Fret not... or do.

We've developed an understanding with our glass-blowing friend. She lets us help make cool stuff, and I bring cookies. In November, when we made Christmas ornaments, I even brought some pasta salad for dinner.  Hopefully, she'll never realize that I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, without any other perks, because she also gives us one of the pieces we make each time we help her, and we're slowly filling a shelf with her outstanding work.  I like that collection.

"Fret" is the colored bits of glass.  Here, she's laid stripes of two different colors on the marver (big steel table). By rolling the gather (glob of clear glass) over this fret, she can get two different regions of color on the final piece.

Fret has already been melted into this piece in the glory hole (go ahead and laugh. We always do), but you can still see two distinct regions of color.

For a single color, she usually collects the fret directly from these bowls.

This shot is harder for me to get, because I took it when I was supposed to be focused on my job of holding the ornament steady while she applies a loop of clear glass to the top for hanging.  This loop also seals the hole left when we remove the piece from the blowpipe.

This is my view for a lot of the forming.  I sit on a little box and provide hot air. It's a little like a management position that way.

Adding another hanging loop. This ornament was treated with some special powder she had to get that cracked-snow look.

You can see dimples on the sides of this piece. She squeezed it from the end with long tweezers (on the bench beside her). That was the first step...

The second was stretching the material, then rotating the pipe while holding the end of the stretch in line with the pipe to get a long, twisty piece.  It was supposed to be practice for a candy cane shape, but things went downhill from here. Still good practice!