Vacation?

So well, I'm on vacation. No, we didn't leave the island. It's a good thing too. I'll be driving back to Hilo tomorrow to take care of some stuff and so I reactivated the botanical stuff in my Etsy shop that I couldn't have shipped while on vacation otherwise.

I meant to post the first incarnation of my lampwork collection necklace weeks ago but didn't get around to it yet, and I did (I am on vacation after all) manage to take that apart and put together again, with some of my own beads wire wrapped in it as spacers. It doesn't exist anymore in the same way, but here it is/was:


As I came across a pretty awful picture of my latest lampwork beads while uploading pictures, here's a picture of those too:
At least his is only an awful picture of what I otherwise consider reasonably OK (newbie) beads.

And if you absolutely have to know this, I spent an hour or so on the phone to the telescope tonight too. And I'm so glad I got the truck fixed when I did. That's what we drove over here in. I love J&J. Called in today, can take DH's car in tomorrow, that's why I'm driving back to Hilo.

So, would you call this a vacation?
(I'll be picking up some forgotten items too, but I wouldn't have driven over for them alone)

A couple of UKIRT updates

It looks like UKIRT (which is where my work is) will go to a minimalist operation mode at least until March 2012. For us in the instrument and telescope software group that will mean some interesting new work as we have to make everything capable of being operated remotely. We have been able to operate (and even power cycle) some things remotely for a long time, and now there will be more of them, and different ones. There's bound to be a bit of fun (software engineering kind of fun) in that - and some time pressure. As JCMT are still in the process of shared risk observing (on sky science commissioning with visiting observers) of their amazing new instrument SCUBA2, we're going to be busy.

Another new thing from UKIRT is a new data release of the WFCAM UKIDSS galactic plane survey. You can look at the whole thing or details here - if I'm honest, I could look around that thing for days. (I hope I'm allowed to make this public, but it's on a website that's public. And, advance warning, there a heck of a lot of data in it)

Not sure whether I should have made these beads

Last weekend, in spite of the wind, I did make some beads. It was gusting about 30 mph and sometimes blowing hot air right into my face, but I did anyway. The beads turned out awful. I boiled the glass I was using,



and most of them have broken off ends:

However, being still really new to lampwork (in terms of doing it myself, not in terms of being exposed to it), I learned something, or at least I hope I did. Today's beads are in the kiln, and I tried to keep the glass further away from the flame. And yes, you can very obviously boil glass on a HotHead.

Some weekend ...

Friday I took the afternoon off from work to take a lampwork friend and a friend of hers up to Mauna Kea. We had a blast, and I may add a picture of the two in the control room of the telescope where I work later.

Coming home, checking my email, I found a tsunami alert, and immediately forwarded it to my lampwork friend who was staying much closer to sea level than we live, and was going to go counting whales in the morning. Checking up on what was happening elsewhere kept me up rather late.

I got woken up by the tsunami sirens about 5:45 in the morning. Checked my email, checked the reports, sent email to the owner of the place where I had planned to be at a swap meet that morning, saying I wasn't driving down the hill (basically), and tried to get some more sleep. With the sirens going off hourly, that didn't last very long. I spent the morning glued to the TV local news live feed and watched the water going in and out of the bay. Got some more sleep after the tsunami warning was canceled.

Mind you, while this wasn't a disastrous tsunami here, it was very real, just not very big. Today's newspaper is one that I'm going to keep. What the mayor said, about Icepond running almost dry, was scary enough. Reading in the paper today that the water almost ran over the "forever bridge" - the bridge at the end of Kamehameha Avenue that too forever to rebuild - brought that home real good. I live at 750 ft elevation. By my husband's extrapolation it would take about a magnitude 11 earthquake to get to us here, but any major landslide will do the same.

Today started out normal, but if I had known that the weather front was coming down the island chain as fast as it did I clearly wouldn't have gotten 7 buckets of mulched green waste when I dumped ours to be recycled. I had some grocery shopping to do and by the time I got out it was raining. I got some of the mulch out of the truck after getting the groceries put away, but the rest may by now be floating around in the back of my truck.

I was planning on making some beads, but wasn't sure about doing that in this kind of weather, so after dealing with the rest I checked up with my lampwork friend who had been evacuated over in Kona, and was scheduled to go back home yesterday too. She did, on a red-eye, after very little to no sleep. As I saw her post I knew she was up. Waking her up even by just phone noise was the last thing I wanted to do, but she was very much awake and I'm really glad I talked to her because it made me take a brief break in the rain as the opportunity to run up the kiln and light my torch. And experiment. I'm sure I boiled some glass again, but they aren't just single color spacers this time (thanks Jill).

It's raining. Finally. I wish I had gotten more of the lawn done before it started, but unless I would have given up the being glued to the TV and made beads then, and weedwhacked that afternoon and done basically nothing today it wouldn't work. I can't type the day after I weedwhack. And I'm pretty sure I can't keep mandrels and glass steady either, though that one I haven't tried yet. I'm not sure I want to either. And this being an El Nino winter I'm sure it's going to stop raining here again too.

Some lampworking glass rods available in Hilo again

After talking with a few people in the community, it looks like I'm going to be a glass rod supplier for our local lampworkers. If you need the occasional rod of COE 104 clear, or some colors, email me. I have a bunch of transparents, some opaques including reds, starting from $1.-/rod, tax included, but you'll have to email me in advance to carry glass around. I have some COE 96 rods as well, and some frit, but for the time being that's it.

What Maren did on her vacation - part I

Never mind that it was too short. I would have loved to meet with Michele Smith (mikala on LE) again, but that didn't come out to be, I misbooked, getting back to Hilo a day earlier than I had planned but there is always more work to do here

anyway. However, there are a few more things available at Trudy's Island Art in the Kona International Market now, and Kona Beads and Jewelry have Royal Poinciana spacers again too.
What ever jewelry I made will follow in another post.

Everybody needs a calendar - AGLF fundraising

You may be aware of that part of the lampwork and other artist community has been under attack from a wacko. This is going to court. To pay for attorneys, some money is needed and those attacked and those concerned have been raising fund for a while.

I know this is a bit on the late side for a calendar, but lampwork artist Elizabeth Wait (aka betsymn) of Greyhavenart has put together a gorgeous calendar of lampwork beads that is sold to raise finds for the AGLF (Artisan and Glassworkers' Legal Fund). I have mine. You can either get it from her Etsy shop or from Debbie Pierce on her web page that also has links to the other AGLF fundraising items. I believe that ordering direct cuts down on overheads and gives more money to the legal fund.

I will add at least one fo the images to this post, but from a computer where I can paste in the URL.