So yesterday I was visiting my friend Margaret, and all over her work space were these glorious collections of rod-ends—overflowing oblong boxes, plunged into vases, stacked into little dishes—all kinds of glass, including many hand-pulled and one-of-a-kind colors, their only commonality having a proximate coe of 104; otherwise, all different, all calling to be cleaned, organized, and incorporated into something or other.

So, of course we worked exclusively with Bullseye.

Margaret kindly put up with my wishes to clean all the 104 stuff off the table before importing the BE, even to the point of accepting my worry that I might inadvertantly mix her 104 and 90 glass as an excuse; but oh, the things I could make, I sometimes think, if only I were just a little less anal.

series of scrap beads made with shattered CiM ginger, ‘dopped’ onto light ivory, rolled in brown, cream and similar TEs; hollow, ranging in size from 10x15mm to 15x17mm. 2007.

These beads are a good example. One of the rods from Color is Messy had an air pocket in it, and my efforts to work it without preheating in the kiln failed utterly, resulting in a great deal of frit all over my table. I carefully swept it up and saved it in a little dish, which I then incorporated into beads by heating a light ivory rod and plunging it into the dish to gather up the frit. Then I rolled the resulting bead in TE, especially brown, or dotted it with ASK colors, or even rolled it in (relatively speaking) finer leftover frit. The result is the beads above.

They're not terrifically exciting beads, but my oh my that “ginger” color is the lushest, yummiest orange tint (what was called back in the day, with equal logic, peach) I've thus encountered. It interacts with TE whites and creams in some intriguing ways, yielding hints of copper green.

I also kind of like the way the powder mades fuzzy stripes, the results of putting it on while the bead was still ridged from the coiling process I use to make hollows, and then melting the coils flat.

Nothing especially earthshattering, but fun little beads I admit to having grown on me. Nevertheless, if I immediately make a habit of using stuff up before it ever gets a chance to accumulate properly, how am I to make the really good kind of odds'n’ends beads? —The ones where your work area needw to be 2 inches (5 cm) deep in rods, stringer and bits?

(The interesting thing is experiencing the various levels of compulsion. Compared to some of my more relaxed friends, I'm ridiculously anal; but I have a couple of other lampworking friends who find even my level of disorder completely unworkable. What the slobs do not seem to understand, however, is that we neatniks are not more virtuous; we are more crazy, driven by the need to tidy our workspaces before we can even begin to think about doing something productive.)

file started 16nov; additional writing 19nov.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.