Last week in the club was crazy-busy. Three days were taken up in teaching the basics of glass fusion, with the end goal of taking home a wind chime for the participants. Luckily for me several of them didn't show up, because even with only 3 students, the class took 4 hours, mostly on my feet. With two students on the next day, the class "only" took three hours. The gratification was not only in getting acquainted with new people but having three of them show up for the sale and stock up on glass for future use. The rest of the week was pricing glass for the sale plus all the usual duties. If I'm in the club, 15 people have questions. I can usually answer ten or so.
We're going to have to do something about kiln availability, but that's a major project for next Monday when I try to persuade the membership to authorize the expense of a bigger faster kiln.
Monday this week, finally mostly recovered after one day away from the club since the previous Monday, there was another student to teach. I also had taken on the project of making a couple wind chimes for the club to sell in March at a new event city-wide, called "Italian Festival". All clubs were invited to participate as venders, making this much like our post-Thanksgiving Fall Festival. We don't know how many tables we get yet for our sales. But we'll organize it like we do in the fall so logistics just need different names and numbers in the slots. The template is well known. And one member volunteered to be in charge this time. (Good luck there: three together organized the fall one.)
After discussion among members about ways to make things with an Italian theme, the idea of a flag pattern in wind chimes was posed. It means three strings of glass, one in green, the middle in white, the last in red glass. Just like Italy's flag. Pieces had been saved from the weekend sale in those colors, the club will also supply the rest of what is necessary, and I will do the actual work. The club will get the sale since I'm not paying for supplies.
I suppose by now you are wondering where does a missing box come into this story? It's the small box I've used to carry my glass supplies and tools back and forth to the club. I need what is in it to make the chimes. I used it to teach the classes last week, and would again for Monday. When I was loading up my tote bag for the day's club needs on Monday, I looked for that box. I checked out the library where my craft supplies are stored along with the books and the office stuff. it wasn't there. It wasn't in the tote bag. It wasn't on the dining table. It wasn't on the table next to my chair. I must have left it in the club. After all, I'd forgotten my glue for glass there after using it for the workshops. At least I had that. But maybe the box was somewhere in the glass room or the office for the club.
It wasn't in any of the places I checked there either. I used club supplies for that day's student, and decided I must have overlooked it somewhere in the house after all. You have to know, of course, that I came home later and checked again. And went to the club Tuesday morning and checked again for this box. And returned home yet again empty handed.
I was beginning to wonder exactly who I was mad at. Obviously somebody had assisted my box in leaving the club. What it contained was very light and it may have innocently been tossed in the garbage. We do have members who periodically go through on clean-up / clear-out binges. We need them, but occasionally discover that that one weird thing that nobody knew what it was for or why is had been saved (with no label or note of explanation) is now the missing thing desperately needed by the person who just happens to know why it was where it was and how it is needed.
Oops.
The other alternative I was thinking about in a less than gracious mood was that somebody had looked through the box, recognized its contents, and decided they had the right to appropriate them for their own use. After all, there was no name on the box, right? Those are the same unidentified people who assist in de-cluttering the club of hand tools after a class so they can continue working on something at home. Somehow those never make it back into the club, of course. I didn't say anything to anybody about my suspicious turn of mind, of course. It'd cost me about $15 to replace the total contents, so more annoyance than anything. However....
This morning I got up early as I usually do, and after the dog and I do our necessary duties, we tend to combine forces in my chair at keeping the chill of the room at bay. A combination of TV watching and napping happens during the several hours before I have to be somewhere outside the house. When the clock demanded I start getting mobile and prepared for decent company, I started to set my/our lap blanket on the floor. Unlike most times, I'd sat up fully first, instead of untangling the blanket from the chair and dropping it before setting the chair up. The result is I had a clear view of the floor where the blanket is always dropped in a heap. My hand was already open as I watched the blanket drop and cover that little white box I'd been searching for.
Because of course.
Everything I'd been missing was in it along with a few other things from the workshop that I hadn't put away afterwards. Those were mostly visual aids of many of the different things different glass does in the kiln. That's part of "The First Rule of Glass" on the top of the worksheets for the class.
(Note to self: Print more for new classes... next week.)
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