I am at an age when my friends and I are approaching retirement age….94 or thereabouts! Well actually around 60 – I guess we’re the lucky ones who can retire at an age to still enjoy ourselves with arts and crafts. A friend retired from school at Easter and her colleagues gave her a good send off. We felt that she should have a crafting one too and invited her to a glass workshop. She has a lovely garden so decided that we would have a go at making a windchime. One friend finally couldn’t make the day so she made three peices in advance but then five of us gathered on Monday to create a masterpiece. The retiree hadn’t been to my lovely studio before so it was all new experiences for her. She loved the idea of what we were making and had such a thrill at scoring and breaking her first piece of glass. As ever, we had a colour theme -there were six colours and all had to be used in some form on each piece of the chime. It was put in the kiln and here is the result. It has yet to be strung together but the colours and patterns are fantastic.
I had great fun creating the squiggles. I softened stringers – thin rods of glass – in a candle flame and made squiggles and shapes. If you haven’t had a go at that it’s fun and you shouldn’t burn your fingers as glass is a poor conductor of heat. The instructions are available on line.
As ever, everyone was amazed at the result. If you’d like a windchime for yourself in colours of your choosing get in touch. I’d love to have another reason to get friendly with stringers and a candle flame.
