I just ordered a 120 mesh sieve, which a couple of the slip ware books recommended.  That should be here later next week. It was the  last item I needed to get started on this earthenware project.I have just about every size sieve but 120 mesh! When I get the specific gravity of the slip (it's settling now), right, I'll see if I can get it through a 200 mesh sieve. The Talisman sieve, which is one of my favorite tools, should make it easier. If that works, I'll throw a few small test pots for sgraffito, while I wait for the rest of the parts for the sip trailers.

This is one Thanksgiving I won't be cooking. We're spending it with our son and his family and friends. It's time to start a new family tradition, with the younger ones cooking. And since our daughter in law, Nicole is a great cook, we know it's going to be a fabulous dinner. My only contributions were making my pate, and helping our son shop for groceries yesterday. I've also offered my services as a kitchen slave if needed. There are a lot of sit down chopping and peeling chores I can do while my hip calms down.

I could barely walk after yesterdays marathon shopping. We loaded two full carts with over $600 worth of groceries; and we both still have more food shopping to do today, for some of specialty cheeses and breads and other things that the local grocery store didn't have.

It took forever to shop because we had four pages of recipes, with the ingredients for each dish in it's own  panel on the right. Had I seen that the night before, I would have made up a proper shopping list. As it was, there were things like onions, lemons, breads, etc. on several pages, since several recipes had similar ingredients, so we were flipping pages constantly while trying to figure out how many or how much we needed. If I hadn't offered to help, I think my son would have been in that store for two more hours!

By the time I got home I was too pooped and sore to do anything more than peel more potatoes and do some computer work.

From now till Sunday, when they fly back to L.A., it 's going to be family time, and time to do some Christmas decorating.  I ordered the tree, which is going to take a while to get here; but in the meantime, and our son took down all our boxes of decorations, so I'll be starting on those over the weekend. Right now I have to get out to do a bit of my own shopping. There's no way I want to be in any stores tomorrow and Friday!