Clare Gaylard Glass 

This month's lampworked glass 'stones', a necklace, very tactile, cool and smooth against the skin. The spacers (small beads in between) are a lovely copper glass that reacts to levels of oxygen when worked in the flame and moves obligingly through a variety of oil-slick colours.

A lampwork glass bracelet circa 2006, I made it in the robust heat and dust of Bangkok thinking wistfully about our annual summer visit home to England and the ballast of rounded stones we would carry back from a day trip to Aldeburgh. The smooth matte surface is acheived by etching the glass. I did some more recently and will try and take a decent shot of them to post.

It is Benjamin Britten's centenary and we got a good look at the set for Peter Grimes, staged on the stony Aldeburgh beach with the grey sea as a backdrop. This one is for my late father, who adored Britten and was always suprised when we children didn't share his taste for the bleaker stories in the canons of English literature and the arts.

Good for building up a batch of twisties, also known as Zanfirico cane. The first time I saw some of these canes I couldn't deconstruct them at all, I had to see them being made. They are a lovely way of demonstrating the properties of glass, the rapidity of movement between liquid and solid states and how the glass (I tend to anthropomophise...) 'wants' to disperse itself fluidly, evenly and smoothly.

Check out my Open Studio dates in the sidebar for 2013. I'd say watching someone melting glass in a thousand degree flame was 'up there' in terms of excitement and immediacy.

I have lived in more exciting times and places since then, and when I moved to Suffolk from Scotland as a teenager I felt like a Flat Earther, starved of landscape and with a distinct sense I might fall off the edge if I walked far enough. This is an undoctored photo of a daily walk, the bloom is Rapeseed and suddenly all the fields around us are livid and plush with it. Well done Suffolk then.

18th to 27th May 2013, uncharacteristic pastel colours! During set-up yesterday I met an artist whose quirky, delicate ceramics have been delighting me for some years. www.leahhinks.co.uk its an indication of how large and lively the membership is that I have been doing Open Studios for three years without meeting her while knowing her work for much longer. I shall be visiting her studio this summer on one of my weekends off.

Queen of Hearts and Dark Jester are there, rather severe and Venetian among a welter of pastel colours that took me by suprise. One of the miseries of working in glass is that most ordering is done online. Being an extremely visual and tactile person who understands handfuls and armlengths rather than weights and measures, I suffer from that. Attending the Flame-Off at Siverstone meant I could pick up handfuls of glass and see them working together immediately.

This was so archetypal Suffolk it made me stop short, big skies and bold colours. A long way - in every way, from recent Venice.

I like the way the chandelier seems to be an extension of the ceiling trompe l'oeil, as though the clouds are sliding down. I'm not so keen on the vast, floral bulbous chandeliers but seen like this it really works.

Look good in Venice, check out that swaddled infant.

When watching Lucio Bubacco make figures it is like observing a Creation Myth. It is hard not to fall back on superlatives. It was a joy.

I wanted to see Lucio Bubacco work for nearly a decade, but it never panned out. Directly after booking a trip to Venice earlier this year I found that he was doing a Masterclass in England the weekend after we returned. Love is not proud, I am now working on merging the experiences. The Masterclass took place at Silverstone, so Astons and Porsches roaring round the tracks while Nymphs and Satyrs get drawn from the flame.   

That is a real unicorn.

Last time I came to Murano was as an art student, twenty years ago. My pre-digital age photos from then are still tucked away in some attic or dark corner, victims of our decade of continent hopping. As a second year student I was discovering that my silversmithing and enthusiasm for the medium left something to be desired. I'd have been hugely cheered to know one day I'd be torching with a wonderful palette of glass made on Murano.

Two barges that took twelve people each, even people you REALLY like, through ice and snow, for a weekend, might have been like being trapped in a lift. The add-ons of excellent food, musical instruments and a willing crew (adult and child) meant we disembarked and started talking about the next time. What a sensible pace&place to view the world from.

Glorious Italian chocolates and paper plates. we arrived back from Venice and went almost immediately onwards to a vast family 40th, a splendid two-barge, longboat weekend with four seasons worth of weather thrown in for free. The paper plates were for mass catering but became Easter cards and decorations for artists and children seeking a break from the blizzard.

Apparently Christianity came to Iken on its first foray into the UK. Im presuming that's why this lovely silver-bleached, Celtic cross watches over the mudflats and long grass.

We hit Covent Garden in the evening just as the entries for the 'Big Egg Hunt' were being encased in bubble wrap and carried away. The shaky photos are about trying to get the best ones before they went. We were pleased to identify the Kit Williams (distance shot) as we have been re-discovering his amazing books: Masquerade and Bee on the Comb. The mass of swaddled eggs looked disturbingly like the cellar scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I used to know most of The Rubayat of Omar Kahayam, now it comes through snippets: 'And when the Angel with the darker draught. Draws up to Thee - take that, and do not shrink'.