October 22- October 29, 2014 Fort Collins, Colorado

With all the excitement of my sinus surgery I have gotten behind in the blog. We went to Denver to meet with Cindy our realtor about selling my house in Denver. The market looks good now. We also packed up a couple of my things. We really have no room to put anything in the two bedroom apartment over the garage where John had been living and don’t want to pay for storage. I have to be pretty selective of what I take. If we ever get tired of traveling in the motor home we will move into the front house on John’s property and I would like some of my furniture then.  Fortunately motor home life  has made me loose my attachment to possessions. There has been an excellent renter in the front house who takes good care of the house and the yard and pays rent on time.

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John and the neighbor Chris moving my treadle sewing machine up the stairs. Chris did not come home till after John moved the heaviest piece-my mother’s cedar hope chest. John is so big and strong.

This is an antique ice box I found in the alley, refinished and made a stained glass front for and kept sheets in .  Here is mother’s cedar chest. I limited what I took of mother’s knick knacks to what would fit in here.

Meanwhile we are still having lovely autumn weather.  Unusually warm, in the 70’s during  the day and 40’s at night. Sunny.  John has still be walking 8-12 miles a day and getting very svelte. Sometimes I go for part of the walk. I saw this praying mantis on the bike path. I did not know we had them in Colorado.

We went to a reception our friend Barry had at his home so we could all meet his daughter and grand daughter who are visiting.  I fused these two iris pieces that when I feel better I will paint some gold on and slump into the molds they are sitting on. Hopefully I will get them done in time to take to the big glass show this next week.

October 20-21, 2014 Fort Collins, Colorado

We went on a hike in the foothills at a park called Reservoir Ridge. Lovely autumn day. High 70’s and sunny.

The cottonwood trees are turned a beautiful gold. This is the view from the top of the ridge looking down into the Poudre  river valley.

Coming back to the car we got this great view of the lake, cottonwoods and golden grass. Amazingly there are still some flowers blooming. White asters, prickly pear fruit and blanket flowers.

spurge, yellow asters, purple fringe, butter and eggs, and yellow flower with burr seeds.

Jeff Sambur dropped by this afternoon. He lives in this van he named Barley and travels, much like we do most of the time. It was nice to finally see it. I flattened these two bottles in the big kiln to make sure it is still working ok. It sat for close to 5 years in my garage in Denver unused. It worked great. I love the one on the right. It is a tequila bottle that had the cactus upright on the bottom. I was not sure how it would slump, but looks cool.

October 18-19, 2014 Fort Collins, Colorado

Indian summer. High 70’s, sunny and beautiful.

 

Tim from Lighten up Electric installing a 220 plug in the garage for my big kiln. Woo Hoo. I took off biking and saw these kids doing Battle Gaming they called it. Shields and foam weapons. Looked like lots of fun. John said as a kid they did the same thing, just used sticks.

Battle Gaming. The rope swings on the river.

Tim had to come back Saturday morning to finish it up, here is the last step, a new plug on the kiln and I am operational! Today John took me boating on the Poudre River through town. I usually see this part of the river from the bike path.  He took these great action shots of me. Here I am dropping a diversion damn.

 

Another diversion damn, but this one had a chute, and me in a manmade rapid.

      

Most of the river in town is like this, beautiful autumn day to be out.  This evening we attended Jeff’s 60th birthday party. He rented a bar and provided food and drinks. Big turn out, got to visit with lots of friends. Jeff and John worked together on the fire dept and he is now living in a van and traveling the USA and we run into him occasionally on the road.

October 14, 2014 Denver, Colorado

We drove down to Denver to move a couple things from my house to the Fort Collins house. My cousin is moving out of my house and we are just going to sell it rather than be long distance land lords. If we move back into a house it will be the Fort Collins house, Fort Collins is much smaller.

Some snow on the front range on the way down. We also went to the Denver Botanic gardens to see the Chihuly glass exhibit.  The red one is Tropical Fiori in the Conservatory.

The gardens themselves were pretty cool too. These are flowers in the conservatory, in the background lower right corner is also some red glass.  The water one is called the Monet Fiori. In times past the gardens had a bridge curving up over this pond, looked like the bridge in the Monet painting.

This is the Blue and Purple boat and Walla Wallas in the Japanese garden. I love these pebble walks in what used to be the Chinese garden. They feel really cool on your bare feet.

 

Saffron tower and cattails. The yellow tower is made of neon lights.  The second shot is part of the Perennial Fiori.

  

This Summer sun is huge. Two more shots of the Perennial Fiori. I like the stripped glass, they are  set off by the garden colors. There was more glass, but didn’t want to overwhelm you with photos.

We stopped at this monument, it says on this site in 1935 Louise Ballast created the Cheese burger. His restaurant the Humpty Dumpty drive-in was Colorado’s first drive-in and was commonly known as the Barrel. The cheeseburger trademark was registered by Mr. Ballast on March 5,  1935. Who knew the first drive-in and cheese burger were in Colorado. We moved my big kiln (the blue one) into my tiny studio. There is no more room for anything, probably not even room for it. I will be glad to move back onto the bus and not have to move and store all this stuff! But in the meantime, what a fabulous studio to play in.

October 11-13, 2014 Fort Collins, Colorado

The newest masterpiece  in stages. It took me the good part of at least a week to make this. By the end it was fired 4 times. It is 12 inches in diameter.

 

I first fired two round pieces of glass together. Then air brushed on the copper luster and fired it again. I cut a stencil by hand of oak leaves.  The compressor needed another regulator, so I had to wait till John could fix it to sandblast off the luster around the stencil. John fixed the compressor the next morning so I could sandblast the masterpiece. Here it is in the blaster, then how it looks with the stencil taken off. It is wet here so it is shiny.

  

Me with my respirator and ear protection on while I blast. Scary looking artist. This  is what it really looks like when dry , with a matte finish and with the dichroic glass leaves and acorns. I will  fire polish it to shine up the matte finish left by the sand blaster.

I stuck it back in the kiln and went for a lovely 5 mile walk with John along the river. The trees are changing and the light was nice.  I love this tall golden grass.

 

John has been walking about 10 miles a day along the river in the morning. This is the route he takes.  He got in 15 miles today after walking with me.

   

Beautiful colors and then a nice sunset. Gallardia and sunflowers are still blooming.

The next morning I pulled the piece out of the kiln and it is all shiny and the dichroic glass is fused to it. I painted gold around the leaves and slumped it into a plate mold, and here it is the next day.  Came out nice.

 

We went for another nice walk along the river. I walked 5 miles, John walked 10. Here is a guy enjoying the nice fall weather.

 

Beautiful colors along the river. When we got back we moved my glass bins across the garage. We are going to bring my big kiln up from Denver and put it where the glass was.  I had to take all the glass out of the bins, John moved them, then I put it all back in.