"A day without laughter is like a day without sunshine." ~ Unknown

Today was a beauuuuutiful sunny day here in Orrefors!

 fresh snow (sort of slushy by lunch time)

 bright SUN!

 blue skies!

 "I see skies of blue, clouds of white, and I think to myself... what a wonderful worldddddd!"

Today at school I worked with Vergard doing mooore wineglasses.  Apparently we are going to be doing this  until the end of next week! But next week we get to use color and practice pulling out really long straight stems! Except today, Vegard and I skipped ahead a little and tried to pull long straight stems, it was so much more fun!  After lunch Marianne did a graal demonstration.  Graal is a very tricky technique which was invented here in Orrefors and is being attempted by the second year Nordic students this week.  I have seen another demo where this was made and the finished piece looked like this:

The one int he rear of this picture is a graal.  It is done by overlaying colors of glass, engraving and sandblasting away designs when the glass is cold and then reheating and finally blowing the engraved piece into a large vase or something.  The one in the front is similar but the design is made by trapping air bubbles under the glass.  Anyway, graal is very Swedish and I cannot wait to try it one day.  Hopefully that day will be soon... Vegard and I had plans of grandeur for the break when the other students aren't around! We are going to attempt a graal and more cool overlay techniques! I think the idea of graal is the only thing that is keeping Vegard from going crazy from the wineglasses haha.

My burn is getting much better! The wonderful burn cream from my Mom is really helping.  It only hurt today when I was working really hard and the blister would leak, but I kept it wrapped all day and it only got wet through at the end of the day.  I think it should be healed up in no time and my finger will be back to working properly and not awkwardly sticking straight out the whole time! And, I didn't have the wear the Micheal glove today, thank god!

After school I saw this adorable sight:

it is a little hard to see but it is a girl riding bareback on an older, small horse

 while leading a TINY pony!

down MY street :)

Also, at the factory today they gave us these: 

 Graphite poker ends.  They were used to poke candle size holes into things... like candle dishes I suppose.  But, I am going to try to carve one into a stamp! Maybe I can make a cool signature stamp or just a cool stamp.  They have screw threads (lines on the inside) to be able to attach them to a wooden handle.  The graphite gets WAY too hot to hold once its been used on the glass.

 I am excited, but a little nervous... I don't want to mess them up!

Later this evening I made myself a very grown up dinner.  I had oven cooked salmon with a mustard, parsley bread crumb top and some risotto!  Sam was totally right, it needed something crunchy... it was all the same texture, good but the same.

  It looked better in real life then this picture but it was getting cold and I was too hungry to try again on the picture.  I have one more portion for tomorrow and then on to something new... probably chicken and beans. I froze my last portion of meatloaf thinking that maybe I would need it later when I am too tired to try to cook something grown up and would normally eat a whole frozen pizza.  Frozen loaf and green beans is probably better for me in the long run.  I am so mature! haha.  

Tomorrow after school I go to step aerobics with Sigrid at the gym... I feel a bit like I should wear leg warmers and a hot pink head band... retro exercising with retro clothes... it is probably good that I only have regular clothes here with me in Sweden ;)