Tonight was the annual flame off event held here during the bead shows. Imagine four teams of lampworkers working on projects in front of a live audience. Two sets of four teams were competing in two locations to obtain the highest bid on their ongoing project. Bidding is done through a silent auction with volenteers walking through the audience taking bids. The project scales varied quite a bit; from animal shape beads for a necklace to large human sculptural forms. As I mentioned in the last post, borosilicate glass has really become a popular medium and most of the teams; especially those doing large projects were using boro AND the huge torches they require to heat the glass. It gets pretty exciting to see those large flames heat the glass and the artists gyrating with it as it reaches melting point and really starts to move...I guess that's why glass work is so often referred to as a dance...The show was better, but we're hoping for an even better day as the Tucson locals are known to come out on the weekend. More later and hopefully some pics...I seem to have misplaced the cable I need to download pictures from the camera .