Debi van Zyl

My sister and I went to a glass blowing class a few weeks ago. It was so much harder than I imagined. It turned out to be a Christmas ornament making class, for which we were not mentally prepared. She and I had much more grandiose ideas about what would happen in the class. We imagined fiery furnaces, large pipes, thick leather gloves; instead we got pre-blown glass tubes, individual burners and some safety glasses.

For some reason I had imagined we'd start off big. We'd start off with some big crude stapes... I imagined I'd walk away from class with a mildly-revolting-but-interesting clear glass shape that maybe, just maybe, I could turn into a terrarium. I was so very wrong. Instead I made some really wonderful but very wonky Christmas tree ornaments.

R bought us a little Christmas tree for the first time last year, and turned some of the urchins I collected from my dives into ornaments. I'm looking forward to this year's little tree and seeing what he does with these little oddities.