Monday, September 13, 2010

Major waves, little beach glass





My college roommate, Cindi Armstrong, comes to visit me every year over Labor Day. When I was teaching, our time together was limited. But, now that I'm retired we have lots of time to visit and enjoy our usual adventures (with a few new ones each year. Like visiting the new winery and discovering a sweet little wine called "Dazzle").

We always make visits to our camper on Lake Erie. One of our favorite pastimes is to walk the beach looking for beach glass. One would think that really strong waves would bring in more glass, but sometimes it doesn't seem to work that way. Maybe what the waves bring in, they take back out.

This year the weather was pretty violent. There were some pretty heavy duty storms with lightning and very, very strong winds. The waves were white capping and the flags were flying straight out.

Cindi and I braved the weather and headed to the beach for a short (and I mean short) walk (we didn't want to get blown away). We found several larger pieces and a variety of colors. The first thing I found was a brown piece of ironware with an interesting design on it. After that there was nothing of exception.

Another thing we usually do is make a piece of jewelry. Two years ago I taught her how to do Kumihimo and last year she worked with the metal clay for the first time. She made a piece that was similar to one of my pieces. This year, we again did metal clay and combined it with beach glass.

This time, Cindi tried her hand at designing and created her own original piece. We added the beach glass after firing with wire or thread. Cindi's piece has the blue glass. I think she did a great job!

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