pics from Hornby Islands Christmas Fair 2010

First a quick and blurry look at my table

then a quick and slightly less blurry glance around the hall

about 3/4 of the vendors have arrived and are setting up ...



we finish our trip around the hall with a shot of Stephanie Wells' knee high shark skin boots - may not be real shark skin .... I got a funny look and funnier story when I asked to take a picture of her boots.

A good sign I hope.

Hopefully a sign of things to come ... today I sold two pendant necklaces on Etsy.

The Christmas Fair on Hornby Island is Saturday and I hope that the roads stay drivable. Specifically Denman Island's roads. Denman has some pretty steep spots that get crazy in the snow and ice.

To get to Hornby from the mainland (Vancouver, Seattle etc) you must take a ferry to Vancouver Island, drive to Buckley Bay, take a ferry to Denman Island, drive across Denman and finally take a ferry to Hornby.

My oldest boy plans to share a table in the gym with another kid and sell pictures that he's drawn. A bunch of kids plan to have tables this year - I can only imagine the mayhem in there. Fortunately I'll be in the Hall with the adults, good music and even better food.

The most important thing: remember to bring LOTS of lighting with a power strip.

too cold to run equipment

According to the manufacturers specifications - the M15 oxygen concentrator should not be operated in temperatures below 50F and mpt stored in temps below 30F. This means that I am done making glass until it warms up again - which could very well be April or May. What a bummer...

Hopefully I will sell enough glass at the Christmas Fair (a week from today) to place a bulk beeswax order. Beeswax is crazy expensive when compared to paraffin but it's a far nicer product. The plan is to make candles all winter until I can start making glass again.

a few more pendants from yesterday

I'm pretty happy with this one. I'm using the same jade encased in yellow that I show in the previous post but with a more interesting color combination and more complex technique.

This is the first hoop made with my new "Peter's tweezers". Normally I leave a piece of glass sticking off the pendant and form that into a hoop with a seamless weld. This time I made a wedge shape of glass and bored a hole through it with aligned steel pokes set on tweezers.The trade off is more stress in the glass from the poking VS time saved from making perfect seamless welds.

It turns out that, as with all short cuts, it doesn't save me any time at all. I completed stressed out the glass with those tweezers and it took as much time dealing with that as it does to make the bail normally.

Further experimentation is called for.

Bail made normally ... the photograph is a little misleading. There is clearly a seam of color where the clear hoop meets the turbo cobalt background. However there is no physical seam in the glass.

simple rod implosion - snow white encased in alaskan thunder with ruby k background. This is the pendant with the pierced hoop.

rod implosion - 3 stages - silver fuming with snow white encased in alaskan thunder implosion, silver unobtanium frit with silver fuming back and turbo cobalt background. This is the pendant with the normally maid bail shown above.