Like/Hate

It’s a seasonal thing – the object of my mixed emotions. In the spring this tree has many small white blossoms and limey green new leaves – Like. In the summer it provides deep shade and develops cute little green clusters of seedpods – Like. In the fall, the seedpods turn bright orange and hang from the tree in bunches – Like (with reservations because I know what’s coming). In the winter, the seedpods fall EVERY time the wind blows. The seedpods hit the ground and explode open – Hate. Really Hate. Each one of the gazillion little seeds inside each seedpod is hard and sticky.

Sticky enough to attach to the bottom of your shoes and don’t easily scrape off. Sweeping them away each day only seems to make more fall. They especially like to attach themselves to fur.

It’s amazing how many hard tiny seeds can hide in Gerti’s fur. We try to brush her off before she comes in but apparently we miss a million or two.

We went to great lengths to save this tree when we expanded our house around it because it does such a great job of visually screening the close-by houses from our view and vice-versa.

As spring comes on I will start to Like it again when I sit inside and watch bird courtship dances in the branches just out the windows and appreciate that I can walk out my door and see leaves instead of a new crop of graduate students studying over breakfast on their deck. Just have to continuously sweep for a few more weeks.

I guess it could be worse. It could be snow.

Recently I vowed (hah!) that I would sketch a calla lily every day and I am proud to report that I came close to sketching it every day until it withered and then the other day while walking in the Ft. Mason area of SF

GGBridge from Ft Mason

Alcatraz from Ft Mason

I wandered into a community garden and sketched these while waiting for some friends.

I was so proud, not especially of the sketches, but just that I had 1. brought a sketchbook 2. used it.

Here is how one of the small bowls came out. And a bigger one that is ready for some clear glaze. It might be a little overworked, but I usually like the glaze pencil more after it softens the lines in the firing.

Growing up

My youngest turned 21 last week.

What a milestone. For her, yes, but equally for me. Wasn’t she just 12 last year? Time goes by so quickly in retrospect. I knew it was coming, and, as she pointed out, she has been legally an adult for the last 3 years, but 21 is really adult

She had classes all day on her birthday and work in the evening at the restaurant where she works a couple nights a week, but she called when she was done at 10pm and wanted to take us out for a beer so we could be with her for her first legal carding. Oh, so exciting. We sat in the very crowded studenty place, struggling to hear, over blasting music, her very savvy critique of one of her sociology professor’s theories, and I thought, “Dang, she sounds like an adult.”

The next night she and 10 of her friends came over for dinner and birthday cake – which was very fun with a mixture of a lot of laughing and intense intellectual college student conversations. I thought again, “Dang, she really is an adult.”

Then it was time for them to go and get ready for a party at the house she and 5 of them share. Birthday girl was saying good-bye to Gerti and put her through all the tricks she had taught her 9 years ago, then got down and rolled around on the floor with the dog and I was happy to see my 12 year old was still in evidence. And I thought, she is still my baby.

But I sure didn’t say that out loud.

testing testing 1-2-3

I resolved a couple of weeks ago – it wasn’t a New Year’s Resolution, but just an everyday kind of decision, to exercise every day instead of the 2 to 4 times a week I had been doing. For me exercise means walking – fast and uphill on good days, and I’ve been being pretty good at sticking to it, for the last 6 days, anyway.

Yesterday, though, I was busy with other things and it was getting dark and cold and the couch and my book were calling to me, but, and I’m proud of myself here, I grabbed Gerti’s leash and took her off for a night walk. I did this a lot last summer, walking up in the hills in the long summer evenings, listening to music, watching – between the houses – the sun go down behind the Golden Gate Bridge, but by 6:30 on a cloudy evening in January, it’s just dark. which doesn’t bother Gerti in the least and after the first chilly, ‘this is work’ few blocks, I started enjoying myself.

Some thoughts on walking in the dark:

Dark is pretty private. / Dogs see better in the dark than humans. / You can sing along to music and not be embarrassed because there is no one around to hear you and even if there is you can’t see their faces. / You can wear your old jacket with the paint on the sleeve. / Plants and flowers look really different in streetlight or porch light. / People store some funny things in their garages. (I went by a garage that I pass by often and tonight, with the lights on inside, I saw that it was full of humorously costumed mannequins – feathers, frizzy wigs, fairy wings).

Today I did another kind of walk I don’t normally do even though it was in the daylight. There is a road through the park that runs along the ridge above town that is heavily traveled except from November to March when the rains come, so that the newts can cross the road to mate in the creek. We didn’t see any but they were probably watching us from the dark under a log.

I spent much time this week preparing and firing test tiles, trying to figure out how to harness the good parts of layers of glaze bubbling up under majolica and also under underglazes. I didn’t get as much information as I wanted because there wasn’t much bubbling, maybe because they were lower in the kiln than last time, but I think I now know which white glazes are best for this purpose.

What made me the happiest in the end, though, was this little scrap of a test. It has just the amount of shine and watercolor matte sheen that I am after.

Here is a look at the other tests of all the white glazes I had access to, with majolica on the left and underglaze on the right in each picture.

Cone 05

Cone 5

show

Meredith, of Whynot Pottery has conceived of, and is organizing a show called “Clay and Blogs: Telling a Story” that will take place in early October in Seagrove, North Carolina. I think there are about 44 potters from all over the world that will be participating – New Zealand, Australia, Spain – just to name a few of the all-over-the-world places. Organizing and communicating with all of these people must be a huge undertaking, especially when Meredith has to keep repeating herself with some people because their spam filter is so picky. (Am I the only one?) As if that isn’t enough, she is also putting together an online show to run concurrently. Pretty impressive.

I’m really flattered to have been invited to participate because the show includes some of my favorite potters and bloggers, so it would be great to be in Seagrove in October to actually see the show and meet people I have been “talking” with. (Not to mention that just being in NC in October would be gorgeous. Last week I watched the movie, Goodbye Solo that took place in NC in the Fall and the red on some of the trees was unreal.)

One element of the show will be excerpts from blogs and maybe a statement about why we blog. That will take some pondering to put into words, but I do know that one of the reasons is community and Meredith is very good at helping to create this. She has a very distinctive voice in her own blog and the comments she leaves on other blogs. Her support, concern, experience, and humor show through in all of them.

Thank you Meredith, for bringing together all these potterbloggers and being willing and able to organize this show.

Clay and Blogs: Telling A Story
October 1 thru October 29, 2010
Arts Council of Moore County
Campbell House
432 East Connecticut Avenue
Southern Pines, NC 28388

Opening Reception Oct 1st from 6-8

Call a calla

I was startled by calla lilies once. Not real callas, but a painting of calla lilies. I saw it in a local art gallery and the lilies spiraled up soft and loose, but powerful and, you know, vital or something, out of an intensely dark and colorful background. They didn’t look at all like the puny snail-nibbled, bedraggled flowers growing crowded alongside the house I lived in then.

I go back and forth on my infatuation with callas, but they are calling to me again. I’m not sure why. Today I cut the one calla in my yard that is starting to bloom from the one plant I own. I plan to make some sketches (at least one, I hope) every day as it opens. If it opens. Sometimes after cutting, they don’t. I planned to pull up a chair and sketch it outside, but it rained all day so, oh, darn, I had to bring it inside to the warm, dry house.

This little critter hitched a ride into the warm, dry house under the petal curl, and got sent back out right after it was photographed.

I have some avoidance issues with sketching. At least once a month I resolve : “Every day I will do at least one sketch” or ” I will do one sketch of Gertidog every day,” or that tree, or the view of . . . . whatever. I follow through for a day or two and then it just slips my mind – possibly on purpose. (Why is that? Now I start rambling so if you are in a hurry you might want to skip to the end parenthesis. It’s my “I wish I was perfect” model. Some of my drawings are OK and some of them just aren’t. I want my sketches to be good if they are going in a sketchbook that I will go back and look at, or yikes, someone else would look at, and see all of my mistakes. So I start drawing in a too controlled way that I hate, but can’t seem to get past, but that I know, if I sketched more, I would get past. Maybe I should just draw on scraps of paper that I could easily cull at will because you know you shouldn’t tear too many pages out of a sketchbook because it looks really silly with a big spiral and 10 or 20 pages inbetween the covers.) So it’s a battle with myself, but now I really, really promise myself I will sketch this calla lily every day till it completely opens. If it does.

I did a few pages of sketches and then there were these little bowls just sitting there and I guess I’d rather do my sketching on hard clay. And then trying out some color

but I kind of chickened out on the one with the white background. I think I will wait and see how the blue one comes out before I start piling up the color. I’m not exactly sure how much I color I can put on before it gets muddy or just what color(s) I want to use.

What I really should do is a color sketch every day. If I can make it for a week doing one sketch a day, next week I will add some color to every sketch. Um, I promise.

No Cuppa Joe

I have had this cup for so many years. It looks like it would be hard to drink from but it’s not, although you do have to interact with it with intent and decisions about angles and lip placement. It’s not a cup you take for granted.

It was made by Anne Christiansen although I may have spelled her name wrong. She was kind of famous around here. People used to line up for her twice yearly sales and leave with big boxes of stuff and not because it was cheap. She was a very quiet, unassuming woman who always seemed surprised that anyone would really buy her pottery. She moved away to teach somewhere. I often wonder what kind of pottery she is making now. I also would like more of it, having broken all of her bowls and most of her cups over the years, as happens eventually to things that you use many times every day.

It could be a beautiful cup to drink my morning coffee from but I don’t. Drink coffee. Ever. Well, there was that once in college, but there were extenuating chemical circumstances . . .

I have always thought it was because my mom drank so much coffee that I turned against it. She would make a big pot in the morning and drink several cups a day. I don’t think my sister drinks coffee either. Really, I don’t like the taste of it, or even the smell. Lucky for me, then, Craig doesn’t drink it. In fact, he is slightly allergic to it.

All of my kids became coffee drinkers as teenagers. Probably because they thought it was some exotic beverage they never saw at home.

I’ve been told that I don’t drink coffee because I have immature taste!!? (Maybe that explains my childish love of chocolate.) One day a group of friends thought I should be drinking coffee and tried to stage an intervention, by making me order a latte. I played along and stirred the milk and coffee around and around the cup with the thin popsicle stick and warmed my hands around the cup. You know, just looking the part.

There is a coffee place a few blocks away that roasts their own coffee and at about 10pm the aroma wafts all over the neighborhood. Neighbors comment on the warm, friendly smell of the roasting beans. I don’t tell them that I shut my windows until the wind changes. It isn’t very popular to be anti-coffee, which I’m not, really.

I’m not a coffee curmudgeon. I go out for “coffee” with people all the time although I order herbal tea. I appreciate the smiley faces the barristas draw on the latte foam with chocolate. I enjoy the Italian names – the Frappiccinos and the Macchiatos and the Cappuccinos.

Most people I know depend on the caffeine to kick start their days or keep them moving through the afternoon. If I have any caffeine after 3pm I am awake till at least 3am.

So it is now 2:30 am and counting. I had some tea with a friend today after dinner and even though the restaurant listed the tea as non-caffeinated, I grew suspicious when it slowly occurred to me that my friend had not been able to insert a word other than “uh-huh” for the previous 10 minutes.

Can you imagine what I would be like with coffee?

and for the next test

I waited all day at the studio for the kiln to get cool enough to see what my majolica tests looked like even though I had forgotten to bring lunch or even any chocolate. That’s because, if you remember, I am very invested in these glazes, to the tune of I-spent-my-returned-Christmas-present-money to buy them and I want something to show for it.

The results were not what I had hoped for but after the initial disappointment, and a little talk with myself, I started seeing the results a different way. I had wanted to experiment and that means not everything will turn out the way I planned. Looking at it that way, I could appreciate what came out of the kiln for what it was, not what I thought it should be. So.

Isn’t this wild? The face I put on this tile didn’t look anything like this. I wish I had the imagination to make those wild eyes and green lips. Nope, it was just a regular, realistic-like looking face and then the glazes had their own party under, over and around my picture and made it their own way

A light blue glaze went down first, then yellow, and then persimmon under the white, with the majolica colors on top. That light green and blue green came from the yellow and blue mixing, but it mixed differently in different places

Pretty amusing. It looks like an old photographic slide that got thrown onto hot coals. Those windows and rooflines were straight lines before the kiln lid was closed and the electricity switched on.

Puzzling

I fired this small tile again with more majolica glaze on top thinking that I put too thin a layer on before the first firing, but in the second firing, more of the black came up through the white. (I put white glaze over black and then painted Spectrum majolica colors over that.) So the face, which after the first firing was just somewhat fugitive, now reminds me of a magazine picture that spent a few weeks in the compost pile.

What I am after is the color blend behind the flowers, where the persimmon comes up through the white in a kind of watercolor-like wash, not the bubbly breaking up of color on the flowers.

I got a beautiful sweater for Christmas. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly fit. I returned it to the store which didn’t have another one like it, so, fashion took the hit as usual. I took the refund to Leslie’s and bought more jars of majolica colors. I am invested in making this process work in more ways than one. I did more tests today – lots of them – every combination I could think of. I may be going about this majolica overglazing the completely wrong way and if you have any solutions or ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

Craig can’t believe I did this. Either putting it together or breaking it apart a few days later.

I got it at the De Young Museum at the Amish Quilt show in a moment of either weakness or bravado. It seemed like a good idea at the time and then later I thought about not even opening it. I did because a holiday guest expressed interest in it but then got distracted by something else.

So there it was sitting on the table. I could have swept it back into the box. Instead I spent HOURS – I won’t even say how many, matching colors and shapes. Publicly I make fun of my drive to sit there till I finish it, but secretly I really love the visual and spatial challenge. Yes, Craig – who still can’t believe it – I was having fun even when I was screaming and pulling my hair in frustration.

Gerti interruptions

Gerti is a very well behaved dog so when she dared to put her feet up on my lap to get my attention away from the computer, it worked. I called Jana who always likes to take a walk with Gerti (and me) and we went down by the bay ~ where the watermelons grow – [sing along, now]. (I have no idea what kind of punctuation to give to a musical aside or the parenthetical explanation that it is a song.)

- to the dog park where the doggies can run free and that’s a big deal in the city. Right off the parking lot we saw these guys

doing just what Gerti would be doing if I let her. Only an absurd amount of yelling over many months broke her of the idea that she could submarine herself in mud repeatedly and then be allowed back into the car for the ride home.

Most dogs go to the dog park to run and play with the other dogs. Gerti goes for the human interaction. She has been called slut puppy more than once for her trick of lying down in right in front of someone walking by and rolling on her back hoping for some belly rubs. Which she usually gets, because she is just so silly looking, but there are those who are immune to her wiles who just step over or around her. She’s doing that maneuver a little less, however, since she passed the 9 year mark.

I followed some advice I got from Linda and a couple other bloggers but I don’t remember who they were, who recommended the Wellness Formula to ward off colds and flu. A friend serendipitously was ordering some a couple of weeks ago asked if I had heard of it and if I wanted her to order some for me. I said yes, and here’s the proof.

It’s sitting on the windowsill along with some other good advice that came my way.

Random sightings

As I was driving back from the studio late this afternoon I kept stopping to look out at the bay and the sky over the Pacific. I love big sky vistas.

I woke up this morning excited about great ideas for using the majolica colors. I couldn’t wait to get to the studio so I could cut some tiles so they could dry and I could get to testing out all those amazing ideas. But on the drive over, I just couldn’t quite remember why I had been so excited.

You know how you wake up sometimes with the elated certainty that you have dreamed up something so profound you can’t wait to share it, and then you try to tell someone and all at once, it doesn’t really sound so profound and maybe it doesn’t really even make all that much sense? I’m afraid my wonderful ideas might have been a dream just sliding into waking thoughts. Or, worse, all the fantastic ideas were real and I had forgotten them all! A nightmare.

I did some other wonderful or necessary things at the studio and then I enjoyed the drive home. It was a beautiful day and I have been feeling terrific after feeling crappily flu-ridden for so long and I was noticing things I hadn’t really noticed for awhile. Like this house that I posted pictures of last March.

When I went by today, I noticed how busy this guy has been. This is all junk that the sign says he finds by beachcombing. I know there is a lot of junk that ends up at the beaches and the bay, but this is amazing. Look at this beetle and caterpillar:

The beetle is made of Bic lighters which are clearly battered, but the caterpillar is from brims of baseball caps and whiffle balls that don’t look like they have spent much time on a beach or being buffeted by waves.

There are signs on a couple of the sculptures and standing close in front of the one below, I thought he must have a friend named Ester Rynne who liked to dance till I stood back from the sculpture and then looked again at the sign and saw that the first letter of each name was written in a red color that had badly faded.

This guy must have some very good neighborly relations. The 2 adjacent houses are sporting more sculptures, too.

I do have some mundane plans for tests on those tiles – cone 5 base glazes under the Spectrum Majolica; using a thinner layer of white, etc., but with luck and maybe more dreams, I really will have some fantastic ideas.

Rolling Over

2010. Had a discussion last night at a dinner party about how to say this new year. Twenty-ten, two thousand and ten, two thousand ten, two-o-one-o, two zero one zero, two-o-ten. I’m peripherally aware that there is a small controversy with some passion on conflicting sides about this issue. Twenty-ten got the most nods in last night’s gathering, but I vote for being able to use any of the above as it suits me. Car commercials are already using different pronunciations. Lexus uses two-thousand-ten and Buick twenty-ten. So, the big question of today (New Year’s Eve) is, do you side with the A Space Odyssey precedent of saying the two thousand, or stay with centuries past – going from nineteen to twenty? Such a problem!

But HAPPY NEW YEAR whatever you call it.

I’m playing with painting low fire majolica on top of layers of dark glaze with white over (ala David Gamble). I like the way the color came up through the white on this first test tile, but the color on top is so broken up that a lot of the image is lost. (Those circles around the eyes were not intentional!) I am going to put on more majolica glazes and refire it and see what happens.

I am trying another one with bigger planes of color and heavier pigment on top and also outlined in glaze pencil. Here is a picture of it before firing.

These are small 3×3 tests so maybe I would get more of what I want with larger pieces. Like underglazes, the majolica glazes can be mixed before applying, but unlike thin layers of underglaze color, or transparent underglazes, these majolica colors don’t do any mixing while firing. In other words what is on top is what you get. Er, unless other color comes up from underneath

What’s for dinner?

This flu is taking forever to go away. Two steps forward and one step back.

I’m trying to figure out how to get the elves to come and cook Christmas Eve dinner at my house. I’ll make the pies. They can do the rest, including the clean-up.

Fortunately, my girls are great cooks. Unfortunately, they eat completely different things. Younger daughter has been a vegetarian since she was 7 and a couple months ago decided to be vegan. (What can you possibly eat that doesn’t have butter or cheese or eggs in it? Why would you want to?) Not that she proselytizes about it. She hardly mentions it. She just doesn’t eat the food. So she will be making vegan dishes which are surprisingly tasty.

Older one is a real San Francisco foodie and the kind of person who likes to figure out all the ingredients in a dish at a restaurant as she is eating it. She is also an omnivore. When she was traveling a few years ago, she had to try the most unusual food in each country. Did you know roasted guinea pig (Cuy al Horno) is a common delicacy in Peru? I wouldn’t have tried it.

Speaking of eating anything, son and wife are traveling around Asia on an extended honeymoon. Here is an excerpt about stinky tofu from their travel blog while visiting Taipei:

“I love all the street vendors here. Almost everything looks soo yummy. And most of the stuff we’ve tried has been awesome. I’m even starting to get used to the smell of all the stinky tofu vendors. Before I leave Taiwan, I’m determined to try some. For those of you who have never visited China, H.K., Taiwan, or Indonesia, I explain stinky tofu. It’s basically tofu that smells like death. There as many recipes for stinky tofu as there are stinky tofu vendors, but basically, they make first make a brine. The brine is made from pouring milk and or pure soy milk in a bucket, adding some meat, dried fish, dried shrimp, spices, and/or lye (there are numerous possibilities, but basically it has to be a bunch of stuff that gets stinky and nasty as easily as possible) and then leaving the brine outside for a week to months until rots and then rots some more. Then, they remove all the maggots and add bricks of very firm tofu and let it sit for a while to further ferment. Basically, the object seems to be to make it as stinky as possible. And I’m not just talking about simple stink. We’re talking about stink you can’t escape for blocks. Stink that stains your clothes, stains your brain. Stink that makes corpses smell like roses. Literally the foulest stuff I have ever smelled in my life. And people eat it. People love it. The stinkier the better. Now, I’m one of those people who is challenged by the weirdest, funkiest, grossest, most abstract food out there (one reason I loved living in Japan so much), so obviously I’m determined to eat and maybe even enjoy stinky tofu.”

If he tried it, he didn’t post about it. Not that I really want to hear about it. Just reading about the preparation is enough to turn me against tofu.

The other day I went to Joan’s to make truffles and while they were cooling, we had tea and I took some pictures around her house.  Ken Dierck’s cat is in front of some of Joan’s tiles in the first picture and the second is one of Ken’s test (!) tiles.

sick of the flu

I have had the flu for the last week and a half. I have read several novels, watched way too many movies and inane tv shows, done half a book of sudoku puzzles, taken handfuls of vitamins, drank tons of tea and chicken soup and it still isn’t gone.

I don’t like to complain, but Really! enough is enough. I don’t get flu shots because I never get the flu. (ahem). I might have to rethink that decision. At least it has been cold and rainy most of the time I have been home.

I ‘m not one of those sweet sick persons. I don’t like to lay around all day but Gerti has been trying to help me with that with her modeling of contentment.

I have been thinking about things I want to do with clay. Nothing kinky.

But before I go off in another direction I have to finish some things like making more little bird bowls for a couple of people who want a set.

This seems like a simple matter. However, these bowls were made by slumping the clay into a condiment bowl from what was probably a set of mid-century, heavy duty cafeteria ware – just the right size and shape. It’s gone. A victim of the thorough trashing of my car when it was stolen. Why was it in the car? I keep asking myself that right along with the question of why they had to throw everything away. Did they think if they did the car would be theirs to keep? Anyway, you also might think it would be easy to replace a little cafeteria condiment bowl. Well, I have been scouring the second hand stores and so far nada. I have tried some others but, without getting too melodramatic, it’s just not the same (she whined).

By the way, Diana, who bought the bird bowl set, left a comment the other day about the “hella darling” bowls, and that combination of words brings a smile to my face each time I think of it.

Snow on the camelias

and frost on the Collards and Coreopis. I know this frost is nothing compared to real snow but it is a big deal on the mid-Pacific coast with our zone 10b temperature range plants. I went out in the dark and cut all the lettuce I could reach from the path and covered my little tangerine and lemon tree trees. I should have covered several other plants, but it was too cold and I am too wimpy when it comes to being cold. Hopefully my plants are tougher than me.

It rained here in the flatlands near the Bay the night before last, but in the hills there was snow. It’s a big deal, since we only get snow every 5 to 10 years and then only lasts for a couple of hours. That’s OK with me since one of the reasons I like to live in this area is – no snow and no ice. Even though I had a great time in my high school days purposely skidding the car on ice in parking lots, I never want to drive on icy roads again.

This bowl turned out to be so thick it was out of proportion to the base, and I was about to recycle it, but wondered if I could lighten it up by carving some clay away and this is the result.

The bowl still seems a little top heavy to me, but the carving part was pretty satisfying, didn’t take an inordinate amount of time, and I want to see how it looks after glazing, so I guess it lives for another day.

Putting together furniture is not a good ikea

The show Saturday was very crowded for most of the night which was a good thing in more than one way. The biggest surprise was how much heat a crowd of people can put out even in a warehouse with the loading dock doors open. By the end of the night when it thinned out, there were people huddling under the kerosene powered patio heaters, but for most of the night it felt kinda like a garden party with heavy coats on. The food and wine were delicious. There’s nothing wrong with eating walnut bread and brie for dinner.

It was terrific to see so many people turn out for a ceramics only event. I had a great time with all my friends that showed up. Thank you all. I am happy to think of my pots in their homes. In fact, the next day, I blearily went to a book club discussion at the new home of my little bird plates and ate sugared pecans from them.

Today I went to help my daughter build some furniture. Put it together, anyway. She just moved and needed more space for clothes so we went to Ikea – my idea of hell, really, but she went and picked it out and all I needed to do was help her get it out of the warehouse – and loaded up her friend’s Suburban with boxes – heavy boxes- many heavy boxes.

By the time we had unloaded it at her place, even with the help of a couple big friends, I was ready for a nap, but we were on a tight schedule and already behind. While she went out for a job related appointment, I got started on the chest of drawers.

Now I got myself into this by telling her the other day that I liked to put together those furniture kits and that I was good at it. “It’s like a big puzzle,” I said liltingly. And I do like it. Even when the directions are not clear it’s kind of fun to figure out how to get it together.

I haven’t put any Ikea furniture together for a few years, but the last times I did it, I was impressed with how clear the directions were and how good the hardware was. What a difference a few years makes. Today, at about the third step, I was starting to fume. The directions were very clear, it’s just that the pre-drilled holes were not where they were supposed to be – first in one piece and then another and then yet another. I figured out a way with a little extra drilling and nailing, and swearing, to get the parts together, but when we put the drawers in, we found that the front pieces of the top drawers were identical instead of mirror images, so one drawer will not close. (I should have taken pictures.)

Now what? Do we have to take it apart and box it up and return it? Will they replace the bad frontpiece? I hate to think of trying to put together the wardrobe with the glass doors that she bought. I think she should return it all, but there’s no way I’m helping carry those boxes again. I think Ikea should have to come and pick up their badly made crappy furniture if it doesn’t work.

showtime

I was happy to see this when I opened the kiln yesterday. The color on the majolica is pretty clear with just enough white showing through.

These other pieces did pretty well too – a little color fading on the new fish deco, but, now I know that I can’t get the stains too thick and still have the pencil put down enough color to take. There were supposed to be dark Xs on the sides of the fish. (or do you spell that Xes or exes or X’s? I never understand the use of the apostrophe when using numbers or single letters- as in “scratch out all the 2’s and B’s – it just seem weird.)

Sigh. I tried very hard to just let that question hang there, and I swore to myself I would just let it go, but I couldn’t. I had to look up apostrophe use. I guess I am still a schoolteacher somewhere in my heart. Probably no one else really cares and if you don’t, just fast forward to the next paragraph, but if you have the slightest interest, here is the rule:

The plurals for letters and numbers used as nouns are not formed with apostrophes. for example: She consulted with 3 M.D.s. (but use the apostrophe to show possession: She went to 3 M.D.s’ offices.) She learned her ABCs. It was in the 1990s (not the 1990’s). She learned her tables for 6s and 7s. Exception: Use apostrophes with letters or numbers when the meaning would be unclear otherwise. for example: Please dot your i’s. (You don’t mean is.) He couldn’t distinguish between his 6’s and o’s. (You would need to use the apostrophe after the o so it wouldn’t look like os and then you would use it after the 6 for consistency in the sentence.) According to the MLA guidelines, using ’s after numbers is old-fashioned, illogical and unnecessary. (Hah, yer only as old as your apostrophes.)

Whew, talk about a bird-walk. What I really wanted to say is that I am all ready for the CAB+ Show and Sale tomorrow. Joan will be sharing a space with me. Not that there is much space for anyone. There will be about 12 inches between tables and the aisles are pretty narrow. I guess small spaces feel more intimate and comfortable, so in a large space, people have to be pretty jammed in to feel comfortable. With 48 potters and ceramic artists that’s a pretty good start to a crowd. Here’s one of Joan’s beautiful ceramic “paintings”.

I wonder how this event will go. This is my first pottery show although I did countless shows and fairs when I was a jeweler. I am hoping to get feedback on my work from people who don’t know me, and I know I will, just by watching faces even if there are no direct comments, but I really like it when people tell me what they like and what they don’t and why. I do wish the pots were as easy to transport as the silver was, though.

Apple Wars

For the past few days I have been trying to ignore the squirrel wars going on in the apple tree, which means the apples are ripe and if I want any, I better get out there and pick them or the squirrels will take exactly one bite out of each one before they hurl them to the ground.

Right before dusk (at what, 4:30?) I picked these baskets full which is about a quarter of the apples on the tree. The tree is only about 9 feet tall, but as you can see, wildly prolific so I could afford to share with the squirrels, but it’s hard to be kind to such wasteful critters. Not to mention the destruction to the rest of my plants as they dig 4 or 5 holes for each acorn they bury, so I don’t want to encourage them.

Both baskets are from the same tree, but the red ones face the south and the green are on the northern side. It’s a heirloom pippin with thick skin and really crispy meat (apple meat?). They make great pies and keep till spring in a box under the porch.

The little tile on the right has been sitting in my kitchen window for a couple of years. While thinking about new designs for the planters. I noticed it and decided to use it. I have been infatuated by arches (DeChirico) since I was a teenager, although they rarely come out as cutesy as this little chair and flowers. I’ve used the arch theme over the years in many ways.

This one is also from a couple of years ago.

The chair and flowers are without arches on this little planter because, even though I worked for awhile to add them, making arches come out just right on a round pot is hard. I always think there must be some simple mathematical calculation to make it all come out evenly, but if there is, I missed that day in math class or maybe I was there and asleep as usual.

Free-er than before

I was actually pretty happy to see how this serving plate came out. After the events of the last couple days I didn’t know if bad luck was going to continue to follow me.

So you may have read in my last posting that my car was stolen but recovered later the same day, not wrecked or stripped. I was feeling pretty good about not having to go out and buy another car, but the next day at the tow yard or whatever you call the place that holds your car in a garage until you pay them lots of money (2 days storage fees for holding it from 5pm to 9am??), I got mad. All the tools and ceramics materials were gone and the seats were littered with other people’s crap, and the upholstery was torn and gouged. All of the books, and papers in the console were gone including all the checks and records from my class, and in their place were some obvious burglary tools and the only thing they had kept from the clay box I keep in the car – the wire clay cutter. Hmm, wonder why they kept that? Hope it’s not because it looks like something from the Sopranos

I took the car to one of those car washes where they clean the outside and the inside and a friend gave me a sage bundle to burn in the car, which I fired up to “clear away the negative energy” and with the hope that it would cover the stale cigarette smells from the ashtray full of butts.

It is kind of freeing not to have to worry anymore about remembering to drop off all the clothes in the trunk at the Goodwill, or trying to find the right person to give the beautiful, old engraving block and tools to, or taking the time to go to the electronics recycling place and get rid of an old VCR and dead DVD player.

The up side of my car being stolen: No more junk in my trunk?

Walking everywhere now

Walked out my gate this Monday morning on my way to the studio, arms full of stuff and looked across the street to where I had parked my car on Saturday night and it wasn’t there. I couldn’t quite believe it and thought maybe I had just forgotten where I had parked it, so I walked up and down the block a couple of times scratching my head, just to make sure I hadn’t missed it. There weren’t that many cars on the street, so I had to face the fact that it was just gone.

I called Joan who said she would go up and put a sign on the studio door saying class was canceled, asked some neighbors if they had seen anything, and then I went out to pull weeds till the nice officer came to take the police report.

My car is old. The back seat is full of boxes of glazes and other ceramics junk. It doesn’t even have a radio, just a hole in the console where the last CD player was ripped out and I decided not to replace it again. It has high mileage and the gas tank was almost empty. The only thing good about it is that the tires are new.

I knew that Honda Accords are the most stolen cars in the country because of their lack of anti-theft devices but I didn’t know that the older ones were the most targeted. (My 1994 was the most stolen car last year.)

I hate to disappoint the other people who are coming to the studio today, and I was also going to load a kiln for a teacher of the kid’s class who needs them soon, but what could I do?

This car was also stolen a few years ago. It was found a couple weeks later, with minimal damage, and an empty trunk except for one pink ballet slipper. This led to many speculative stories, but we preferred the one about the ballerina with a checkered past who was late for a performance . . .

Update: 3 “suspects” were just arrested driving my car about 25 miles from here.  “It’s not wrecked or nothing” the lady at the police station told me. A cop heard the call about the car and looked up and noticed my  license plate.  Now I just have to wait till tomorrow and go to that town and pay the tow yard a bunch of money to get my car.  Too bad there were 3 of them. Which means at least one was in the back seat, which means they probably dumped all the good stuff in the back seat, including all the records for the pottery class.

Doodlebirds

I’m not feeling too inspired with new designs lately, but I’m getting tired of the old ones, so while making random marks on scrap paper (ok, doodling while talking on the phone), I was reminded of a big platter I did a couple years ago. As you can see, it doesn’t get used for plattering food, but I like to look at it up on this high cabinet with the redwood tree behind it.

I tried the design out on one of the little dipping bowls and was happy to see how little time it took to make. I like it well enough although I may try for a little more of a horizon line or color change at the bottom. What do you think?

The bitty bowl is only about 4 inches across. I make lots of them and sometimes I use them to try out new patterns and colors. This one literally took 3 or 4 flicks of a brush to make each bird, so hopefully other people like it as much as I do. Some of the designs on the little bowls are pretty time consuming.

Most of the time when I am on the phone, I am also walking around doing some mindless chore – phone crunched between my shoulder and ear – but the other day I was sitting in my car listening to a friend vent about her terrible day and I didn’t have the headset for my cellphone, so I didn’t want to drive, but I did have a pencil and some junk mail envelopes to occupy my right hand. This is the only good thing that came out of those doodles. Maybe I should get in my car and call someone.

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.