguay’s Chicken and Seafood was the chosen local lunch destination. I had the veggie burger with sweet potato fries and it was good. Half the fries came home with me. Sis opted for a chicken tender dinner and Mom went for the BLT.

After lunch at Dollar Tree, I spotted friends at the checkout as I was hitting the first aisle and dashed over to say hello. It was exciting. I rarely see people I know out in the wilds of G-Vegas. Once I got to the shopping, I again employed the generally successfully “only buy what I can carry” strategy and rejected a shopping cart.

My focus was special occasion cards and acrylic storage boxes. I overachieved with the target items plus a book, 12-pack of toilet paper, toothpaste that doesn’t have ingredients to which I am allergic, snack bags, and a few other things including the one thing I didn’t know I needed – an “inspection mirror” with a jointed, movable neck to “view behind furniture, vents, and cabinets.” It looks like a dental mirror. It may go down in my personal shopping history as the coolest $1.50 item ever.

At the register, with items balanced atop the 12-pack of toilet paper and two chrome paper towel holders and two oven mitts dangling from my fingers, I remembered it wasn’t toilet paper I need, but paper towels. My linen closet now looks like I’m stockpiling toilet paper for another COVID-19 shortage. At least I can forget about buying toilet paper for a while.  And I’ll probably be back at Dollar Tree on Saturday for paper towels and liquid hand soap.

A week and a half ago, I ordered a four-slice toaster oven/air fryer, which arrived last weekend in an outer box that said only “toaster oven” and I wondered if it was even the right item. The unopened box sat on the living room floor until today and I was wondering if I might not have been as excited about it as I thought, but then it took two cycles on dark to get my toast toasted and I remembered why I bought it.

Oops, a bit charred.

As of this evening, the new appliance is finally set up on the small counter near the refrigerator. It had a test run with the leftover sweet potato fries, and I made a bad guess on how long it would take to warm them up. In the old toaster oven, it would have been one or two cycles on the dark toast setting. It was definitely less than 15 minutes on the air fryer setting on the new unit, and they came out mostly charred. I ate them anyway. They were still good. 

Maybe this weekend I’ll explore the recipe book that came with the new kitchen wonder. And also try to figure out what to do with the old one.

random thoughts – Day 2,403 (Thursday 10/15) – in the zone

Three sides sided, one more to go.

Despite writing every day AND referencing the day of the week, sometimes the week still slips away from me. Case in point – over the past few weeks, I thought Wednesday was Thursday. The most recent activity schedule has a different flow and Monday and Tuesday are busy enough that I look forward to Wednesday because it is mostly obligation-free. Then, somehow, on the magical obligation-free Wednesday, I mentally accelerate the week and keep thinking it’s Thursday.

Today, was mostly an unlabeled anonymous day of hustle and noise that began with the siding crew arriving in my driveway and me abandoning my coffee and scrambling to trade sleeping clothes for daytime cloths and go move my car out of the way. With that done, the scaffolding was set up, the utility boxes were secured, the existing back yard motion lights were reset and old door light was swapped for the new one. The peak above the carport is done. Three sides are done, and the front and the skirting remain and then it is done.

Completed 10-15-2026.

The recent days with the soundtrack of hammering, drilling, and the work crew’s radio playing decent music loud enough that I could hear it have let me slip into the zone while I cut glass. The cruel trick to today’s glass work was that I wanted to use clear iridescent textured glass in two pieces underway, which was some of my favorite types of glass in the past. And in the dozens of sheets of clear glass I have now, there is only one sheet of the iridescent stuff.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon when I realized that today is Thursday and I haven’t talked with Mom all week. Or done a proper grocery run. Or dealt with the laundry. But I soldered the piece set up yesterday, and cut, foiled, and soldered a new crescent moon piece. It appears I have released a glass working obsessive little maniac. I wonder how long this will last and when things will settle down to a more moderate pace. Also, "Maniac" (from Flashdance) was one of the songs I heard a snippet of today.

Note to self: please resume regular life maintenance activities. Soon. Like, now.

Another note to self: get more clear iridescent textured glass. And a cutting grid to catch all the little glass chips. And tacky paper to hold the cut pieces in place during assembly. And more rolls of copper foil and solder. And the zinc notching tool I just learned about so I can more easily add zinc frames on square/rectangle pieces.

Additional note to self: stop falling into the time-suck of watching so many videos about soldering. And looking at glass and supplies online because life was simpler and slightly less expensive when I didn’t know about all the cool gadgets.

random thoughts – Day 2,402 (Wednesday 10/14) – storm and calm

Morning through the sheers.

The Tuesday overnight weather featured a thunderstorm. There weren’t sudden, loud, thunderclaps, instead, they were prolonged waves that at first I thought was a train. Kiki bolted and hid. The torrential downpour slammed on the roof. I was racing my way through a 400-page, mediocre book and was too comfy in bed to get up and look out the window at the drama. After it passed through, the contrasting quiet was nearly as dramatic as the storm.

This morning, I woke up tired at 8:00, but it was most likely due to reading until 1:00 a.m. Or maybe it was 2:00. And I still didn’t finish the book until today. It’s a good thing I got up when I did, because the siding crew arrived at 8:30, which was a half-hour earlier than usual. The sun was shining, it was warm enough to have windows open, and the trees continue to dazzle with color, even through the navy blue sheer curtains in the dining room.

Today’s siding labor was focused on the short wall under the carport, which has multiple lighting fixtures, a window, a doorway, and all the utility boxes for electric, the new fiber, the old cable, and a box labeled Verizon for a preexisting land line phone I don’t currently have but might want someday. Or not. The hammering and drilling sent Kiki into hiding again and she stayed hidden until the crew left around 2:00.

Foiled and ready for solder.

While the guys worked outside, I calmly worked on cutting glass inside. This project is small-ish (6” x 8”) and is serving as a warm-up while I mull over the colors for the larger piece (12” x 26”). There was some glass cutting and bloodshed because it turns out finger tips are prolific bleeders. Later, I did the foiling. Tomorrow I will do the soldering.

I’m trying to perfect cutting, foiling, and soldering on smaller pieces before tackling the large one with many parts that could break my heart if I mess it up. It’s feeling like a rational plan. 

A trip to Ocean State Job Lot resulted in merino wool blend socks (big selection!), rubber treads for the concrete stairs out front for the winter, nail polish, coffee, two melamine tray/plates, and the inspiration for supper in the form of a jar of korma sauce. If I had taken a shopping cart, I would definitely have bought more stuff, but I was operating on my fiscally conservative mode of buying only what I could carry. Schlepping four rubber stair treads through the store was awkward, but helped with the objective.

I played amateur chef and a pot of rice, mixed veggies, chicken from the freezer, and the korma sauce came together and it was delicious. Two bowls worth of delicious, to be exact. And maybe another small bowl for a snack a little later. The container in the fridge should cover some of the feedings for Thursday and Friday. It’s great not having to always think about what to eat.

random thoughts – Day 2,401 (Tuesday 10/13) – missteps

My yard in the morning 10-13-26.

The sunny weather of Monday was cloudier and gloomier today.  The leaves are still pretty and I love looking out the window at the back of the house and seeing the wooded area beyond the yard. It’s been fun over the past year seeing the seasons change. 

The morning was leisurely and I spent some of it finally making a box of Manischewitz potato pancakes from the pantry. The project took longer than I expected, mostly because I don’t fry foods in vegetable oil very often. 

The batter seemed endless and I stood at the counter eating potato pancakes and applesauce while cooking the rest of it. The pancakes were good, but not as crispy as the glowing description on the box described they would be. I fully accept that it was most likely an operator error/recipe misstep.

Not so crispy potato
pancakes and applesauce.

After the late breakfast/early lunch, I sat down with a roll of silver-backed copper foil, a fid, and a box of small triangles. The tiny triangle foiling project continued with edge wrapping and smoothing. My poor finger tips were feeling abused when I realized the time and that I needed to get myself out the door.

It was dance double-header day with two hours of Denishawn in the afternoon and an hour of belly dance at night in another town, miles away. I failed to properly consider food for the day and headed out with a lone chewy granola bar, a bottle of water, and no food plan for the next 6.5 hours. I ate the granola bar on the drive and arrived at my first class already hungry. Talk about a misstep.

After the first class and barely seven minutes into the drive to the second one, Waze rerouted me without explanation. I have tried to defy the oracle in the past and regretted it, so when the navigation system suddenly wanted me to turn left, I did. I don’t know what mishap Waze was sparing me, but the new route delivered me smack into a traffic jam.

For 20 minutes I sat in a line of traffic, with the only forward movement occurring when a few other vehicles bailed, hooked a left into one of the parking lots on the other side of the street, and headed back the way we had just come. Much of my time spent not moving was spent in front of a Thai restaurant, hungry and closer to home than the destination. It took everything I had to not pull into the restaurant, have a nice Thai dinner, and go home.

Even with the delay, Waze indicated I would still arriving on time (thank goodness for my neurotic big built-in time cushions), so I continued to class. My brain was foggy with hunger and everything felt difficult, even the stuff I know how to do. It was frustrating and much of it (or all of it) was my own fault. There is a definitely a lesson about planning ahead and feeding myself in there and I hope I remember it.

The drive home was dark and wet. With flashing yellow, red, and blue lights all around, a trailer with an oversized load banner on the back and a house on the trailer passed me at one point. The spectacle of trailer, house, and entourage was very festive. 

When I arrived home, ravenous, I headed for the fridge before even taking my coat off, grabbed the bag of deli cheese ends, sat on the couch and devoured a nice thick slab of some tasty unidentified cheese that was definitely not American, Swiss, or provolone. And I started to feel better. Next Tuesday, I will need to have a better food plan. I didn't enjoy the preventable missteps.

random thoughts – Day 2,400 (Monday 10/12) – studio, storage setup

In the studio.

The drive to Worcester was another pretty one. The tree trunks were dark and beautiful from the rain and the leaves were very glamorous, especially the vibrant red ones. A country road with a speed limit of 30 or 40 mph is perfect for admiring the scenery. Unfortunately, the narrow roads with no space to pull over are not conducive to taking photos.

In today’s studio time, I worked on a design I drew ad made with lead came many moons ago. Now, I’m trying it again in copper foil, in two sizes. The morning was spent wrestling glass sheets out of the too small milk crate they have lived in forever, to choose colors to use today. I discovered I have lot of red glass. Much more than  I suspected.

In the studio, four of us worked on own projects and chatted about things like the fun ancestral roots info from genealogy DNA tests, various glass projects, the grinder at the end of the counter that makes a horrible groaning noise when it’s powered off, and holidays like today that are not full-blown holidays and had us all wondering if trash was being picked up or not.

Setting up the new glass storage.

Some of my glass was very agreeable, some, not so much. The pink cut like a dream, the green wasn’t too much trouble, but the purple broke during a simple straight cut.

On the way to the Craft Center, I stopped at the nearby Goodwill and found a wooden crate and a file organizer to hold my glass sheets. This will make it easier to find things. The glass sheets that had been stacking up on the dining room table are now in the crate, but much more is waiting for organizing in the alleged crafts room. Bit by bit, the home crafts room is inching along to usefulness.