Glass Fiction, part one

Will someone please make this zip up flip-flop sweater t-shirt out of glass so I can "experience" it and understand what is going on here??

Here's an excerpt from the book "Life's a Beach" by Claire Cook. Okay, she might have the funniest website in author history. There's a lot of photos of "flip flop sweaters" for her release of this book in 2007.

I guess East Coast glassblowing can get pretty hot...

"I peeked in again, from the side. It wasn't quite a dance after all. More like tai chi or some kind of yoga in motion. Whatever he was doing, it was filled with long, graceful, continuous movements, and I could have sworn there was a little bit of imaginary swordplay in there, too.

He picked up a long blowpipe with a big knob of sea green glass on the end and clamped it across his work bench. Then he grabbed another smaller rod and dipped it into the furnace, and when he pulled it out he rolled the button-shaped gather of hot glass around in an old tin filled with crushed cobalt glass. He kept the first pipe spinning with his knee at the same time he twirled molten glass from the second pipe around the original blob of glass. Then he picked up some metal tongs and reached into the glass and twisted and pulled at it until it froze into a series of waves. He stopped and put everything down, stepped back, and looked at the knob from all sides, gave it a spin, then he did some more almost dancing around the room.

He came back and unclamped the blowpipe and plunged the knob into the furnace. He placed it back in the clamp again and kept it spinning with one hand. With the other, he reached into another tin and pulled out a handful of something that might have been pieces of gold and silver foil and sprinkled them like confetti over the knob.

He put the blowpipe back into the furnace again, and sweat soaked through his T-shirt. He pulled it back out and dropped the glass end down until it almost touched the ground. The monks were still chanting, and Noah looked like he was lip-synching into the other end of the pipe. Maybe he was. Then he started to swing the pipe in a huge circle, crossing his wrists, as if he were twirling a fiery baton.

Finally, he lifted the pipe and placed his creation into the empty center of a sphere made from several lengths of copper tubing circled around and around and dangling from a clamp. He blew some air into the blowpipe and quickly covered the opening with his thumb. The blob of glass expanded slowly and magically until it filled up the copper orb and became some new kind of ringed planet.

Watching Noah like this was somehow more intimate than having sex with him. I felt like a stalker. In fact, I probably looked like a stalker."

How do we know we're not in Seattle? He's working by himself and listening to Gregorian chants. Although I suppose that anywhere you are, if you're listening to Gregorian chants in all likelihood you're also working alone.