That's NOT A Marble

I got inspired (finally) to get back to soldering and making something new for my shop. I have a huge collection of beach glass from when we lived in Ventura-nothing better than beachcombing to clear your mind and relax. There are no beaches here in this hot smoggy place that we live in now, unless you count the ones along the river, but you have to go way up the river, because here in town there is no water in the river. Why the water disappears before it gets into the city I have no idea, dams or something I guess. And you don't want to go swimming in our river because people drown there on a regular basis, like five or six in the past few weeks, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, I was going through my jars of beach glass:


looking for pieces to solder and a few dropped to the floor, where I left them because I was too lazy to get down from my chair and go look for them. So, later on Keith finds Buddy playing with this beach glass marble in the bathroom, where he likes to take things like this to play with because they clink against the walls and roll on the linoleum so well. I had forgotten about this marble, but this was quite a find, and the only beach glass marble I've ever seen, so I was glad that Buddy found it on the floor for me.


So, I go back to work and Keith is watching me from the doorway and says 'hey, there's another marble or something under the window bench', so I reach under the bench to see what it is, pick up something that's hiding against the baseboard, something that I can't see but can only feel, and it's something hard and brown, maybe a brown piece of beach glass, but no, it isn't a marble, it's a piece of PETRIFIED CAT POOP!

Ewwww.

This is one of my other most prized pieces of beach glass:


And, this is what I've been making with my beach glass.


These are beach glass combined with vintage paper glass charms:


And this one is made with the glass marble gems that are intended for vase fillers or whatever.


So, other than picking up petrified cat poop with my bare hands, it was a productive few days, and I've got lots of ideas swimming around in my head, now.