Summer's cool!

This week produced the kind of non stop activity we associate with Summer. I began teaching four young people how to blow glass. Each one has a different level of experience, but all can benefit from a brief review of the basics. Each student will be introduced with a description of their aims as well as their experience to date as this summers'cool unfolds.
Sadly we said good-bye to Andrew Palmer a brilliant man that for some reason (perhaps being bitten by the glass bug) graces us with his company and allows us to share insights about how heat, gravity and will can shape a glass bubble. Ken and Andrew had a particualarly good time together making handles on small pitchers. Andrew returns to Singapore, leaving his residence in Deer Isle, ME. until next summer perhaps.

AND I put the new glass to good use. I had a blissful evening on Thursday blowing biggish garden colored vases.
The evening was a tiny bit cooler, my strength was fair and I got to use some new duck billed shears that made cutting the lip of the urn shapes easy as pie
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Then Thursday night while I was beginning to scrub the salt off, I got a call that Katherine Dube was downstairs and wanted to show her friends around. Katie (left) was an intern with us nearly ten years ago while she was a student at College of the Atlantic. Since that time she has traveled to Japan, earned her Masters Degree in Eastern Classics, and is now a teacher of Buddhist studies at College of the Atlantic. Here she was just another summer lovin goddess out with her best buddies, "Big Head" (middle) and Amanda Witherell, a journalist at the SF Bay Guardian. Katie wanted to show her friends around because she has been working all year with Ken assisting him in his "Sea foam" line of decorative blown glass. And recently she began setting up her painting studio in the back section of our building, the area we affectionately call, Narnia...