Dose of Molten glass for the lampwork addict please

Yep, I have been getting increasingly DESPERATE to lay my hands on some glass rods and melt them down into thier new life. I have unpacked my garage to the point where I can now step into my workspace and touch the glass rods in thier holders .....YAY .... but still not quite good enough.

So, whats the easy solution you might ask? Well, I drove over to Bilgola to my friend Gails studio and Halleluja, we melted glass together for a few hours. It is really on just feeding the craving, but like any addict, I am sure a small hit is better than none at all. I taught Gail how to make some complex murrini cane (which she did very well at) and she let me use her humungous torch (a GTT Delta for the afficioniado's out there) to make my first unsupervised paperweight. The decision to try out the stumpsucker and make a paperweight was a quick one and so I made a very fast and dodgy-arsed setup which took me all of 15 min to make..... bit of a shame, but better than an empty paperweight, or one with just frit inside. I made a couple leaves, a gumblossom, some aussie flowers (a bottlebrush that resembled a toilet brush and some non-sneeze inducing wattle) and the main feature of a red backed spider with one leg missing - fortunately in the preheating stage we managed to partially melt another leg so he is not lop-sided.

Here is a pic of the offending article.... please shut your eyes to the haze, the smudging and the REALLY shitty shaping job I did. This was the first time that I had made a paperweight totally myself...... yep, I was a bit scared to be honest, but it was really fun (not getting it off the punty) and hopefully they can only get better!

House move from hell, still unpacking......aaarrgh

I have missed the boat to do more torching in the cool weather I think, but here is a particularly unflattering pic of me in the middle of my messy boghole of a lampworking desk just before the packing up began......................... artistic temperament = organised mess (at least that is what I told myself)

Yep the house move from hell is over, but the unpacking is feeling a bit like the neverending story or groundhog day..... box after box after box etc. I am sure you who have moved themselves totally understand the pain. We have somehow managed to get most of the house unpacked (apart from small pockets of boxes in corners), but the garage is a real disaster and my lampworking zone is a particularly nasty quagmire of boxes and miscellaneous "stuff". I reckon I either need to lose about 60kg or not fit between the boxes to even reach my glass.... well to be honest the 60kg could come off irrespective of that issue, but we had better not go there :-)

Now that the rain is giving it a short rest here in Western Sydney I thought I might get some of this rubbish out of my space. I am getting increasingly desperate to set up my torches and kiln and melt some glass. My dreams of sorting out the stuff as I unpack and start working in a pristine well organised environment is very quickly being given the bums rush so that I can just get some lampworking done................ If I wouldn't set alight to the cardboard boxes and melt the plastic ones I might already have lit the flame.......... hey, thats one way to sort out the garage ;-)