"I don't know where I am going from here, but I promise it won't be boring!" ~ David Bowie

The count down to being home in America started a few days ago but now it is really on because I am in single digits now... pretty exciting and TERRIFYING.  I guess it is the definition of 'bittersweet' right?  I am sad to be leaving school, all my good friends here and working with glass ALL the time... excited to be back with Sam, living in Austin, Tx, seeing my friends and family and having my horse again!  A lot of complex emotions are rolling around in this body... 

Well, my last few days have been filled with graals and ariels on my last blanks.  These pictures are actually stuff I did list week but somehow I have managed not to take hardly any pictures this week...

So, here I am marvering some graals to flatten the designs so as not to get any unwanted bubbles:

 This one has the penrose staircase on it... should have done it in a nontransparent color....

 This one is 3 carousel animals going around it in pink and blue.  I tried to pick it up first but didn't get it stuck to the pipe properly and dropped it on the floor! I managed to get it back on the piece after Vegard did some running around there was a lot of reheating. 

 Here is the penrose one... can't hardly see the design :(  Oh well, I guess it was a learning experience in the long run... and it had nice straight sides luckily.

 And here is the finished animals one.  Those bubbles you see at the top of the horse are the only evidence of a whole lot of cracks which resulted in the dropping.  But with some luck and a lot of heat they melted back together and all I have are these bubbles!

 I think the swan looks a bit scary... or angry haha.

 So Wednesday I spent trying to finish up everything I liked. So, here I have both of the above graals, a polar bear graal with some special northern lights effects (sort of), an ariel, a nice stripy graal which could out live almost any natural disaster (it is super heavy and big) and of course the wonderful encalmo.  Also a couple of christmas ornaments thrown in there.

Now I am packing, trying to weigh my suitcases and figure out how on earth I am going to get everything I want to home! This weekend I am going to Oslo to visit Rosanne for a few days which will be a really nice distraction from the stress of moving home and then moving to Texas and all that entails! Also, I am slowly saying goodbye to all my friends here and trying not to be too sad... just lots of little sads spread around I think Monday will be the big sad day.