Updates: Etsy street team, new lampwork on Etsy, and I'm getting a second (spare) torch

Much to my surprise I got invited to join a new Etsy Street Team, Prayers on a Wire. We're about rosaries and rosary supplies. While I have never made a rosary yet this is partly due to supplies other than beads being hard to find here, though I have been asked (in spite of the Lutheran church that I grew up in not using rosaries, I would make them), and I have sold Job's Tears to rosary makers before. I hope to make lampwork sets for decadal beads and the like as well.


Our Street Team has a summer competition going that is entitled "Colors of the Ocean", and while it is not required to list the entry on Etsy, I did:
This is Hilo Bay Beach, light teal, the link will take you to my Etsy listing. This set of lampwork beads was made by me, here at home, one by one, melting glass with my HotHead torch. The smaller beads are Moretti (Italian glass) light teal, the larger ones are the same light teal, rolled in sand from the Hilo Bay Beach and then encased in clear Moretti glass, annealed in my digitally controlled Glasshive kiln and the bead release cleaned out with my Dremel drill. You can see through these beads, including the empty space, not like a lot of the beads imported from Asia.

As I got sortof addicted to lampworking as time and weather allows (I can't make beads in the carport when it's windy, and work comes before lampwork) the last thing I need is my torch to give out (I already have 2 kilns), so when a good deal came up I ordered myself a second one (another HotHead, hopefully old style).

Once I get my second torch, and a get second gas hose, and as long as both are working, if anybody wants to come by and use a hothead when I'm home, and possibly already even making beads, I'm game. It'll be kinda tight spaces, but I'm sure it'll work somehow. Bring or buy your own glass and mandrels (I have some extra) and clean your own beads. I'm not saying I can teach you anything, I'm still a newbie, but if you want to come by and make a bead or three (or three dozen) we can talk about it.