Creature Comforts

Since high school, my daughter, Ellen has volunteered at the Nan Pipestem Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Tres Pinos, California. Each year they have a fundraising auction and dinner as their primary fund event, which will be this month. You can view more information at http://www.npwrc.org/events2009dinnerauction.html . This rehabilition center is a third generation effort, with no governmental funding, and to say it runs on a shoestring is a serious overstatement. If love and commitment could be burned as fuel, these folks have a power plant.

I will be making a stained glass panel for the auction. I have two more weeks to finish cutting the glass, foil, solder, frame in cedar, and mail to California. Piece of cake. The design, used with very kind permission of Focal Point Glassworks http://www.focalpointglassworks.blogspot.com/ is a lovely waterfall landscape.

You will note that I'm saving cutting out the glass for the green part of the tree almost until last. That's because it's the glass from Hell. It's Uroboros granite ripple, emerald green, and it is absolutely beautiful glass. Probably because of my inexperience, but handling that stuff is like putting my fingers in a food processor...on purpose.

Hopefully I'll get it all cut out today, and start foiling tomorrow. It's supposed to rain all this week, which is great glass weather. I can work on it all day and not feel guilty about staying inside.

Ok well, flash forward a few hours...the glass is all cut. I managed to not flay the meat off my fingers. Actually..the glass isn't too bad if you're careful. The last time I handled any was about a year ago, so maybe I'm just more at ease.

Tomorrow...foil!