Solo More Than the Daily Grind

[Saiyin]

10th Summer 518 AV
"Speech"
"Others"

Saiyin was already out of the door before the dawn rest had even ended. She walked through the swirling fog, feeling it permeate through to every inch of bare skin, even though she tried to bundle herself into the cloak as deeply as she could. Saiyin didn't have much in the way of spare funds, otherwise she might have bought herself something in the latest fashion, some snuggly coat or wrap to add that extra layer of comfort. Instead, she forced her way at a raring speed, her steps clomping through the city as she made her usual morning commute and barely took a glance at the looming shadows and shapes that occasionally peeped from within the realm of the mythical.

There wasn't much to occupy her mind, other than her work, and so it was that she reached Sesr Glassworks in good time with little incident. She had a full day of stock production planned, which was one of the reasons for her promptness. There was nothing better than to have a worthwhile job to occupy her time and her hands; Sesr Glassworks was fast becoming much, much more than a hobby and simple way of earning kina. Instead, the Glassworks was becoming an obsession.

Saiyin strode into the workshop out the back, and began to rustle up energy into the ovens. The process was a long one, that required time and plentiful amounts of patience, as she shovelled coal, charcoal, and carefully coaxed flame into the bowels of the rudimentary machine. By the time it was ready her hands were blackened with dust and dirt, and she was sweating profusely. With even more patience, she loaded the sand mix inside the crucible and kept a careful eye on it as it heated and formed the bubbling, red-hot liquid that was what she required.

With the furnace door open, heat was rapidly escaping into the room and steaming up the window. But Saiyin's eyes were watching the bubbling glass, trying to ascertain whether or not it was ready. A bubble formed, perfectly cherry-red, and Saiyin stirred it with the blowpipe, feeling like some mad cook working at a superheated broth. The clay tool moved with ease through the liquid- it was ready, then. Haste was required now, so she pooled an amount onto the end of the pipe and kept it rotating as she pulled the whole lot out of the furnace and slammed the door shut with her elbow.

There was a rapidly decreasing amount of time before the glass cooled too much to be workable, and in that time she had to formulate the basis of the first item she'd decided to make that day, that being a decent batch of jars. It wasn't the most exciting of projects, on the face of it, but to Saiyin the task was a fascinating one. Her biggest question was whether or not she would make straight sides or rounded. She suspected rounded would be easier but less neat, but honestly she didn't know what she would go for.

Either way, there was no time to waste. She turned the glass over and over whilst resting the blowpipe on the edge of the marver, and leant over to blow into the glass. She kept her breath measured and slow enough so that she could watch the glass expand, keeping a careful eye on the bubble of air that pricked inside the darkening glass.

Post	Total
573	573

[Saiyin]

"Speech"
"Others"

Saiyin pulled her lips from the blowpipe just before she puffed too hard into the glass. The bead of air within the red taffy-like glass was almost too big. She'd ticked over the mechanics of the jars whilst she'd walked to work, and she'd decided they'd need to be thicker than glasses and bowls and suchlike, simply because they didn't need to look quite so decorative. That was all well and good, but it didn't help her if she decided to blow too hard anyway. She mentally shook her head at herself, but continued.

It was time to heat the glass again, yet a little mild panic wiggled it's way into her brain as she heard the sound of the furnace... Much too quiet for her liking! She pulled the door open with a rag of tatty old leather acting as her mitt- lo and behold, the furnace was not as wild as it should be. Still, the heat that blasted out should be enough to placate the proto-jar. She hoped.

Saiyin carefully balanced the edge of the blowpipe against the rim of the doorway into the furnace and held it so she could keep it turning. At the same time, her feet searched around blindly until she found the pedal for the furnace. The edges of the fuel were glowing, the insides brighter, but as she began to furiously add flow to the fire the flames flickered and the coals burned brighter, much to her relief. It was tricky to keep both parts of her body moving in different ways at the same time though, and more than once she had to hurriedly yank the blowpipe up before the jar went plunging into the liquid centre of the furnace.

Her face felt scorched and stretched with dryness and heat by the time she was finished, no matter how well she tried to protect herself from the fire. Her hands had caught the edge of the furnace more than once too, adding more burn marks on top of older scorched scars. Still, she had just managed to keep herself afloat, stopped herself from having to drop everything and start over at least.

There was something about the way she justified the wasted time that made her feel just that little bit uneasy. Maybe even inadequate.

Nevertheless, she did still have to create the jar she'd been working on. It was half-done, still a blob of nothingness on the end of the pipe, and she had to fix that. Saiyin was done with the blowing part, but there was a lot to do before she could detach it from the blowpipe. She carried the molten glass over to the marver, and then it was time to make the decision. Rounded edges, or vertical sides?

The marver made the decision for her. A sudden idea sprang into her head as she approached the flat surface, and she began to roll the blob backwards and forwards to create flat sides. The marver was maybe one of the most expensive pieces of kit in her workshop, excluding the furnace itself. The marver was one piece of solid stone, and it was patterned throughout with veins of black and white. It was pretty, but Saiyin didn't buy it for its beauty, but instead for its cooling properties.

Hessel had helped her with that, at least, advising her on what best to get to kit out her workshop. Without the woman, she doubted she would be doing as well as she was. She had just never noticed that Hessel was always trying to get Saiyin to stand on her own two feet. It was the biggest and nicest thing she could think to do for the young woman, who had lost so very much at such a young age. When Saiyin thought that Hessel didn't approve of the business, in actual fact the Eypharian was simply trying to let the young woman grow into her own.

Post	Total
660	1233

[Saiyin]

"Speech"
"Others"

The glass now represented a roll of some strange, glossy material. The end was malformed and ugly, which she would be changing very shortly. After firing the glass in the furnace once more and making sure that the furnace was still up to temperature, the glassblower hiked the pipe so that it was held in both her hands but vertically as opposed to horizontally. It was rather more tricky to hold in such a position; Saiyin fumbled with the blowpipe and almost dropped it to her dismay, but it was the only way she could think of to create the flat bottom that she wanted for the bottom of the jar.

She added flat tool to her list of things to one day buy for her workshop, whilst trying to keep the pole rotating. The end was flattening nicely, but she had to keep swapping from vertical to horizontal. The glass, being runny and molten as it was, kept drooping downwards and so she alternated between rolling the glass backwards and forwards on the workbench and pressing the top down until it was flat enough all over. There were likely easier methods, some kind of flat pressing tool being one of them, but she had never thought of it until now.

After a while of the same repeated pattern over and over (with a few trips back to the furnace to keep the elasticity of the material), Saiyin was content with the general shape. The jar was almost finished, except for the fact that it didn't have an opening. The young glassblower was coming up to her least favourite part of her craft, simply because it was such a nerve-wracking experience.

The glass was cooling. Saiyin manoeuvred the blowpipe with the glass attached so that it was vertical once more, but this time she rested it against the marver. The jacks were nearby, and she slid them into her hand so that the joint rested against her wrist and she had a firm grip part-way down the length of the metal tweezers. Carefully, and peering closely to make sure she got it right, Saiyin gently pinched the part where the glass joined the pipe, so that it came free of the blowpipe completely. As soon as it was away from the clay, she dropped the jacks to the marver with a clatter and rushed to the furnace. She needed to get a tiny blob of fresh glass, to act as the glue between the part she'd just flattened.

She pushed the blowpipe within the furnace and withdrew it. With the utmost care, she picked up the rag of leather and held it against her hand, then turned the jar upsidedown. It slipped slightly, but before it could fall she righted it with her hand. Her bare hand. Wincing, and wringing her wrist with the searing pain that pricked at her fingertips, she had no time to dedicate to healing the blistering skin. With the blowpipe aloft, she attached the fresh, molten blob of glass to the flat underside of the jar, and hoisted the whole lot to the furnace once more. The final part was coming, and she was in the groove.

Post	Total
532	1765

[Saiyin]

"Speech"
"Others"

When she withdrew the jar from the furnace once more, she knew she was onto the finishing streak. Yes, it would take a little while, but Saiyin could also feel the method sinking in as she began to use jacks and sofietta to create the opening. Once she'd wiggled a hole wide enough to be practical, she began to flatten the edges once again using the method she'd been using the past few moments before.

It really was beginning to take shape now. Saiyin was pleased to see that the jar didn't have the rounded shape that most of her other stock seemed to take. There was a pleasing uniformity to the simple jar, and she enjoyed making it neat. It took longer, that was certain, but she hoped her customers would appreciate the clear cut lines as much as she did.

With a little finishing smooth with the scrap of wet leather, dunked in the bucket that sat on the workbench at all times, Saiyin was finished with the first jar. She carried the jar attached to the blowpipe and placed it in the secondary furnace. It was dark and boiling in the little nook where the completed glass items went to cool down. She had to peer very closely so as not to knock the glass against the walls of the nook, because in this form the glass was very fragile and delicate.

She had the jacks in hand, and she put her hand down past the doorway to pinch off the top of the glass. It was upsidedown inside- it had to be- and she noticed that the underside was now not quite as smooth as she'd made it previously, simply because of the blob of glass 'glue' that she'd used to attach it to the blowpipe. Petch. With a shrug, she simply reminded herself to fix it in the next one. Perhaps she could make a little dip in the underside so that when the glass 'glue' went in, it wouldn't bump out much?

Saiyin gently tapped, three times, on the clay blowpipe and with satisfaction the pipe easily came away from the jar. Now for the next! She grinned, feeling that elation that came every time when she finished a piece successfully. The glassblower began to hum a tune under her breath, a song she'd learnt in childhood from her best friend. She wondered how he was doing as she began to sing, her voice scratchy and hoarse from lack of practice, as she dove the blowpipe into the glowing crucible of molten glass. The words came in fits and spurts as she worked, as she pondered the next line, and forgot where the tune was wandering to.

"In the great mountains,
The ok'mo did roam,
Wild beasts of the meadow,
And strong as the storm.

With horns twist'd and mighty,
Like lovely green oaks,
The okomo wanders,
Wherever he goes."

She laughed to herself, absolutely sure the lyrics were wrong. She heaved a breath from her lungs and blew into the blowpipe, looking down the length of the pipe to watch the bubble grow. She mulled over the song, and remained humming the sing-song tune whilst she worked. Backwards and forwards she went, from the furnace to the marver, from horizontal to vertical, humming as she went. Her fingers stung where she'd burnt them but she would focus on the pain later. For now, she had a jar to create.

Post	Total
576	2341

[Saiyin]

"Speech"
"Others"

"Far out in the wild,
There lives a grim tribe,
Of creatures quite vicious,
And evil as spite.

Their hair's dark as twilight,
And eyes red like fire,
Beware of those creatures,
Or be feared of their ire."

She was belting it out now, aware of nothing of her own voice, but only the glass and the work. As such, her voice was cracking and breaking like nobody's business, but she wouldn't have cared even if she was paying attention. The song reminded her of her friend, and her childhood. The slopes of Lhavit were an incredibly enjoyable place to grow up. She'd been a whimsical, playful child. Very unlike the woman she was now. Back in those days, her head had been in the clouds, her dreams had been fantastical and she'd believed every one of them.

But although the occasional thought drifted past, she was still very much rooted in glassblowing. She had the next jar turned around so that she could create the inside with the cone-shaped sofietta and the jacks ever on standby. She had created a hole, but in doing so the sofietta had pushed the rim of the jar outwards to create a wider shape than she wanted.

It was a simple enough fix. She whisked the whole lot back to the furnace and gave the foot pedal a good pump whilst she was there. She turned and turned the glass to heat it evenly on every side, and once it was done she carried the lot back to the marver. She picked up the jacks, and held them so that one part went over the edge of the glass, and the other went inside. Then, although it was difficult to do simply because she felt like she never had enough hands, she began to turn the blowpipe backwards and forwards so that she could smooth the edge of the jar out.

She was finished, and she was so pleased of her work. Truthfully, she wasn't pushing herself far enough in her endeavours, but then she was only a new business and she needed to build up her stock. She had a need for jars in her own home, so she reasoned that others would too. She carried the glass over to the secondary furnace, and pinched the tip once more. With three neat, gentle taps to the blowpipe (and one more for luck), she extracted the pipe and grabbed the scrap of leather to pull the first jar from within the dark nook. It could cool on the surface now, but Saiyin needed to space. She had much more to go, that day.

Post	Total
440	2781

[Saiyin]

Grades Awarded

~

Saiyin

Skills
Glassblowing: +5
Observation: +3
Planning: +1
Singing: +2

Lores
Lore of the marver
Glassblowing: Using the marver to uniformly smoothe
Simple jar design
Glassblowing: Vertical grip of blowpipe
Sesr Glassworks: Buy a smoothing ‘flat tool’
Glassblowing: Jacks grip for higher accuracy
Glass ‘glue’: Make a dimple to hide the irregularity
The release: Use three gentle taps
Song: “In the Great Mountains”
Childhood: A head in the clouds

Notes
+Blisters across three fingers on her right hand. They will heal in 20 days with no scarring.

This was a self-grade. Please PM if you spot something wrong.

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