WOW!
That's about all I can say about how much fun we had at the sushi roll tasting and sushi platter making day last Saturday! Sarah Norek makes wonderful sushi rolls, which you can investigate further in the next blog.
Above, we all gathered around the dining room table and got to visit while enjoying the sushi rolls. Sarah (sushi chef) is standing in the center back of the photo.
It was a great time - and we'll do it again, especially for all of you who said you wished you could be here! For now, though, just enjoy the photos...
(Left) Deb contemplates her winged, fire-breathing dragon platter and sauce dishes. Don't tell everyone that Phil cut out the dragon on the ring saw for her, though! :-)
A little bit of mixing, matching and cutting out pieces with the mosaic wheel cutters, and soon the dragon had legs and feet!
A bit of stringers and noodles... and the border was applied!
Deb's finished project: 7"x10" platter; two 3"x3" dipping sauce plates.
Transparent light blue; green dragon with a red wing and red-yellow "flames" shooting from his nostrils! Red-yellow frit "scales" on his body. Borders on the 3" square plates tie in with the trim on the ends of the platter.
Sarah (left) and Mary diligently working on their projects.
Unfortunately, I remembered too late to get everyone's photos! Maybe they will come back again next time and I'll be sure to do that! There was one photo I couldn't use because Michelle told me if she looked silly, I didn't have permission. So, since she wasn't smiling...
Sarah's Set: Abstract design on turquoise with vitrigraph, dots and scrap glass. 7"x10" platter; two 3"x3" dipping sauce plates.
Probably won't be too long before these plates are filled with sushi rolls and wasabi! Remember to check out the next blog to see the photos of the sushi rolls!
Mary's Set: Cherry Blossoms, constructed on transparent cherry red with vitrigraph and custom-color frit (made at Martin's Glass House) flowers. Very clever use of the frit!
Results of Mary's project... 8"x8" platter; two 3"x3" dipping sauce plates. Curiously, the design in the dishes was also in the top that Mary wore that day!
The Megan and John Team (back right side of table in photo at the top) designed this abstract design set: two 6" square plates on transparent light blue with various dots, frit, vitrigraph and scrap glass, with accents in the 3"x3" square dipping sauce plates pickingup the colors in the serving plates.
FUN!
Jill's Set: 7"x10" platter and 3"x3" dipping sauce dishes, white with multi-color stringers and noodles.
In the top photo, Jill's face can't be seen. Clockwise, I think Deb (or Vicki?) was sitting next to John, then Jill was at the middle of the right side of the table between Deb (or Vicki?) and Michelle (in brown top, front right of photo).
Michelle loved everything in the studio, but fell head over heels in love with the blue in this glass, so she opted for the "swirl" design instead of making some other design. But - that's OK! It looks great!
Then she spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out the dots into separate jars by color! Boy... I am so tempted to put that photo of her here so you can see why she probably did that... but, I gave my word...
Patty's Set: 6"x6" and 3"x3" sushi and dipping sauce plates in transparent yellow with a celebration of assorted vitrigraph colors and dots.
Patty (in photo at the top, wearing a black top) is sitting at the left front side of the table next to Guyla (who is wearing the turquoise top).
Guyla's Set: 6"x6" sushi plate, black with Amazon green vitrigraph and dots in red and white; 3"x3" dipping sauce plate in Amazon green with black vitrigraph and dots in red and white. Fun!
By the way - I forgot to mention that I hope that I have everyone's plates photographed in their "upright" positions! Just goes to show you that they look good from any angle!
Vicki's Set: Paw prints everywhere, with inclusions of copper "leaves"! We ran out of light blue transparent dots, so Vicki used bits of stringer for the "toes" - but they came out looking like dots. Very cool!
All in all, I think the sushi rolls must have been pretty inspiring, judging from the creations these students made. We definitely need to do it again!
Holey Pineapple Slice, Batman! Am I excited about the up-coming Fruit of the Month Workshop! 
I can visualize half a real pineapple, scooped out, with some kind of pineapple fruit salad inside, served on this clever dish. It was a lot of fun to make - and even more fun to see when it came out of the kiln! (Anyone have an idea how to scoop out a real pineapple? We tried a grapefruit knife to get the fruit out from the ends. It works pretty well. Pretty juicy, too!)
Coming up with ideas for making the smaller round dish (6" diameter) was fun. I'm sure you will come up with many more clever ways to design a pineapple slice. This small dish was made by cutting strips of yellow and light amber glass into pineapple wedges, filling in the spaces with a random mix of assorted frit sizes in ivory, yellow, white and amber. The edge was done with coarse frit in amber, yellow, olive and moss. With a live pineapple model at the workshop, you will see colors and structures to inspire your design. 
So, have you figured out yet why I just love to do glass fusing? It's not just the feel of the warm, glistening glass that is alluring, but the surprise of how things look when they come out that keeps drawing me to the kiln in the middle of the night to see how things turn out! Take a look at the leaves on the end of the dish. What a surprise! Lots of leaves! These were made with three differenct colors of green.
And every piece will come out differently. I experimented with a technique to add more than one layer of leaves, which makes the dish look much different than I bet you thought it would look, didn't it? This dish has two leaf layers, but I'll bet with a little diligence, we could put three layers in there. On the other hand, maybe two layers is enough. :-)
Here is the Martin's Glass House Calendar for April 2009! 
