More Pictures from Dad

I thought I'd share some pictures of my Dad's wood shop. His basement "Man Cave" as he calls it. He lives on the other side of the country, otherwise I would be hanging out down in this basement with him. :) Instead he hangs out down there on the weekends (without me!) and makes wonderful things like boxes and tables.

Current project: a cribbage board box

Both my mother and father are creative people... my dad is an engineer/businessman by day(he works with huge turning machines that make car parts among other things) but he always has had a wood shop in the basement. I really enjoyed growing up with furniture that he made and a shop in the basement with all sorts of cool tools. Hes good too - I could go on and on with lists of things that hes made over the years. Love you Dad!

The following pictures are labeled by him... I had to include the labels :) As you can see hes an organized kinda guy (notice the pegboard behind the workbench, he would always know when I had "borrowed" a particular tool...everything has its place)

primitive man cave

workbenches

tablesaw

original workbench 1975

Incra router fence

drill press, belt sander, Bulldog router table

DeWalt planner

1 Micro dust filter

My First Newspaper Coverage

The Plain Dealer, 1983 (Cleveland, Ohio)
thats me sittin' on the sweet bike

My Aunt Joan sent me this article in the mail (thank you!)... she has been cleaning out the home my late Great Aunt June (who was the bestest great aunt ever - I miss her). Evidently Aunt June was the keeper of family pictures, its been fun to see all of what she kept from over the years. This article was a surprise, I had to share.

This article is about a book that my mother and her friend had just published: "1983 Cleveland Guide to Daycare and Nursery Schools".

I remember the book, mostly because for a period of my childhood there were boxes and boxes of them in the house. Also I remember the book because my mother went to the same publisher as the founder of American Girls (then called Pleasant Company) and they became friends and I received the catalogs for these dolls right from the very beginning of that company. I saved all my money (I was 8 when the first catalog was released and I remember the dolls costing about $100) and bought a Samantha doll. I would pretend to play with her school books (for some reason I was affraid to ruin their perfectness), so the pencils still have their original tips and the books aren't scribbled in at all (my mother kept that doll and all her chachkees). But that is a random side story (of me being a very strange little kid)... how easily the story diverges :)

To get back to the article... This book that my mother and her friend published continued to be the only resource available to parents in the greater Cleveland area for more than a decade. I couldn't be prouder of my mother for putting out this book. It was 1982 and she and Mrs. Crawl did all the research themselves, hired a printer and found a publisher. Not too shabby for a couple of stay at home moms. Seriously.

Love you Mom!

Happy Thanksgiving

"the Founder of the Feast"

by Mary Pellegrini (my Mom)

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Family Passions Passed Down

I have been thinking a lot about family lately.

Loved ones facing crisis, emails from family on different sides of the country, my heart is aching a bit right now and my brain has turned to stories from the past.

My maternal grandmother, Birdy Bergstrom, passed away before I was born. The story here is that she was an avid paperweight collector, her collection combined with her sister-in-law's to create the foundation of a paperweight museum. Her brother John had bequeathed his house to the city of Neenah Wisconsin, along with the glass paperweight collections, to become the Bergstrom Mahler Paperweight Museum.

My mother grew up in Neenah WI, just around the corner from her Aunt and Uncle Evangeline and John - she remembers them quite well. I grew up in Cleveland, OH, and there were paperweights throughout the house, dotting the mantel and holding books in place on various shelves. It wasn't until I was in my 20's that my mother took me to the Museum (we were in WI for a family reunion) and I got to learn all about the paperweights.

It felt as though a passion of my grandmother's had been passed down to me. I had begun blowing glass a few years before learning about the Museum and paperweights have always been a favorite of mine. I remember making paperweights in my first glass class and thinking that I could just make paperweights for the rest of the 8 week class! They were so amazing! Here's a picture of one of the first paperweights I made back in 1999. (its probably not the first one, I gave most of my paperweights away in the beginning and this is just the first one I found around the house when I went to take some pictures just now)
Its interesting to me that although I never met the woman, my mother's mother, I feel a bond with her that we both enjoy glass. Thats a good feeling.

The last picture here is of the front of the paperweight in the first picture. Its a special edition paperweight featuring Evangeline Bergstrom, I believe they were created when the Museum was founded. As you can see in the engraving on the back, I have the 3rd of 250 that were created! It was one of the paperweights I grew up with in my Ohio home and when I became a full time glass artist it was given to me.
Evidently a passion for glass runs thick in the blood.

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