For no one reason, I've been going to Virginia Stained Glass Company every time I needed supplies. It's easy to get to, but not fast to get to---there is no supply store that's near enough to where I live to be fast. My instructor works there one day a week, but I've only been in on that day once, and then he was teaching a class, so I just smiled in his direction and got someone else to help me. And the prices are okay, I guess, but they're no Warner-Crivellaro.

Yesterday I let my hair down and tried someplace new. Virginia Stained Glass was still out of my 3/8" zinc frame when I called, and I'm not known for my boundless patience, so it was off to Kensington, MD, and Weisser Glass Studio.

It's tiny, but they have a lot of glass packed in there. So the size of the place doesn't seem to limit their selection much, however it does inhibit thorough glass-browsing, if there are other customers trying to do the same. Their workshop area in the back also appeared very small, although possibly there are more rooms I couldn't see that are not open to the public. There was a class going on while I was in the store; I wasn't into craning my neck to see how many people they'd crammed into the workshop but it couldn't have been many. Either that, or it was a very friendly class.

At my own first class session back in September, our instructor handed out a list of stained-glass stores in the area and briefly touched on the unique characteristics of each; Weisser, he said, is offbeat and "funky." I can see it. I got a pretty good vibe from the place, and I got my zinc too.

Flesh wound of the day: careless handling of a strip of zinc I'd just mitered left me with two parallel, razor-thin, stinging cuts on the inside of my right wrist. This does not hold a candle to Don's flesh wound of the day. It was to his right hand, incurred during the destruction of an old chain-link fence, and required a couple of hours of hanging around the E.R., five stitches, a tetanus shot, and an assload of antibiotics. See, I crack jokes about hurting myself for the sake of something to do on evenings and weekends, but compared to my sweetie, I'm just a rank amateur.

Posted by Michelle on November 03, 2002 11:28 AM