blown glass, blown glass pendantI met a woman last weekend who makes her own jewelry with blown glass. We were at a festival together, she selling her blown glass vases and jewelry and I demonstrating solar cooking. She got really interested in solar energy and wondered if there were a way to use solar heat to melt the glass. I thought there was, so I gave her some links for sites online to learn about the intense heat from parabolic cookers, a type of solar oven. After we exchanged cards, I got to looking at her products and ended up buying a blown glass pendant to give my niece for her upcoming birthday. After talking to her about how the blown glass process comes together, I had much more empathy for the costs associated with making jewelry. As my engineer dad always said, it's expensive to make anything that involves lots of heat or freezing cold. Hopefully she can find a parabolic cooker that will cut her fuel costs. She burns oxygen torches, but if a shaft of light from the sun could heat the glass for free, so much the better.