Last weekend, Drew and I went down to Half Moon Bay to try our hands at glassblowing. It was a “bucket list” type of thing, and Drew’s idea to celebrate this kind of big birthday he was having.
The class was in this little studio next to a winery. Half Moon Bay is so charming. It’s easy to have a good time when you’re in the most beautiful part of the world.
Right after we arrived, this other (older) couple came in and the woman started making all this annoying comments and asking too many questions. None of us – Drew, I, Doug (the teacher), or the woman’s husband – seemed interested in what she had to say. When he asked them what they were there to make (pumpkins or tumblers) she said they weren’t there for the class, that they “came in off the street.” But wait…hadn’t she just told us that they had to make a U-turn on 92 because they drove past it? So what’s the truth? She was crazy. Luckily they left right after that.
While we were waiting for the other two people in the class to arrive, Doug told us he would do some work on a project and we could watch. He was creating a decanter, because apparently some guy on the east coast is doing all this work with infused vodkas and ordered a bunch of “hand-made vessels.” He shaped this gorgeous decanter, it was so time-consuming, and then it cracked and he dumped the whole thing into this discard bucket. Yikes.
When the class started, Drew went first (thank goodness). Doug took him through the whole process, from start to finish. It’s harder than it looks – keeping the whole pole turning the entire time might be the hardest part, especially with gloves on. At one point I thought that we weren’t going to do any of the actual blowing, but we got to do that part too. Doug must have been teaching this class for a long time, because he’s got the system down pat – how much to let the student do, and how much to take over. I probably only did 30% of the work creating my tumbler, but I was so involved in the whole thing, and I did a little of everything.
There were some questionable safety issues – like when we were supposed to just leave the propane torch on, but it rocked on the base so you couldn’t set it down stable and walk away. But all’s well that ends well! We left our tumblers in the freezy box, and went back on Monday afternoon to pick them up.
Both our tumblers are a little lopsided, and we don’t have any immediate plans to actually drink out of them, but we love them both and they look so friendly together. And taking a glassblowing class was super fun and something that I would never have dreamed up on my own. I definitely recommend Doug’s class if you’re interested in stuff like that, or even if you’re not. You never know!
The Cameraphone Diaries 