Blowing Glass and Falling Leaves

A week ago today we went to the Glass Museum in Tacoma to see Anu Pentinen, a Finnish artist, working in the Hot Shop. She has created a new Pentinen bird in glass to commemorate the museum's on-going partnership with iitala, a maker of Scandinavian glassware. We love sitting in the bleachers in the Hot Shop, watching the team of glass blowers. (If you have a high speed connection, you can actually watch the artists live by clicking the appropriate spot on their website!) A bird handler from the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium also exhibited 3 birds as [art of the Bird Lover's Weekend. Two of the birds, the kookaburra and the Eurasian owl were raised at the zoo and the other, a Western screech owl, was a rescued bird that had been hit by a car somewhere in Oregon. The handler was able to coax the kookaburra to "laugh" which was very fun to see and hear. The little blue heart made in Seattle by Bedrock Industries is my souvenir from an earlier visit. The Pentinen birds unfortunately were not in our budget!
Glass Heart

Fall seemed to arrive last Saturday with very blustery winds. We went for a walk in our neighborhood, and the leaves were just raining down. I picked up this great sample of our bigleaf maple. It lives up to its name as you can see with one of my normal-sized NH leaves nestled on it with lots of room to spare. Later on that evening, we were at a party and heard lots of stories of people's difficulties crossing the 520 bridge in the wind. I was very glad we took a different route!
Two Maple Leaves