Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of four columns depicting experiences that arts and entertainment editors Kathryn Fiegen and P. Kim Bui had attending Workspace classes. Regular commentaries by both writers will continue in two weeks.

Every year, I go to the Iowa State Fair. Along with the giant boar, the funnel cakes and the mullet-hunting, I make sure to stop at the building with the photography and miniature doll houses. And then there’s the glass beads.

For a few years now, I’ve watched the woman make beads and picked through the jewelry she has out. It’s fascinating, to see glass become a shiny piece of jewelry to put around my neck. How the speckles and swirls appear is almost like magic to me.

So for my second Workspace experience, I chose to try to make my own shiny pieces of glass. I was excited to do it, but fearful I would walk out of the class with a blob barely resembling a bead. It’s not a one-class deal; the teacher shows you how to do new and different kinds of beads each week for the five-week duration of the class.

It seemed odd to me when a tank of propane was plopped down in front of me. What was this for? And then the torch on top of it and the sticks of glass, I began to think I was in way over my head. I can sew pieces of paper together OK, but fire and breakable things don’t usually work out for me.

The teacher, Deborah Conti, seemed like she had it all worked out. She had even made up a packet for us to take when the class was over. She showed us how to warm up the rod we would put our bead on slowly, until it turned bright red, and then how to pull glass off just as slowly. Glass bead making is definitely not a speedy art.

She let us loose, and I felt like I wasn’t prepared to play with this blowtorch and glass rods. What if I broke glass or heated up wrong and it broke all over the place?

My first bead was a plain, clear bead which was supposed to be a blue-ish color. It somehow turned out gray-ish. Deborah assured me it was fine and that my bead would turn out well. It was blobbish. Very blobbish.

I slowly made three more beads, each one looking better than the last. I figured out that the secret was getting the glass really hot and pulling it onto the rod slowly, without loosing patience. Spinning the rod at the right speed was also crucial. My arms ached from holding them up, and looking around, it seemed I was progressing, but my arm pain was not something I saw anybody else suffer from. Maybe I need to get up from my computer every once in a while and work out.

Somewhere in making my beads, I burned myself by touching something I shouldn’t, and I don’t even remember what it was. Deborah said it would happen to one of us, and I just knew I would be the one to burn myself. Still, I was embarrassed. So I pretended I didn’t hurt myself. But damn, it hurt. And as we were cleaning up, I did it again. I touched a hot torch part and realized immediately that was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had. That thing was just shooting out hot flame, and I assumed it was cool.

With my burning, throbbing hands, I walked out of the Workspace holding my beads as if they were diamonds. Next time I go to the fair, I’d show the lady with the beads. I’m just as cool.