Monday, March 16, 2020
So many glass globes, what’ll I do with them?
The elderly fellow from whom I purchased my house (he custom-built it back in the 70s), was a collector who left behind many interesting rocks containing minerals and fossils and other trivia. I found the rocks along with lots of glass insulators. The rocks were intriguing and I saved then, and same with the insulators which rang a bell in my head. Long ago, power companies commonly placed the heavy, thick-glasses atop power poles, and as a passenger in my mom’s car, I could see those globes. Years later, one of my first workplaces was an organization that supplied electrical components (including glass insulators) to power companies.
After moving into my Central Oregon home and finding those glass insulators, I felt intrigued by the memories they tickled up–of early car rides and my education in electrical apparati. Unsure of what to do with the globes, I set them on the ground in a circle, eventually forgetting about them. Recently, a repair team working on my property dug up the glasses. Again to my surprise, they brought good feelings.
I have more globes than can fit into a two-plus gallon bucket. I’ve set extras around in hopes that seeing them will generate up a way to utilize them. I’ve considered lining them up, say atop a small wall, and with a string of Christmas lights endowing each globe with a colored bulb. Something like that, and hopefully, more motivating.
The last few days have brought snows, nothing serious besides very cold weather. Maybe those snows accumulated to a couple of inches, as illustrated by my little eastside deck.
While out feeding horses and moving around the barn, I came across some glass insulators and their attractiveness delighted me–snow-topped little gnomes! Setting randomly on the lid of a trash can that contained animal feed.
Directly above (shown in today’s header photo) were extras, a bit of the overflow and au natural, on a horse stall window ledge.
Dear Friends: Could you conjure how to utilize these, somehow decoratively, and possible? Diana
Diana's Morning Blog 
Oh! I grew up with these in well lit windowsills!
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We had a collection of those when I was a kid too! My dad loved colored glass. I’m still nostalgic about them. My first idea of what to do with them was some kind of lights: they’d be nice as low-voltage pathway markers. I also liked the idea of pendant light conversion. A search on “glass insulators creative ideas” will turn up some photos. The idea that appealed to me the most, though, and perhaps would be the easiest and most useful was to make coat hangers out of them. https://www.littlethings.com/insulator-coat-rack/5
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I agree about the coat hangers! Might try those hangers for tack in the barn. Thanks, too, for introducing me to a cool DYI site.
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Wonderful! The blue? ones look good where they are. Other spots: on a railing, along a path, in a rock “garden,” or anywhere the light would catch them.
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Thanks, Kat, I’ll play with them.
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