The Bluestocking Women's Pub, in which we wait excitedly for the next instalment of Gosie's adventures. Gosie, Glass and the Gerbils' Dilemma.

[AsWithGlad]

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5559589-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-in-which-gosie-returns-to-the-trail?page=1

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the best (perhaps only) online women's pub. Nothing in the food or drink can harm you, everything is served by a very enthusiastic crew of gerbils, and any curious menfolk are welcome at the Staunch Ally down the road.

With a lot of conditioner she came out really smooth!

I took the opportunity of her being clean and tidy to get her to try on her new school uniform.

It turns out she's genetically not able to stay neat and tidy. I suspect too much time spent in @ifIwerenotanandroid lab as a pup.

Gubbins in real time:

😆

I can't stop watching it.

I love the wild look… love long fluffy hair (my own especially LOL never cutting it even when I am old and fully grey - Before-Gubbins is my spirit animal).

Though I may rethink that when I go to see Bon jovi and Europe in a few weeks.

I fluctuated between a grade 1 & a grade 4 for a few years but I’m growing my hair now, partly for a change & partly because I think long grey / white hair looks amazing.

It has a kind of horrible fascination.

Someone isn't happy, after all her hard work.

I am strangely blessed in having long curly brown hair (was poker straight until kids). Despite being just a few years off 60, I only have little white wispy bits at my temples/ears. I aspire to morph into one of these one day as they look amazing… would look so cool as an Eng Lit professor with those locks!! And doc martens, ideally in patent.

Mine is wavy or straight depending on how I comb it after washing, & dark brown or grey depending on… something, not yet worked out what makes the difference.

My grandmother & great-aunt both have / had beautiful white hair & I’d be very happy to inherit that.

This is what I should look like. But I am more Gubbins after, complete with sulky look.

Sadly, that's not it...

This is from the online virtual tour: https://stainedglassmuseum.com/virtualtour

Bloody Google. Will have to track that window down now as I was thinking it would make a really lovely cross stitch/tapestry project!

But I love the correct image too. I am resisting temptation to fall down a google wormhole and discover how they made the glass that particular shade at the time.

I've attached the image of all six lights that the museum was gifted from the Hadzor parish chruch and you can see a clearer image here, which can be enlarged and downloaded as a pdf:
https://stainedglassmuseum.com/catshow.php?func=show&seq=0&collno=ELYGM%3A1976.4#mainimage

The two panels from The Presentation in the Temple are not on display. There would probably have been at least three more sets of lights (windows) in the church, but these have been lost.

Well, unfortunately they didn't make glass in lots of colours in the middle ages.

Very little in The Visitation remains from the 14th century. The head of Elizabeth is medieval and some of the top yellow accents in her pane and in Mary's are just about it.

The Annunciation contains a lot more original glass, which is why it is loaned out to medieval exhibitions.

The red shaded area in the image below corresponds directly to the right hand pane, and indicates the original 14th century glass.

You will see that most of Mary is in clear and yellow glass that has been painted on to give texture. That is then fired to set it. The yellow glass is made using silver stain, which is mixed with the sand etc when the make the glass. This was about as much colour as they could create back then. Gabriel's wing has a lot of black paint added to create texture.

The windows were heavily restored in the Victorian era, which means that the bright reds and blues were added in the 19th century.

I've put the two images below so you can match it directly for yourselves.

@MyrtleLion that is so interesting- it was the vivd reds and blues that caught my eye as they are lovely to work with in a tapestry. I did wonder how they achieved those colours back then - I did pop down the google wormhole to ascertain that glass is not liquid after all (have spent years believing that it slowly becomes denser at the base over time) but instead the method of glass making and lack of industrial tools simply meant that the thickness was often not very uniform.

A lot of people think glass flows, but it is the blowing or rolling it that makes it uneven, hence Fenella boasting about hand-rolling her own glass. The Pilkington method in the 1950s was how they created perfectly flat glass in larger panes. I posted about this earlier.

The colour is added when they make the glass, so any section that is blue or red is made of blue or red glass, and then painted on to give the detail.The colours are created by adding metal oxides to the glass-making process, as per The Great Pottery Throw Down. Red was created by adding a mixture of gold salts and tin chloride (tin(II) chloride to be precise) during the manufacturing process.

I fudged that a little with Gemma Glasswing but hopefully you didn't notice... dramatic licence and all that.

Nowadays coloured glass is made using enamels.

I can’t find one. I thought I had, but it’s no longer available. I did find two crochet patterns, but my crochet is only suitable for blankets. I can’t do what I think is usually known as amigurumi.

The search I did earlier for soft toy gerbils produced things which would shame any educated gerbil lover. The best was a tiny one made from hard plastic, so clearly unsuitable.

Wondering whether the guinea pig pattern in this book could be adapted? There are lots of seriously cute patterns in this… though I’d actually need to teach myself to crochet properly. I really need some grand kids or something!

https://amzn.eu/d/00GpGJQd

I was so convinced that glass was a fluid that I wrote a whole paragraph in a chapter of a YA post dystopian fantasy novel for my MA. One day I may finish it cos the tutor really loved my description of the dragons… now I need to remember to take this bit out ‘cos I’ll seem really stoopid.

It's a common myth, but you can adapt it to show off your new knowledge, if that works for the story.

Medieval glass was blown into cylinders and which was sliced open and then rolled to make flat glass...

My random glass fact is that one of the reasons that wine bottles are 70cl is that it was the average lungful when bottles were blown by mouth.

I had a lot of fun learning about fusing glass a few years back. It's such a fascinating material to work with.

Chickens will eat small to medium slugs, as will frogs, toads, hedgehogs and corvids when they are in a particular mood. Corvids will also grab snails and smashed them on flat rooves to eat them more easily. I hear the crows and jackdaw do this most days.

Although they are 750 ml.

Yes, sorry, 750ml/75cl. I blame my late night (drinking wine) yesterday!

In my opinion….
You might as well buy a pattern specifically for Gerbils , or this one which has a choice of ears and tails.

Unless you might like to make lots of amigurumi animals, in which case spend more initially and go for the book.