D16 – Wrap it in leather – Zanfirico Hanks

Sunday, September 20th, 2026. Studio Uncle Fish, Irmo, South Carolina.

My most common experiences in this life are probably water, coffee, cigarettes, weed, shitting, eating, and waking up depressed. Lol. Fuck. Start the dream life with a nightmare; thousands and thousands of mornings.

I think modern society is cooked. This is unfortunate because I don’t appear to have figured out how to be modern or a member of society. I’m both limited and blessed to struggle for a good day in my infinitesimally small and largely imagined universe.

Keep the weed and coffee, lose the cigarettes. Again, a morning montra. Good luck to me. Should be an excellent day.

I get up at 7 but don’t do much, but coffee and weed until 930. Lol, so unimpressive. I know, I know.

Studio Assessment

In a progressive future, there will be a link to a tour of the glass shop.

It takes me a good bit of the morning to even arrive at the glass shop. I don’t have the place clean, and I’m not sitting down ready to start my day until about 12:15 pm.

From the kiln. Ball beads and marbles. 6 of 8 to the board, 2 of 8 to Etsy. 2 marbles to eBay. A couple of rainbow preps from last night, looking better. Moving past this confetti ridiculousness I’ve been in for weeks, I can look forward to seeing more intentional color patterns. Like rainbow. Awe. Rainbows.

eBay Charity Auctions

After cleaning the studio, the first order of business is national service. Read about my 100% donation eBay charity auctions program, benefiting food programs around the United States, by clicking here. Link to live auctions by clicking here.

I’m in a pretty bad spot with eBay. Today’s auction looks pretty grim. All others actually factually look as bad as possible. I have a potential solution for next week, but it isn’t easy, and it ‘s not today. Yeah, I’m really unsure what to do. I make a quick post to Reddit and Instagram, but yeah, that won’t do much.

I end up back here at 4 pm to do pack and ship. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but it’s the way it worked out. It doesn’t take too long (twenty minutes), and I’ve got three sales packed less propaganda photos because I don’t have any left. My plan is to go to Walmart and print those out tonight.

Etsy

Shop the Zanfirico Harold Etsy store by clicking here. You buy, I backpack.

In order to make a certain craft project happen for myself, I need to take care of some packing and shipping. Thankfully two orders, I don’t have any propaganda, so I let packages remain open.

With that done, I can end all of my marble listings on Etsy.

Lampworking

In a progressive future, there will be a link to photograph history or plans or some shit.

Well, there’s a lot to do here. I need to do some rearranging of the marble inventory, and it’s gonna take some courage.

I ordered some bamboo drink coasters off of Amazon. They have a slightly recessed edge but not quite recessed enough for me. I went to Michael’s hobby store and purchased some leather and gorilla glue. I was able to wrap the coaster with the leather, and now I have art a fairly safe marble pyramid. That’s thirty marbles, so a $750 item. Good times.

Conclusion

Well, buddy, I worked till 2am. The oxygen is gone. At some point earlier in the day, I went and got cigarettes, but I smoked them all. Much stuff done.

Tomorrow, I need to be different, except for the part where I enjoy working seven days a week to make glass that won’t sell. I need to keep doing that.

Zanfirico Hanks