Pucker Up & Blow

This summer has been filled with lots of…stuff, but in between all of that, my husband and I have also had a lot of fun laughing and spending time together while the kids are away. And of course, doing chores that somehow don’t get done during the rest of the year. 

When the kids are gone, we look for things to do together that are different, and one of the things he suggested was glass blowing. There’s a glass blowing school he passes on his way to and from work everyday and he thought it sounded interesting, so I checked it out. The school offered a variety of options, including the chance for a group to make glass objects. The price was reasonable and we found friends to join us—she was in favor because it was a craft, and he liked the idea of fire.

You know how when you’re little, adults make you think you’re doing something for yourself, but really you’re not? Well, that was kind of this experience. First, they gave us a demo of what we’d be doing. With everything at more than 2,000 degrees, I was suitably nervous about touching anything, even the tools I was allowed to touch. The studio was 20 degrees hotter than outside—luckily it was in the seventies and raining outside, so we were just sweating, rather than melting. After the demo, which looked easier than it actually was, of course, we were told to choose one of four items to make—a paperweight, a bowl, a vase or a flower. Two of us chose a paperweight, because of the cool glass design you created inside a sphere of glass, one chose a bowl and one a vase.

At that point, we took turns and along with our guide, we made our objects. Remember how I said when we were little the adults “helped” us? Well, this experience was similar. Our guide never fully left us alone, and that was probably a good thing. The tools were heavy, the glass was hot and none of us knew what we were doing. The men (I use that term loosely) in our group—my husband and my friend’s husband—enjoyed making wisecracks and obnoxious comments throughout. Based on the type of comments they made and we laughed at, there’s a halfway decent chance I can take the experience either as a tax write-off or as inspiration for a future book. Regardless, I’m pretty confident that other than to pick up our objects, we’re never allowed back.

But, we didn’t burn the place down, didn’t break anything or anyone, and I think what we made turned out halfway decent. We'll know in about a week.