Wavy Gravy Groovy

I’m not dyslexic, really, but the other day while visiting Gary Rith’s blog, I read wavy groovy bowls, as wavy gravy bowls, and it reminded me of a story. (Wait, does that make me sound like a female version of a codger?)

Wavy Gravy, social activist, comic, clown, and MC at Woodstock, among many other accomplishments large and small – including having a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor named after him, lives around the corner. But that’s not the story, although maybe that’s another one. This one happened many years ago to an old friend.

Abby had just moved to California from New York City and was at a big party in San Francisco. Almost as soon as she arrived, a large affable man came up to her, shook her hand and said, “Wavy Gravy” and welcomed her to the party before moving on. She is a very outgoing person, and, thinking she had just learned a cool San Franciscan greeting, and wanting to make some friends, went up to at least a dozen people, stuck out her hand and said “Wavy Gravy” with her most charming smile.

Youngest daughter has been crazy about Wavy Gravy since she was about 4 because he would come to the Earth Day parades dressed as a clown with his fish on a leash. Wavy Gravy and his wife founded and still run Camp Winnarainbow – a wonderful, well-organized circus performing camp. At 7, she went to Camp Winnarainbow for the first time and fell in love – with stilt walking and high trapeze as well as Wavy. He told the kids around the big campfire about how he used to eat Snickers bars washed down with Coke every night before he went to bed. Then by the light of the fire, he shone a light into his toothless mouth and sent them off screaming to get their toothbrushes to “brush ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.” She went every year till she was too old to be a camper and then was a lifeguard one summer.

So actually, Gary’s bowls are Wavy Groovy Twisty bowls, but that’s another story.

Then there’s the sad tale of my persimmon tree.

Yes, those persimmons are luscious and the color of the persimmon leaves in the Fall are spectacular, but I bought those persimmons at the Farmer’s Market and put them under my tree so it would get the hint to grow some fruit! not just stand there looking beautiful.

old style

Our trip to Kyoto was planned for the day of the Great Pottery Sale with stalls that line both sides of the street for 5 or 6 blocks. It was softly raining in the morning and the subdued light and wispy fog was gorgeous. The rain brought at least a slight decrease in temperature which was a relief, but as we walked the few blocks to the sale, it started to pour and stayed that way for most of the rest of the day. While everyone else dried off in the Camel Cafe, drinking foamy coffee and eating pointy toast triangles, I slogged up and down the street. Hardly anyone was out except the potters huddled under clear tarps, pouring the puddles out of their bowls.

Only one side of the street had handmade wares and some of it was beautifully done, but nothing very different or beautiful and I wasn’t very inspired until I saw this piece. I have to admit to knowing nothing about Japanese pottery, but I kept coming back to look at this. Keiko, the potter, told me it was “old style, fired many times”.

After all the work they went to to make sure we were in the right place and time for the pottery festival, I think my daughter-in-law expected that I would buy a lot more than one little cup, but the looking was what I wanted and the little cup is a bonus.

Where ya been?

Oh yeah! I mean where have I been? A series of unfortunate and fortunate events . . .

Unfortunate? Suffice it to say that the circa 1900 part of my house has now been stripped of a portion of charm, but also of the nasty mold that we finally discovered was hiding under 2 inches of concrete in the bathroom, leaking mycotoxins into the house and making me feel pretty darn awful as I am really allergic to mold. The bathroom was gutted and fogged with Tea Tree Oil!

Fortunate? A truly wonderful trip to Japan with my daughters to see my son and his new wife. We ate delicious, artfully presented food,

saw serene gardens,

a baseball game in the Tokyo Dome,

rode the amazing subways and bullet train, went to my daughter-in-law’s parent’s home for an incredible dinner, walked for miles and miles in Tokyo and Kyoto,

stayed in a really lovely ryokan (traditional inn) and visited Nara for the Festival of the Lights and were followed in the park by tame deer begging for food like big brown Labs with fuzzy antlers.

I could go on and on but to top it off, I can’t say enough great things about my new daughter-in-law, and how carefully Eli and Junko planned the trip so we all got to do the things we were interested in doing.

Now the bathroom remodel is still going on, and the price tag is mounting. Amazing how much work there is to do in an eight by 5 foot room.

Finally, though, I am back to throwing some pots and trying to figure out why my new batch of glaze is getting pinholes when the last batch was so great. It’s a little frustrating because I am preparing for the Ceramic Art Show and Sale at Leslie Ceramics on December 4th. Judging from how many good ceramic artists were at the planning meeting, it promises to be a pretty wonderful event.

(I’m cringing at the glare, but my photo set-up is not set up because of the re-construction.)

Somehow December 4th sounds like a long time in the future. My calendar got a little bit stuck back in August and I’m having trouble moving on into Autumn. I have been helped with that charade because it is about 72 degrees out today and, except for that oblique quality that the Fall light has, it could still be summer.

Curbside Recycling

I passed this chair on my walk this morning and on my way back I saw that the free-newspaper delivery guy had provided reading for anyone who wanted to stop and take a load off. A footstool would be nice. And maybe some snacks. . . .

This is a community with a large and transient student population where it rarely rains between April and November, and many who find themselves with an extra chair, couch, microwave or who have just reorganized or downsized their bookshelves or toolbox and don’t have enough to warrant calling the Salvation Army for a pick-up, offer up the item to the streets for personal recycling. It won’t get ruined by rain and will usually find a good home quickly.

The residents of some streets closer to the university, having been inundated with recyclables closer akin to trash from departing students are not as happy with this practice but in most parts of town, it is looked upon as benign. When someone on our block put out some art books and this framed Beatles poster, I brought home the poster because my daughter is always looking for picture frames for her photographs.

She was happy with the frame but even happier with the picture in it. Husband was curious about this Beatles poster he had never seen and has been searching for information about it to no avail. Anyone ever seen this before? And what do you think the story is under the table??

And on the recycling theme, I successfully recycled this pattern from one on my little bowls onto this serving dish. Some of the patterns from the small bowls got lost in translation and will either never be used again or remain diminutive.

There are no pictures

No pictures and that’s a good thing.

It was a hot day at noon and I had come back from a long walk in the hills and I was understandably overheated. The fastest way I know of to cool off is to have on fewer clothes so as soon as I got in the door of my house, I tore off my shirt and hooked it on my bedroom doorknob.

I live back from the street. There’s a gate that’s hard to open. People rarely come up our walk without calling first, so as I was sitting on the couch, reading while I cooled off, I was shocked to hear a knock on the door. Did I mention that if you are at my front door, you are at a point between the living room and the other parts of the house -like the bedroom where my shirt was dangling?

Meaning, if I was going to answer the door, (and it’s a door with many windows in a room with many windows) it would have to be sans upper body clothing. I thought of running past the door so fast that I would be a blur but didn’t think I could pull it off so I hid behind the one solid wall section, hoping whoever it was would go away.

Whoever it was didn’t go away and the knocks were persistent and loud. I continued cowering till I heard retreating footsteps. I peeked around the corner and caught the eye of my ever-so-nice neighbor as he took one more look back at the house before going down the steps.

I had no choice. I grabbed a big pillow from the couch and holding it casually in front of me, I went to the door and greeted Bill. We both tried to pretend that I was not wearing a pillow as he reminded me that I needed to move my car so because it was street cleaning day.

He had a hip replacement a few years ago and still walks pretty slowly so as soon as he turned to go, I threw my shirt back on, grabbed my keys and was outside before he hit the bottom porch stair. I managed to carry on a decent conversation with him on the walk out to the gate, hoping it would make him totally forget the previous 7 minutes.

I’m not so good at keeping track of the 2nd Tuesday of the month when the street cleaning truck comes. The fine is $37 if your car is left in the way, so I really am grateful for all the times Bob has come over and reminded me, but today I’m going over to his house to give him my phone number.

I wannan electric car

This is the one I want. Isn’t it cute? Just room enough for me and my dog and a little space in back for some stuff – groceries, clay, pots, . . . . When the rest of the family is with me, uh, I guess we take the station wagon.

I have been seeing more and more of this model around town this summer in various bright colors and that cool little stripe. The last time I really looked into an electric car, it was the boxy Zenn which had a top speed of 25 mph – which is almost fast enough for city driving – but not quite. I think that this yellow cutie is a Think car which is supposed to be able to go 62 mph with a range of over 100 miles on a charge.

I first started seeing this golf cartish style around town about 9 years ago. It goes about 25 mph for 30 miles. You can see this one has been used for a long time. It has tent-like plastic “doors” – kind of a fair weather vehicle.

Here are a couple others I passed by yesterday on a walk. The white one is at the electric car dealer’s. Last time I stopped in, they were selling a different type. Today I noticed this WheeGo car and a very strange 3 wheeled dealie that holds 1 person.

So why don’t I just get one? Well, besides the obvious money issues and the fact I already have a car that, although old, still gets me around town, I don’t have a garage, or a driveway. Meaning, no place to plug in! I park on the often crowded street and not always right in front of my house. While I am quite good at parallel parking, I can’t figure out any way to consistently plug in an electric car at the curb. But I still want one.

Below are some more little bowls. Playing with color and decoration to see what might work and what doesn’t – like the blue oval. I liked it before it was fired but the color balance isn’t right – the blue is too intense. The ladder and hoop is from a picture my daughter took on one of her excursions to photograph grafitti and “stuff” near the railroad tracks.

For some family based market research, I – at different times – asked daughter and husband to rate these from favorite to least favorite. They were in the exactly opposite order. Daughter’s favorite was the green and white with ladderish design and husband’s favorite was the leaf pattern at the bottom. I like the vaguely heart shaped circle one in the middle.

Full List

Looking a little like he has risen ecstatically from the sunless underground, this guy can’t help but make me smile with his wild hair. I didn’t think the rutile would stay orange through the glaze firing but I’m glad it did.

The texture on the “collar” is intriguing to me although I am not sure exactly what to use it for. The clay is kind of brittle and flaky, I guess from the sodium silicate. Maybe finding a cool technique and then searching for a reason or a place to use it is backwards, but I just know could be a useful thing to know how to do – for something someday.

I went to the studio today with a long list of things I wanted to get done. I am the “one-in-charge” on Fridays, but usually there are the same few experienced people there who need little help from me so I’m free to do my own work. I guess because it’s summer, there were 5 new people today, 2 of them ready to start pretty ambitious projects that needed much discussion. The new people are all congenial and easy-going which is worth a lot.

Between talking and demonstrations and loading a kiln, my “to do” list is still as long as it was this morning. Oh, wait, I did have time to trim a couple of pots. Scratch 1 item.

When I came home the partner was raving about a movie he had just seen called Food, Inc. He rarely raves. He said it was done really well, not just gross pictures of meat packing companies, but a view of the entire corporate food industry. It will be interesting to see what Monsanto will counter with.

On a happier (but possibly food related note) Gerti is so happy that Tate is living with us for the summer. Can you see the look in her eye? She is fantasizing the glorious chase she would have if she could just get that bunny outside with no humans around . . .

Color feast

The front door to Keeyla's studio.

I went to Keeyla Meadows‘ garden and art open house the other day. Keeyla is an artist and landscaper. I have seen pictures and small examples of her work for years. She has written books and articles and her style has been imitated widely, but I wasn’t sure what to expect when going to her house, studio, and garden in an unassuming part of town.

The back entrance to her studio.

Her specialty is the color palette of plants and their surroundings and the colors in each area of the garden are reflected and balanced – art and building color dance perfectly  with the plants growing there. The attention to detail is  incredible as you can see in the picture above of the back or side door of her studio.  She has another smaller clay studio.

This pot looks small but it is about 30 inches tall.

Passage from the side to the back part of the garden.

It sounds like she has a lot of space, and it feels like it because of all the paths and elevation changes, nooks and crannies, and plant, ceramic and metal visual feasts, but really it is just an average to small urban lot – with no fewer than 4 large water features.

A corner of her studio with pots

This is a metal sculpture- with hanging lights and a fountain at the bottom.

Detail of a large pot tucked in with the nasturtiums.

I’m going out and water my wilting roses now.

Revisions and practice

I wish there was a faster turnaround to see if a color combination works. I am happy with the overall design on the finished bowl, but the colors don’t exactly pop, to coin a phrase. I think the orangey color is not bright enough for the intense yellow. and the very orange dots at the bottom of the bowl stand out too much when they should just add balance. I decided to try the general design again with brighter circles and some delineation on the yellow, so I penciled in a rough design. I don’t know, I get a kind of small thrill about being able to drawing on bisque work, making mistakes and approximations and partial erasures and knowing it will all burn out.

Here it is underglazed and penciled and I’m hoping these colors will be better. The black underglaze pencil fired to a light blue on the bowl on the left. Sometimes it is black and sometimes this beautiful blue. I don’t yet know why, but hopefully, it will go blue on this bowl, too.

I tried to focus on cylinders and bottom thickness in “Barbara’s self-taught throwing class”. Below are the next few pots drying after trimming. I think they were a little thick at the bottom, but after trimming seem to be fine.

These next ones not as warped as my picture makes them look. I think I went overboard on thinner bottoms on these. Maybe the next try will be juuuust right. The, um. let’s call them planters, on the picture above are about 7 inches tall and taller ones on the bottom are about 8 inches tall.

I can only sit at the wheel for about 45 minutes at a time till my back starts rebelling, but it’s longer than I thought I would get. I am thinking about how I can extend this time. I have tried different chairs, etc. but I am looking for a stool with adjustable legs to see if that will help.

My back was just fine till 3 years ago when I laid a stone patio. It was fun – like making a mosaic with really heavy tiles. I picked up at least 5 different stones for each one I laid, to find the one that fit just right in each spot. And who remembers about correct lifting when you are in the middle of making a giant mosaic!

Tweet

Violet and her mom came by today to visit and shop for presents. One of the pieces her mom bought was a bird ocarina and Violet gave us a little concert before I wrapped it up. It’s hard for a 3 year old to get her fingers on all the holes, but she can make sound come out, and that’s a start. I haven’t seen Violet for a few months. So much changes so quickly at 3 – but she still likes pink. Purple, she says, is her mom’s favorite color. The last time she was here, she showed me all her ballet moves and the names for each of them and instructed me on how to do them correctly. I just tried to stay upright with my toes pointing in opposite directions.

I got to make clay pancakes with Violet while her mom was looking at pottery. I have to say that her pancake always had more yummy things in it than mine. I think my imagination needs a tune-up.

This plate went home with them because Violet’s dad rides his bike over the Marin county hills that look like this. I have been meaning to do more of these plates. I like the shape, but on the bottom, the round foot is a little like the shadow of a foot. I would like it to be more substantial but still small enough so it doesn’t interfere with the picture on the bottom – same hill silhouette but with just a lone tree.

While I was writing the above paragraph, I kept looking at the word foot, thinking it was spelled wrong. How could any word spelled like that have meaning? I both knew it was spelled correctly and knew that it just looked wrong, wrong, wrong, Has that ever happened to you? Once, long ago, in college (with brain cells still fairly fresh) and new to cooking on my own, I searched for chicken recipes in a big cookbook. After reading each and every one of them I was sure that the word ‘chicken’ was spelled wrong in the book and wondered how they could have published a cookbook with the word ‘chicken’ spelled incorrectly. By now, I know it is a devious trick my brain plays on me occasionally and if I just close my eyes for a minute, foot will look like foot went I open them.

Whole lotta shakin’

Where to run when the ground starts shaking.

Just as I sat down to the computer, I heard a rumbling, the dog tumbling down the stairs, and then the house started to shake. I was a little slow to react since it’s been awhile since we have had a daytime earthquake, but then Gertigirl and I dashed into the living room where we felt much safer. Well, I did. Gerti had no idea what was going on. She just wanted to be with me.

My little house has 2 parts, built more than a century apart. The old part which was built as a temporary shelter in 1900 while the big house on the property was being built, has 7′4″ ceilings and was not built to last, but it has, although there is a definite lean to the north. When we decided to live here a few years ago, we reconfigured the old part slightly and added a new kitchen and living room. Building codes required us to use specially engineered earthquake panels in the new areas. The contractor felt that it was over-engineered for such a small space and the joke was that everyone would run to our living room in a earthquake.

Well, no one else was here but me and Gerti, but we sure got there fast. Now I hear the neighbors in back out talking about earthquakes and where they were when the last big one hit back in ‘89. Yep, makes everyone a little on edge. We don’t worry about killer cold, snow, hurricanes or tornadoes, but there is that tectonic shift issue.

A Little Goes A Long Way

Just to show how much can be put into 36 square feet and still have a spot to stand and a chair to sit on. I have a space to underglaze the pots and a table to handbuild when I don’t feel like driving to the studio. AND all the spiders are gone! (I shouldn’t say all. I read that you are never more than 10 feet away from a spider wherever you are. ) At least all the spiders that could be seen are gone from the inside.

Now that I know that the beautiful black spider that I became so fond of for its intensely protective maternal ways was a Black Widow getting ready to present me with about 500 of its babies, my attitude has become less laissez-faire and more authoritarian. Me in, spiders out.

The little dipping bowls that I made while standing in one spot are drying bottoms up.

I ran into a chalk and chocolate festival in my neighborhood the other day. I forgot it was happening, till we walked up to get a late lunch at The Juice Collective, my favorite sandwich shop, and heard the capoeira drumming. This festival started about 3 years ago and is getting a little better attended each year.

This one might be my favorite, even though he is just getting started. The kids are wishing for a chocolate bar that size.

These drawings are fun, but I’d love to see these guys in action: http://www.impactlab.com/2006/03/09/amazing-3d-sidewalk-art-photo

Unfortunately, they were out of roasted red pepper and feta cheese sandwiches, but I made up for my disappointment by sampling chocolate – lots of different kinds of chocolate. And I’m sure I went home healthier with all those flavinoids and antioxidants. I sure felt happier.

Feels like summer

I took the Gerts out for a walk last evening and I thought, “I love summer!” OK, it is not officially summer, but it was cold and foggy just like summer here often is and, the most exciting part – it was 8:30 and it was still light. Hurray for long days and short nights.

Since it’s summer, my daughter will be coming back on Sunday to live with us for the next couple of months – which I also love. Although between her summer class, her job and her social life, I don’t know how much we’ll see her.

The big issue for me is that I had taken over part of her cute little attic room to paint my pots, with her vintage Beatle’s poster and red wall.

Now this will all be moved out to the studioette. While out there cleaning and rearranging to make room for a painting table I cleared out lots of spiderwebs. This very protective spider parent would not abandon her eggs, so after I reassured myself that it wasn’t a black widow, I had to let her stay.

(later note: Looks like I was wrong, wrong, wrong, about this spider – thanks to Linda and Meredith- read their comments.)

In the fall when I was teaching 7 year olds, and the big beautifully colored garden spiders were in every bush, I would take the kids out to watch and learn all about them. The kids were fascinated (8 eyes! spinnerets!) and would get so excited to see any spider. One day a parent was helping in the classroom and one of the kids saw a tiny spider and called everyone over – “spider, spider!” The mother, thinking she was coming to the children’s rescue, ran over and squished it with her shoe. The kids couldn’t believe it. There were tears.

Spiders are supposed to bring good luck. “If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive”. You would think I would have thought of this sooner, but when the eggs in that sac hatch, my studioette will be filled with up to 1000 babies! Uh, lucky me?

Finished Book

I finally finished this book from the Steven Allen workshop. He said the stain used for the screened image (all of the black parts) would be easily smeared even after the bisque, so the glaze would have to be sprayed on, which is a problem for me, not having a spray booth. I also wanted some color on the image and was nervous about smearing the black if the underglaze touched it, so the “book” sat a few weeks till I got tired of being cautious.

I painted on the underglaze very tentatively trying not to touch any black, till I inevitably slipped and saw that the black stain really didn’t smear that easily, even when wet so I painted right over the stain without any blurring.

I was still worried about putting on the glaze, though, so I used my little metal atomizer to spray enough clear glaze onto the printed surface to cover it and touched up with a paintbrush.

I am amazed at how well this gadget works. It’s really messy though. I should have made a cardboard box “booth” and sprayed into that. Next time.

sitting on the dock of the bay-ayay

Sitting on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I’m just sitting on the dock of the bay

Wasting time

Left my home in Georgia

headed for the Frisco Bay . . .

(Thanks to Otis Redding)

Makes sense that this song would be playing in my mental soundtrack as I sat on this dock waiting to meet my daughter at the Ferry Building for lunch, but now I’ve got an earworm and it won’t go away.

If I had gotten the cars to stop or it might look like this picture was taken in the 50s with the streetcar stopped right in front.

After lunch I got on BART subway to ride home under the Bay and Claire walked up the hills and stairs to her place just below Coit Tower. But before we parted she told me she would like to have a pitcher and I saw a challenge. New goal: throw a functional and well-balanced and well-handled (!) pitcher that looks good.

Multi-talented Jana, was a potter when I first knew her. She made special cups for my kids that I still have (cups and kids) and a wonderful pitcher for me that I used for years and years until it developed a small crack in the bottom. By then, Jana was a painter and hadn’t kept any of her pots so it is now back with her. It is kind of a Kool-Aid pitcher shape, so that is what I am aiming for.

Coit Tower through the haze.

Cool Studio

Usually it’s a little hard sometimes to go to the studio on a beautiful, sunny day because it is kind of a dark place with not enough windows, but it was the perfect place to hide out from the heat today. I tried to work in the garden, but by 10am it was too hot. The studio was as cool as I thought it would be and I sat down and started making bowls.

I made these three right off the bat – er, on the bat, and then I forgot how to center I guess, because the next couple got themselves wedged back up into balls of clay to try again.

There was a big birthday party/barbecue going on in the park next to the studio, and a kid’s ball game up on the hill above. There was lots of happy noise right outside the door where kids were playing in the shade of the building’s overhang and when I was leaving, I had to step over piles of candy and bubblegum from the pinata. Bubblegum smells like good memories. After I drove away I wished I had asked for a piece to keep in my car. I could hang it from the mirror like an air freshener.

I came home and watched some more You tube to see what I was doing wrong and got enticed by the thought of a Bison trimming tool. I think my throwing would be much improved if I had a Bison trimming tool Doesn’t that make sense?

This bench with the nasturtium and cilantro flowers shows the overgrown state of my garden. I have been waiting for the winter vegetables to go to seed because I like to use my own seeds, but the waiting is cutting into the new seedlings time.

Resolutions revisited

A paper fell out of my calender this morning that said:

Be more careful.

Stay on one theme.

I was blank for a moment and then – “my New Year’s resolutions!” Back in December, I resurrected the New Year’s Resolution idea for myself as a way to correct my serious flaw of excitement – so many things to try in clay. My focus was everywhere and I didn’t stay with one thing long enough to work out the problems.

At the time I thought I was dealing with 2 different things – not being careful enough and flitting. Now I see one flows into the other. Repetition allows you to correct and improve and shows you at what stage it is particularly important to be careful.

I have stayed with the theme of the heads project (even though I am behind my schedule, and have a couple of other themes going) and I have been trying to be more careful to finish bowls so they look as good on the bottom as on the top.

A small handbuilt bowl with a sprig inside the foot.

I am just learning to trim because I am a throwing beginner, so maybe if I make the bottom with lots of color and design, any trimming flaws will be less apparent.

I read, in some brilliant blog I think, about always having some small surprise at the bottom. Wish I could remember who to credit for that sage advice. I hear that “voice” whenever I turn a piece over. I am thinking about other ways to leave a “surprise”. Stamps? Drawings? Different sprigs? Words of Wisdom? Stock tips?

Ok, it is getting really late, but as I look over this posting I am noticing that the picture of the bowl with 3 orange circles looks like a bug-eyed face with a furry nose. It’s funny how once you notice something like that you can’t see it any other way. Do you see it?

New relative

This was a great weekend. One of the highlights is that I got a call at 9 am Friday from my son and my NEW daughter-in-law in Japan. It was 1 am there and they had been waiting up to call me to say that they were officially married. There was no ceremony, just a lot a papers to sign at various places, the last place being the American Embassy. We will go to Tokyo in early August to celebrate with Junko’s family and friends.

The flowerpot is one of my first thrown pots. The other one has a foot thrown onto a slab bowl. Both of these are wearing the new clear glaze which has a beautiful smooth gloss but it changes the color of some of my favorite underglazes. The evergreen color which looked so good under the old glaze (that pitted), loses all color under this glaze. That’s disappointing, but that light blue and orange still sing and the emerald green looks almost as good.

I have another stack of bowls waiting upstairs to be painted. I have never liked glazing because I am not so good at planning ahead and keeping the fired glaze color in my mind, but painting with underglaze allows me to design and balance color as I go. It’s a process I love and I may have said this before – more than once? – but I guess I just have to say it again.

I do the underglazing at home instead of the studio and I get to have whatever music I want at whatever sound level I want and also lots of breaks for snacks and Scrabble.

I was invited to an on-line Scrabble game a few months ago by a claymate. I am just OK at the face to face game because I get anxious about having people waiting for me and I lose concentration. With the on-line game, I can take as long as I want and use a dictionary before playing a word. It does change the game to being more about strategies with the word and letter scores, and less about knowing cool words without a dictionary. But you never have to look for someone to play a game with and you get to use all those weird 2 and 3 letter words without having to memorize them. Aa, oe, mm – not in my Webster’s but all legal in the OSPD4.

Peacocks and Fog

There was a peacock walking up the sidewalk! I was driving to the studio along a main arterial road in the residential hills and was shocked to see this guy strutting nonchalantly along. There are rows of houses on each side of the very busy street. I pulled over, hoping that it didn’t strut into oncoming traffic at least before I took the picture. I took a couple more before I drove off wondering why and how it got there and still hoping that it would have at least a slightly longer lifetime but not holding out much hope for it.

But while the car was stopped, took a couple of pictures looking out the other direction and got this picture of the fog coming over San Francisco.

This is a familiar sight, especially at this time of year as the inland areas heat up and the fog gets sucked in from the ocean to replace that hot air that has expanded and risen. The fog moves onto land in the evening and usually retreats back out to sea the next morning or at least the next afternoon. Sometimes it hangs out right over the land all day long – actually for days long.

I threw some bowls but the clay was really too hard. I will have to pay more attention to the condition of the clay before I start. But I had a good talk with Chris about how to keep the studio running more smoothly. By the time I drove home at about 10:30 I was plowing slowly through fluffy clouds.

Oh, and while I was there, I found out that the peacock that I was so worried about has lived in the area for several years and is apparently pretty car savvy. I guess it has more to fear from some neighbors who are not so happy about the unlovely ear- wrenching noise it can make.

The fog has retreated this morning, at least in my area of land, and it is a beautiful warm sunny day, and I am off to count some more tests, but only for a few hours.

Headin’ On

After pushing papers all last week, I finally got to the studio today and threw some more pots and was happy to find that I hadn’t completely forgotten how to do it – remember, I am still at that formative beginning stage of throwing where I could give up at any time things are not going well – and I made several more nice size bowls. Nice for me being about 8 inches.

Seems to me that the trimming is a little more difficult than the throwing part. Time to look up some you tube trimming videos. Hmm, I just remembered Ron Philbeck’s video from a few weeks ago. He sounds so relaxed he makes it look easy, maybe even fun. He tapped on the clay a couple of times while he trimmed. Someday, I might know what the various sounds of tapped clay mean. I will watch that again soon, and repeatedly.

I sculpted most of this head the weekend before last, but between working and the “other thing”, I didn’t finish it until today. The “other thing” is whatever I did to my right arm that has been provoking colorful swearing if I move it the wrong way – or any way.

It has been working up to the cursing stage for a few weeks and my usual practice of “ignore it and it will go away” needed a small adjustment so I spent the last few days off the computer, (or mousing and typing using my left hand – hilarious) and most everything else. Seems to have helped enough to get back to clay and computer today.

back to the heads: yes, I am behind on the head schedule. I only have made 9 and I should be at 12 by now, but maybe I will make 3 this week or 4 next week or 5 the week after. Or more realistically, maybe I will allow myself to extend my deadline – arbitrary as it is.

soda, pop, or p**p

The following story has nothing to do with the above picture, but taking it was the most creative thing I did all day. However, I did hear some creative reading by a first grader that cracked me up (quietly).

I was in the reading room at the elementary school (wrangling those pesky standardized tests). There was a lull in the testing action so I whiled away the 30 minutes drawing and listening to a 6 year old boy reading to the reading specialist. She was assessing, so she was just listening to him read and not correcting anything.

~6 year old’s own words are in parentheses~

“What do you want for supper,” asked Tom’s mom.

“I want peas in a pot and toast that’s hot,” said Tom.

“I don’t have peas in a pot and toast that’s hot,” said Tom’s mom.

“Then I want ice cream that’s pink and poop to drink” (wait- poop? . . He wants poop to drink? . . . Poop? . . . He’s a weird kid. Really weird.)

“We don’t have ice cream that’s pink and poop to drink,” said Mom.

(Oh, good, great! He’s not really going to drink it.)

and he blithely goes on reading.

After he was done with the book, the teacher had a lesson with him about how what you read should make sense, but actually Northern Californians almost universally call it soda, not pop, and most kids have no idea that a lot of the country says pop when they want the fizzy stuff. So pop might sound even stranger than poop.

You might ask how he can easily read hot, pot, mom, and Tom and not pop, which has the same vowel sound. Good question.

I grew up saying pop (WV near Pittsburgh) but have been a soda person most of my adult life. I wondered which term was more prevalent. Funny I should ask. Apparently many millions of people have already been weighing in. And it’s not just soda, pop, coke, or soft drink, Go to http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/308-the-pop-vs-soda-map/ if you haven’t seen it. We are a nation divided by the nomenclature for carbonated drinks. Scroll down to read the explanations of the words. Isn’t etymology fun.

Pat the Bunny

I knew it was going to be a good day when I found this box while I was looking for the tube of Tanglefoot Mary lent me. My studioette is tiny so it amazes me that anything can get lost in it, but I still haven’t found the Tanglefoot.

The thing I like about making boxes is that each side can be different as long as there is some kind of relational aspect. I think this one got stuffed away because I wasn’t happy with the relational aspect of it – there wasn’t enough.

But what I do like is that the clay is so smooth that the underglaze pencil slides over it easily. It is a cone 5 porcelain which I didn’t like for it’s chalkiness and I went back to B-Mix. But B-Mix has too much grog and the feet on my bowls are rough after a glaze firing even if I have burnished them. Maybe there is another solution but I don’t know it so I am looking for a smoother cone 5 clay. I have just made several bowls with Icelia but they haven’t been fired yet. Anyone have a white cone 5 recommendation?

This is Tate, my daughter’s bunny. She (the daughter) goes to UC Berkeley and lives in an apartment near campus with 2 roommates, the bunny, and her roommate’s cat, Lou. Often the animals are left to their own devices for getting attention. Lou pushes his paw through the cage and Tate puts his head down so Lou can “pat the bunny”.

I have never had a cat so it is amazing to me that the cat, which is only about 6 months old, is so gentle with the bunny and it also amazes me that the rabbit is so trusting. Sometimes the cat lays on the top of the cage and dangles a leg in on top of the bunny’s back. Awww.

Walking to work

I was walking to work today, (more about that in a minute) and the weather was beautiful and everyone was sitting outside at the sidewalk tables at the cafes and sitting on the grass in the median strip – leaning against the signs saying Keep Off – eating pizza or just standing around, but there was a little more buzz than usual even for the noon crowd on a hot day.

Continuing on up the street, I see a couple cop cars, big trucks, and lots of big guys with 2 way radios and ball caps and part of the street blocked off. I figured it was a movie – not an unknown sight in these parts. I asked, when I stopped in for my bakery delight, and the counter guy said a customer told him they were filming an episode of Nash Bridges but somehow(!) that didn’t seem right to me so I went closer and took a few pictures and asked a few questions.

A friendly big guy with a 2 way radio told me they were filming a pilot for a show on NBC called Parenthood. Well, yup, just read the chairs.

These are a couple of about 10 carts of tripods. I had only a little interest in standing around and seeing what would happen, because the real action would undoubtedly be happening inside of Saul’s Delicatessen and I had to get to work, but I now have an ever so peripheral interest in tracking the life of the pilot called Parenthood.

Yes, so about going to work. I agreed to be the testing coordinator for an elementary school giving the required statewide tests. I did it last year and swore I would never do it again so why did I say yes this year? The very nice principal got me with a combination of wily flattery and her anxiety. The job has a limited run of about 3 or 4 weeks, but there is so much picky detail. And rules. And more rules. Every scrap of paper has to be counted, recounted, and counted again, daily! I should just think of the nice piece of paper I will get in the end. The one with the dollar sign on it.

Hot Dog

This is going in the direction of what I have been aiming for with the heads project. I want to make quickish, sketchy heads with some expression. This woman might not have the personality that you would want to sit next to on a long plane ride, but it’s distinct like someone you might remember.

Paperclay has so much strength, I only had to wait about 2 hours before the neck hardened enough to support the head.

It was about 90 degrees today. Gerti knows what feels good on a hot day. She’s wanting a little under her chin.

The clay studio, which doesn’t have enough windows and is hard to come into when it is beautiful outside, was cool and appealing today. It stayed fairly cool till about 4:30. Now that I have come home and watered the dog, I’ll go try to revive my wilting garden.

and a nice Chianti

I walk by these fava bean plants everyday but you know how you get used to seeing something and don’t really look at it? I wasn’t noticing that there were lots of fava beans ready, and some past ready, for picking. They are incredible plants. They are nitrogen fixers. They grow all winter here without any care. They have pretty flowers. The beans are delicious – if you are willing to do the work of getting to the edible part. And they produce piles of soft greens for the compost. When I was working full time, I often wasn’t willing to do all the work of harvesting the beans and they were still worth planting for their other attributes.

These don’t just split open like a pea pod. The pod does not like to give up its seed. You have to break and squeeze to pop it out.

Then the beans have to be blanched for a few minutes in order to be able to tear the tough outer skin and pop out the edible part. Each bean is a very labor intensive tidbit. No wonder restaurants use them like condiments. I think they are delicious plain or thrown into a stir fry right at the end.

One winter I tried cooking dried fava beans thinking I might get the same flavor. What a disappointment – soaked cardboard.

box top

A couple of years ago, I made boxes. I kept this one because, well, for one reason, the top fell off and distorted, but also because it reminds me of all the years I kept chickens in my yard and this time of year I really miss having them and the little chicklets.