These next few days are a bit of a blur. Early rising and late to bed becomes the norm as more people show up for classes and more cool people start showing up at the studio. Murano Magic turns it up a notch. So now it will turn it moments in memory from the diary, sometimes day by day – see how I go . This will speed things up abit for you guys that are reading my slow diary blog and seeing final pictures at other people’s sites 
From Thursday 27th March…
Day 2 of Pati’s garden bead class and we play with more canes, flowers and garden beads. My bead making patience has greatly improved since yesterday. She also shows us how a alphabet letter murrini is made after we were all very impressed with her little signature murrini that says in tiny writing “Pati 2008″. She just puts that murrini together so easily – I’m still tossing up whether to give it (alphabet murrini) a go myself. It’s a big commitment that I’m not sure I want to get into. Once you start with a couple of letter and numbers, you have to do them all!! 
Sarah Hornik and Indie arrive at the studio today too, after catching up on some jet-lagged induced sleep. Yay, I finally get to meet Sarah! (Insert more girly squealing here.) We get together in the kitchen and have a chat about traveling after I start a sentence with “When I was in Ethiopia last month..”. Sarah is coming to teach classes in Australia soon and she was asking for recommendations for days off and for Sydney. She is really stoked and excited about coming to Aus, so I write myself a note “travel tips for Sarah” Can’t wait to show her our little corner of the world.
We all head out for dinner in Venice later than usual that night. This is my first time to Venice this trip so I follow the crowd. The usual pizza joint they eat at is closed so we head in another direction along the water to find an open restaurant. Lucky – we find one open that’s willing to take on our group. I sit across Indie and discover her sense of humor. She orders a seafood soup, saying she is not hungry. Out comes an big bowl brimming with crustaceans that smells awesome. Indie declares, “This isn’t a soup. It is a National Geographic Special”. (Photo of the soup the night I order it.) She’s right – it has so much seafood in it that we can’t believe the good price for it!
This restaurant turns into a firm favourite with our group during the rest of our stay. Sarah makes an impression on the owner/chef on that very first night. On subsequent visits, he makes her a special vegetarian pasta just for her. Plus he comes out of the kitchen to say hello and kiss her when she arrives! Lucky girl. Simone is very handsome. I bet he hopes Sarah visits Murano again soon, eh Sarah?
Friday 28th March
My day starts at Carlo Dona’s shop. I, with Sharon, go to knock on the door but Esther opens it before I get to. She and Nachuma are shopping before class today. Aha, you have to get there early to get a pick of the tools, me thinks Roberto is forever patient with us and answers our questions. His shop is small and it gets even smaller with 4 of us in there. I can’t remember what I bought. Maybe I was there for moral support for someone
Pati’s Aquarium bead class – Day 1. Again we start with canes and stringers that are needed for the aquarium. I really like her aquarium beads. I think it’s the Cancerian in me. After lunch, we all take a ‘quick’ visit to Effetre’s show room. These visits have to booked ahead of time so we had to slot it in the middle of Pati’s class. She doesn’t mind and comes along too with John and Cosi. Sarah H and Lindalee Tritton is with us too.
Well, Effetre’s visit is different to Vetrofond’s factory. We get to see most of their murrini, cut and uncut, stock and their odd lot stock. We have some fun raiding it and make some purchases. There are only a few photos as we aren’t “allowed” to take a lot of photos here. Poo. But Sarah H goes a little nuts and gets excited. She starts looking for a place to live right there in the store room. We tell her to hold up on her decision to moving to Effetre’s and then tell her about the Vetrofond factory tour
In the evening after Pati’s class, Sarah H gets on the torch to do a demo bead. Corina and Mike rock up to watch and so does Di. She makes a perfectly perfect bead on the minor torch and also resists poking Corina with a hot rod after she says those words “real torch” to her. It was so funny. But us hot head-ers have almost, al-most convinced Corina to try to make a bead on a hot head. Pity we don’t have one in the class as I think we might have gotten her onto it straight away Not sure if Corina is gonna like me for saying all that 
Almost everyone heads off to Venice for dinner and I stay back and ask Di East to demo a hollow bead and some fuming for me. The hollow bead she does is reminisent in style to how John Olson does his – off mandrel. Di has a good crack at it and it was amazing to watch try something out that she’s only seen once. You can tell she understands glass well to remember John’s steps. She makes almost the whole bead and then fumes the inside of it and then decorates the inside of it, closes it off, rounds it up and then some how pokes bead holes into it. I get her some hot fingers to chuck the bead into the kiln. I think it survived! Di then shows me the fuming and fumes a few beads in different ways. I buy a fuming kit off her as well as her book. I ask her to sign it for me and she does I like Di.