Nature's Eye candy

  https://www.youtube.com/embed/FiZqn6fV-4Y

I've always thought that nature was the best designer and this video is an amazing look into the world of nature's creativity. Enjoy!

My creativity lately has been cooking - at least that's been the case this week. Tonight I made a great rack of lamb with a dijon mustard coating and then topped with  a coating of herb and garlic bread crumbs drizzled with butter, and my own take on cottage fries (cooked in a frying pan since my main oven is kaput and the repair man won't be here till February 7).

This week has been dealing with car problems. My car is now at the shop after getting hit by a driver who suddenly decided to put her car in reverse on the exit road from our local Costco, and did  a great job of scraping my front bumper area which will now be getting replaced. They called today and said it would be ready on Monday Her insurance company gave us a loaner ( good to have had a willing witness and a guilty party acknowledging guilt) ; but I'll probably be returning it with a full tank since I did grocery shopping the other day on the way home and am all set for dinner menus for the next few days. So their SUV loaner will safely sit in our garage till I take it back on Monday before picking up our repaired car.

 Superbowl Sunday is just going to be classic wings and a bit healther potato salad to balance all the fat in the wings.

I may just pick up a small watermelon for dessert  to balance all that fat. Life these days is all about balance - at least most of the time. 

Another Clayart archive

Here's a link to the original clayart archive with messages until mid to late 2012. This archive is the one I tend to go to for information since all the information is in categories. If you're looking for a certain type or color glaze, or certain cone, it is in it's own directory. You don't have to scan thousands of posts or many years to find what you're looking for. http://www.potters.org/categories.htm

Finally went in for the endoscopy the other day and seems the paraesophagela surgery last year caused a new mini hiatal hernia, as well as shifting of the mesh they put in there. There were able to stretch the bottom of my esophagus, so maybe now the food will go down and stay down! It's not totally fixed, but so far it's an improvement. The good news was everything looked good otherwise, so that's a blessing.

On another note - I've decided to sell my brand new, never used Brent extruder with all the lovely dies. With this new hernia, I'm just not going to risk it getting worse by using a hand extruder. I can't ship it, but if anyone in my area of Southern Oregon is interested, let me know. I'll have to check the price and probably sell if for $100 less than I paid for it and throw in all the lovely dies and hardware.

With Jim's health challenges as well as my own, there isn't time or energy for the studio. My hip has gotten very bad and I can't get a new one for a few months, till Jim is done with his treatments, so I'm hobbling along with my cane and spending a lot of time sitting down and reading in between cooking and other "must do" household chores. Old age gets more interesting every day!  

Time to check on wall ovens. Ours died a few days ago. It won't unlock after the self cleaning and I can't even figure out how to get it out of the cabinet! So as soon as mercury retrograde is over in a couple of weeks, I'll be replacing it. Thank goodness for my little toaster/convection oven which is doing a great job for most things - just no pizza for a while though. 

New Clayart archves now available

 A new page for Clayart archives is now available:

http://www.clayartarchives.com/

This archive, unlike the old one separates the years. My preference is the old one which has all glaze recipes, and like related subjects in files. This archive will require a lot more time to search for information unless you know which year, of at least 15 years archived, to check.

Finally got to the right medical office yesterday after months of being shifted from one doctor to another; and on the 23rd I go in for a endoscopy procedure to hopefully fix this problem, of my lower esophagus that has pretty well closed as a result of last years para esophageal surgery. Now that that problem is set to be taken care of, I now need to get started on getting another hip replacement, hoping I can do that in March.

This hip has suddenly gone south and I now have the cane nearby all the time. Yesterday Jim noted that most of the entries in our calendar these days are medically related! Old age is certainly interesting time.

Once they patch up this body, it should be in time to be garden and studio ready. One can hope!

New directions

We took down the Christmas tree yesterday and the handyman is coming in a half an hour to put all those heavy boxes up on the hanging storage grids in the garage. The house always looks so naked with the Christmas decorations down which is why I tend to leave them up so long!

I'm in a bit of limbo still waiting for answers on what's going on with my body. Two doctors have now taken about 2 months to finally get me to see an gastro enterologist; but my appointment with that office tomorrow is only for a consultation with a nurse practitioner. Lord know how long it will take to get any answers. Meantime I'm taking medication and living in the land of the unknown for a while longer. And my hip has gotten worse but I can't look into another hip replacement until I get this other problem dealt with, so these days I'm doing a lot of things that require sitting and not much too much walking.  


My time is being spent on cooking, reading about soap making, ordering soap supplies and organizing them, and making some soap molds out of core plastic. I also started a soap blog a few days ago: www.ladyjunesoap.blogspot.com

Once the rest of my soap supply orders arrive, I'll make more soaps and other bath and body products for family and friends. That will keep my creative juices going until I can get back into the studio. Frankly, I haven't even missed working in clay, probably because I wasn't thrilled with working with the earthenware, and was facing having to start all over with oxidation fired stoneware as my only other choice. So it will be interesting to see how I feel once I can get back to it.  Life sure gets interesting in your 70's and 80's!