SoapZone Community Message Board

So bff is currently not speaking much to her sister (the one who lives just down the street) for...reasons I totally understand. Bff's birthday was earlier in February; I knew she usually went to Cleveland's big home and garden show with her sis for her birthday. I have never been to the h&g show and have never had a moment's interest in attending but I did ask bff earlier this month which she would rather we do for her birthday: go to the h&g show together or take the second of what's ultimately six classes on making your own glass beads. She chose the bead-making class (she told me in her opinion, the h&g show hasn't been quite as good the last couple of years), so I signed us up for the bead making class and told her to pick a restaurant and time and I'd also pay for a meal. The class was at 1:00; she opted to have a late breakfast at the Inn On Coventry which is maybe only a couple miles from Cleveland Rocks and Beads, where we had our class.

I *highly* recommend both places. IoC is a favorite among the locals, and their lemon ricotta pancakes are legendary. I opted to have blueberries added to my pancake and oh my YUM! Bff really enjoyed her eggs benedict but she asked for a taste of the pancake and is in agreement that it was among the best she'd ever had. Today was an unusually nice day in Cleveland in February so we opted to walk off some of breakfast at the nearby Lakeview Cemetery. A number of notable Clevelanders are buried there, including John D. Rockefeller, Elliot Ness, Allan Freed (the DJ who coined the term "rock and roll"), Garrett Morgan (inventor of the traffic light) and of course President Garfield. The place is HUGE...we only strolled through the section closest to Coventry, which turned out to be the Jewish section. The only celebrity in that section that we "saw" was Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who was a long time, and well respected, political figure in Cleveland.

We got to the plaza with Cleveland Rocks and Beads a bit early, so before we went to our class, we stopped at a shop called Animal Zen. A combination pet store, doggie day care and grooming salon, it was kind of the opposite of "zen". There were at least a dozen dogs behind a partition to the right, most of whom were barking a greeting at anyone who came inside. Bff had a long talk with the person working about possible foods and behavioral training for her traumatized Rottweiler while I just stood there and talked to all the lovely doggos over the half wall separating us, wishing I could go into their area and pet them <g>.

At today's glass bead making class, we learned to make "barrel" beads (which are more cylindrical than barrel-shaped, IMO) and how to roll them in frit (tiny flakes of different colored broken glass). Our instructor--the same as last time (and the one who does all the glass bead making classes)--is an absolutely lovely woman, and a very good, very patient instructor...it's not her fault I have no aptitude for the art <g>. I have difficulty continuously rolling the rod you gather the molten glass on and I have almost as much trouble laying down a steady stream of glass in an ordered pattern. Bff again enjoyed the class more than I did...but I had to be honest with her. I told her I'd be willing to take class #3 (cone-shaped beads and "dotting") but after that, I wasn't terribly interested. You CAN go to CRaB and spend 90 minutes making the kinds of beads you've already learned to make, under the watchful eye of the instructor, but she's much more hands-off during those sessions and I kind of need a lot of hands-on to get anything remotely evenly shaped.

I would've loved to have ended the day at Koko Bakery with a red sesame paste ball but they're closed on Tuesdays. This seems to be a new trend among the mom and pop shops around NE Ohio: be open one or both of the traditional weekend days and be off Monday and/or Tuesday. I don't know if that's a result of the pandemic affecting foot traffic in brick and mortar stores or what but it frustrates me a little because I don't tend to check if businesses are open on Tuesdays--I just assume they are. We did get some absolutely delicious smoothies (and I got a fantastic chocolate chip cookie) at the newly opened Ellie-May's Gourmet Cookies in Coventry. And it was nice enough outside that we could sit on a bench just beyond the store and soak up some sunshine with our smoothies.

We won't get the beads back until Friday, as they need plenty of time to slowly cool down. I'll be interested to see how our beads turned out this time.