45 test tiles and more to go

Test tile marathon should be finished by tomorrow. Each test is on 2 or 3 different clay bodies. I thought I might have room for some re-fires in the small, gas, test kiln, but it looks like there won't be room for them by the time I finish batching the rest of the tests.

Time to sit back and read my snail mail, then give Bonnie Kitty some play time. She has decided that she would like to be a studio kitty if I leave the studio door open and she can come and go at her own convenience. That won't work in another month or so; but by then she might be satisfied to stay put for a few hours. So far we've only have one kitty mug casualty - not too bad a start.

Driveway firing

Finally got a two day sunny forecast so I could do the maiden firing of this little Olympic, gas test kiln. I'm bisquing it to season the ITC100 coating. It's firing empty other than two  shelves and a few pieces of  ITC 100 coated kiln posts.

It took off really fast even on what I thought was the lowest setting, so it looks like it may be done by dinner time at this rate as long as there are no wind gusts to blow it out.  Right now it's over 800F. My makeshift metal and kiln shelves surround seems to be doing alright under these no wind conditions.

Think I'll change the days studio plan and make up some glaze tests so I can do a soda firing in it tomorrow or the next day if weather permits, with some re-fires and glaze and slip tests. I've designed a couple of alkaline base glazes in the hopes I can get those lovely alkaline copper colors without crazing. Problem is when you add enough silica to lower expansion, that acidic nature of the silica changes the alkaline quality and you lose the colors; And even with enough silica, sometimes the alkaline content is too high and you still get some crazing  Therefore,  I keep testing. I probably should do some of Ian Currie's grid testing one of these day if I could only find more hours in the day.

Waxed pots and Sunday dinner

Got this small batch of porcelain pots cleaned up, waxed and covered and ready for slipping tomorrow. After some studio clean up, I came in to start on a roast chicken dinner. I made honey ginger carrots and mashed potatoes with the potatoes from our garden - an heirloom variety called "Bintje" - very tasty, big, all purpose potato. I'm not sure it will replace my favorites - Red Pontiac, but I wanted to try a couple of other varieties this season.

At my grandmothers house, Sunday dinner was always around 2 o'clock; but I couldn't make it that early today; but we were sitting down and eating a little after 4. Now I'm going to rest this aching lower back, drink my Cakebread chardonnary, and  make some glaze/decorating notes and maybe read some of the Gail Nichols "Soda, Clay and Fire" book. I perused the book when I first got it but didn't delve too deeply. It looks like a wealth of information  with great charts on clay body tests, her firing methods, etc.

I'd love to be able to get in the studio later but I think my back is voting for sitting still for the rest of the day, and maybe watching the men's final of the US Open if the rain in New York stops soon.

Shane Mickey TRAC show Burnsville

Here are a couple of pictures of my friend Shane and his wonderful pots from his opening last night at TRAC in Burnsville. Great new work Shane.

Got studio time yesterday trimming and pulling and attaching some handles on a few of the porcelain pieces  and throwing a bowl with the last piece of this current porcelain reclaim. The little bit of reclaim left is too wet to use, which is fine because I eager to get back to stoneware. Hopefully the couple of pieces left to trim will be dry enough to trim t and then I'll can do a bit of clean  and maybe even get around to mixing some slips to be ready for slipping and decorating tomorrow.

I'll get good studio time today since dinner will be easy -  Indian food that I took out of the freezer this morning. This damp, rainy day is perfect for Indian comfort food - cauliflower and potato curry, dhal, rice and Naan. Rice is the only thing I'll need to cook. The nice thing about cooking for two is that most of the time there are leftovers for busy studio or garden days.

Oh what a night

I'm not sure how well I'll fare today with only 3 hours sleep. It was one of those nights - wide awake at 2am and not able to get back to sleep. Today was going to be a studio day; but I have no idea how I'll function on so little sleep. Hopefully, a nap will be on the afternoon agenda.


Yesterday morning I ordered some casters for that little Olympic gas test kiln and a new spray gun with a built in compressor from Harbor Freight. Someone on Clayart recommended this high volume low pressure unit a while back. It was either that or buy  a third compressor. My little 1/2 hp one is fine for light spraying and my big one is just too big to haul around, so this self contained unit sounds like a good choice.

Pots were still not ready for trimming yesterday morning which was fine since friends invited us to join them for a play day. So we caravaned to Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway with their two classic convertibles - me in the very comfortable Jaguar with Laura driving and Jim in the more sporty Corvette with our friend Jim driving, then lunch at 12 Bones and a quick peek into Curve studios and garden, across the way. Twelve bones wasn't good as our first visit. The ribs were overcooked and dry. We all decided we wouldn't be rushing back there any time soon.

We took back roads ride home with a quick veer off through the charming town of Marshall. Jim and I had never seen the town and we will definitely go back some time for a longer visit.

Moving at a snails pace

Woke up with chills, headache and explosive tummy, so I'm moving at a snails pace this morning. There's a bunch of tomatoes that I need to blanch and skin, make a batch of pizza sauce and get that in the freezer. After that's done I'll head to the studio to put together and trim and sign the  few porcelains pots I had time to throw yesterday.

Yesterday morning I used some heavy duty tin snips to cut the pieces of metal roofing to protect the small gas test kiln from the wind. Unfortunately, I could only get enough from that big piece to cover 3 sides of the kiln, but I figure I can lean some bricks and a kiln shelf near one side; or maybe get the piece of scrap metal friend Shane offered me the other day.

I was hoping to bisque that little kiln  this morning; but not feeling well has put that off till the next free, sunny days with no possible rain in the forecast. Water is boiling - time to blanch all those plum tomatoes.

Fork Mt Pottery sale

Headed out early yesterday morning for another great potter show/sale at Fork Mountain Pottery, Bakersville,North Carolina. Here are a couple of pictures of the exquisite work of Suze Lindsay, Kent McLaughlin, Gay Smith and guest potter Silvie Granatelli.

Even though I felt there was no room in the house for any more pots, I bought 4 of them - a square dinner plate and salad plate of Suze's, the white basket in the photo with Gay Smith, and a small bowl of Silvie Granatelli.And miracle of miracles, we actually found suitable space for them! There is a huge selection of rather spectacular work there and if you can get over there today, you would be treating yourself big time!

I got a bit of studio time in the afternoon to trim a couple of porcelain dinner plates, get more porcelain reclaim drying and  threw a test yunomi with the slightly firmer porcelain. This clay is very well aged and if firmed up enough is throwing well. I was back in the studio at 7am this morning, (it was 45 F out there this morning), getting some of that soft porcelain into a few bridges to dry some more. Today, I'd like to finish up this clay so I  can start dipping and decorating some of the leather hard pots and later in the week get back to stoneware.

At some point this morning I might just get that gas test kiln out on to the driveway, load it  and do a bisque while it's on the metal wheeled cart. After researching the current Olympic models with wheels, I see that getting casters on those legs is a bigger job that I originally thought. The legs on those newer models have extra metal pieces on the base and one side so the casters can be welded to the bottom. I'll have to find a metal shop that can cut and weld similar pieces and the casters.

7 am studio time

At 7 am I headed to the studio to make a few more porcelain bridges with the Helios reclaim. Hopefully it will dry enough to at least throw a few plates or shallow bowls later. In the future if I'm tempted to work with porcelain, I'll batch some with some ball clay to make it more of a porcelainous type white stoneware.

Time to hit the shower, have a light breakfast, check the garden and harvest the days veggies before it gets too hot, and then head to the studio for a few hours work; but after lunch I want to get the ratatouille sauce made for tonight's pasta dinner, then I can get back to the studio for a couple of hours before dinner. I find that if I work to the last minute, I'm too tired to stand in the kitchen and food prep and cook for an hour, so getting all, or some of dinner prep done early works well for me.

Throwing cream cheese - oops, I mean porcelain

Jim suggested we put off taking the little Olympic test  gas kiln apart until I get the casters and find someone to do the welding, so instead I managed a couple of hours of studio time to throw some cups, mugs, and a small teapot with the too soft, porcelain, reclaim.  It was so wet that I was practically throwing dry. I'll throw some plates and shallow bowls with the remainder twenty five or thirty pounds and then get back to stoneware.

Kitty Bonnie, decided for the first time, to actually spend more than  a minute or two in the studio and it was only when she found the papers on my desk intriguing enough to start knocking them down, that I literally showed her the door. Next time I'll be ready with the squirt bottle to zap her when she starts looking for mischief.

Time to feed kitty, hit the shower and get ready for dinner.

Man plans God laughs - one of those days

Two days ago I thought today would be a studio day; but an ad in the Sunday paper for a sale on a comforter that appealed to us, got us motivated to change plans and head to Asheville and the mall this morning. Now, I am not a shopper, at least a mall shopper, so I have to be intrigued to drive an hour and twenty minutes or more to buy something. Going to Asheville is always with a destination in mind - usually two or three actually. So we headed first to Earth Fare where I could pick up some ingredients for recipes I want to make in the next week, and then on to lunch at the Indian restaurant and a quick stop at TJ Max where I picked up a small Le Creuset casserole for half price and a new non stick frying pan. So good, so far.

After that  we headed for the mall for the new comforter only to find that the nice red, paisley comforter in the newspaper ads, was actually more brown than red. Although it was a bit disappointing, I was thrilled with the rest of the day. So we headed home and on the way back I stopped at the local Grassy Creek Hardware and got some metal roofing that I'll use to protect the burners on the small test, gas kiln, from blowing out when I get around to firing it.

Tomorrow I'll see if Jim and I can deal with the weight and take the kiln apart. I want to get the base to someone who can weld some casters on it so I can wheel it in an out of the kiln room garage and fire it in the driveway.

Perogi burnout

Yesterday was a day of being deep in potatoes. I spent the entire day making perogis. The freezer is now maxed out. We had boiled perogis for lunch and fried perogis for dinner. I'm not saying I was tired, but last night I slept 8 hrs which is unbelievable for me since a good night's sleep for me is usually 6 hrs! 

So today is going to be a total vegging out day other than cooking and opening the studio and gallery for one out of town visitor coming mid afternoon.

I signed up for the December TRAC tour, so I need to get a soda firing in before then. First thing I need to do is slip and decorate the last small batch of pots and do more throwing. There's enough leftovers in the freezer - everything from gumbo to mushroom bisque, that I'll be able to get in some decent studio time this week.

Tomorrow I'll be making stuffed cabbage-the only meal I'm planning on cooking this week.  I finally found a savoy cabbage big enough for the job. I have a great recipe from an old neighbor in New Jersey which is the best I've ever tasted and I promised our friend Jim, who loves stuffed cabbage, that I'd make it for him. This recipe has an amazingly tasty broth made with tomatoes, white raisins and fresh grapes, instead of the typical heavy, tomato paste type sauce often found in stuffed cabbage recipes. My family was never big on cabbage, so I usually only made it once a year for my own pleasure. I devoured every bit of it while I watched everyone else cutting away the cabbage. :-(

Thank God it's Friday

Tonight is porch sitting with friends so I'll be tidying up the living room and spending a bit of time in the kitchen. Jim is bringing out one of his good Bremer Family Cabernet's to go along with the steamed pork dumplings, pate, cheese and fruit tray, raw veggie dip, and Japanese crunch munchies (I don't know what else to call them!) and mixed chocolates for dessert (they go so well with the wine).

On the pottery front, I got a reply from Olympic kilns and they suggested that I find someone local to weld casters on the small gas test kiln. After digging the last of the potatoes yesterday and putting in some heavy duty weeding time as well, I was too tired to head to the hardware store for some casters and corrugated material to go around that gas test kiln. I'll try to get out there tomorrow. Now that I've got the kiln ready to go I'm eager to get a bisque and soda firing some time by the end next week.

Juggling the day

My intent was to do a bisque in my little Olympic gas kiln to set the ITC 100 coating this morning, but since the weather report said chance of showers this morning and the sky seemed to agree, I decided to just get the lines attached to the propane tank and test the burners. I was a bit concerned that I may have gotten some of the ITC in the burners when the metal pieces I covered them with moved during the spraying, but they looked fine.

I emailed Olympic to see if I can fit some wheels on the legs and get the kiln off this rickety cart. Their newer, small gas kilns are now on casters and I'm hoping I can get some for an existing kiln. It would make loading and maneuvering a lot easier. Now I have to find some corrugated metal sheeting to protect the burners from the wind.

With the weather changing the days plans, I  decided to get the dried, harvested potatoes off the front porch and get them cleaned and stored, which took about 5 trips us and down to the basement. Then there was weeding to do and before I knew it, it was time to start on dinner. I had enough plum tomatoes to make another batch of sauce for the pasta to go with the leftover eggplant parmesan. Now I'm just going to relax and watch Master Chef followed by Top Chef.

Cooking day

Thought this was going to be a day of rest for me but I've been cooking instead. There were a lot of ripe plum tomatoes in the garden so I made a double batch of pizza sauce and got that all in the freezer and now I'm making a double batch of Michael Chiarrelo's  marinara sauce. The deer seems to prefer eating my big round, beefsteak and other eating tomatoes and are pretty well leaving the plum tomatoes for us. Next year I'm going to hide those beefsteak tomatoes in the flower beds in front of the house, since the deer avoid coming this close to the house.

I also harvested some pole beans and a large eggplant so I think we're going to be having eggplant parmigiano in another day or two. Our ancient apple tree is dropping apples and I have half a basket full that I haveto use for something. If I have any energy left I'll make an easy apple dessert to go with tonight's pot stickers. Needless to say there was no time or energy for much rest or studio work today.

Ignore ball clays disappearing message from yesterday.

Yesterdays message was me, misreading Highwaters notice on those ball clays. What it is, is: The plant will be closed June 20th - July 11th.
Stock up now!

Guess these old eyes only saw "stock up now". :-( Good thing I didn't buy a ton of each! LOL

Some ball clays on the way out

Jim just helped me move 600 lbs of raw materials. Two days ago I checked Highwater's web site and found a notice saying that after June (they didn't specify what year!), they won't be carrying the following ball clays: OM#4, XX Sagger, and Tennessee #10. So I figured I'd better get several bags of OM#4 and a couple of bags each of the others. If this 70 year old body wasn't as badly worn I'd have bought more! I also bought a small amount of Mini Spar to test as a replacement for the Kona F-4 soda spar that is no longer being mined.

Time to cool down a bit before going back out to sweep up.

Power out, time to make ratatouille

Ground is too wet to garden, power is out in studio (generator only powers the house), so I'm making ratatouille instead, while I wait for the power to resume. There are some porcelain pots that need trimming and handles that I hope I can get to at some point today.

Yesterday I got the results of my MRI. Bottom line is my body is a bit of a mess - large hiatal hernia, a bunch of bulging and arthritic disks (overall major mess in my spine) and a marble sized non cancerous tumor in my left, upper jaw (the probable cause of the droopy eye lid). At least I now know the cause of all that back and neck pain, constant headaches, reflux and droopy eyelid. The good news is that there's nothing that's life threatening - just the results of a well used body, old whiplash injury, and arthritic family history from my maternal side. I'm glad we only took pictures of the upper half of my body. Lord knows what more they could have found in the lower half! LOL

I think it's time I rethink how hard I've been working this obviously well worn body,  which means cutting the garden way down next year and maybe limiting  studio time or at at least make some changes in how and what I make.

West Coast visit

We got back from our west coast trip a few days. Here are a couple of pictures of Crater Lake in Southern Oregon.

The first part of our trip was a couple of days in California's Napa valley buying some great wines (8 cases), and having a couple of wonderful meals at Bouchon, and Botega, etc. We were thrilled to find that you can now send wines to North Carolina. One case of Cake Bread chardonnay arrived the other day with the rest soon to follow. Before we bankrupted the family coffers with all the high end wine buying, we headed to Southern Oregon to our son and daughter-in-law's gorgeous vacation/future retirement home on the Rogue river for a fabulous family re-union.

We watched the salmon jumping, fished with the grand kids, enjoyed the company of old and new relatives, enjoyed great meals, and found time for a couple of visits to old haunts and restaurants in Ashland and Jacksonville, with  a half day trip to Crater lake Monday, after the re-union festivities.

Since we've been home I've been digging up potatoes, doing a bit of weeding (they took over while we were gone!); and  just getting settled in with our animals. I took a rest from the garden yesterday and got some studio time cleaning up, doing some glaze chemistry, and getting some of the Helios porcelain that was re-hydrating while we were away, on to the plaster wedging table to dry out.  I should be able to get the rest of it dried enough to wedge and store for throwing later this week. While it's drying I'll weighing out some test batches of the glazes I created yesterday.



                                                                                                        

This crazy week

It's been a busy, animal drama filled week with Bonnie kitty getting badly attacked by the feral cat Tommy, needing a couple of visits to the vets for both (stitches, shots for Bonnie), and shots, alteration, for Tommy so he could be put up for adoption. Bonnie finished her antibiotics yesterday and her leg is healing nicely and she can now get some outdoor time.

We had one heck of a storm come through this week and had another lightning show last night, with the possibility of more rain today.

John Britt came over yesterday to check up on the bees and seems the bees are very happy here. The sexy queen has made a LOTS of new bees and there's about 60 lbs or more of honey in there, so John has to expand their living quarters.

The garden harvest and maintenance, cooking and other chores have taken a lot of time between the  animal drama - lots of beans and the last of the blueberries are in the freezer, a crock of pickles is brining away, and a trip of Johnson City, TN resulted in  new, smaller, travel friendly laptop which I've been setting up in my spare time. I figure have another day or two in between other daily chores to get the remaining software installed and documents transferred.

Everything is going at slower pace since my good hip hasn't been acting good at all and neither has my back. My MRI shows deterioration in my spine (not surprising news to me!). So I'll have to wait till my next appointment to see what, if anything can be done other than taking Tylenol and staying away from studio and garden, which I've been told is only making things worse. And, I'm not ready to give up those activities; but I am willing to moderate them.

Needless to say there's been no time for the studio, other than the odd couple of minutes to make some sketches and "to do" notes for when I can get in there. Crazy, busy, week!

Pottery making app for Ipad

Part of the day's harvest

The plan was to get a bit of studio time after morning chores, but when I did a quick garden stroll, I found out there was a lot to harvest. Here's a photo of some of the harvest. I also dug some early red potatoes which I didn't have room for in the photo; and there's more harvesting to do after dinner, when it cools down a bit. It's in the 90's now, time to clean, blanch and freeze some beans, unless some friends and neighbors read this and call me to save them some cucumbers, beans and cherry tomatoes.

More pots from pallet kiln

Unloading the pallet kiln

Here's some pictures of the pallet kiln getting unloaded. It was a successful first firing with some really great pots, and info garnered to helped tweek future firings.

f

Mark Peters, the designer and kiln builder of the pallet kiln.


I'll get a few more photos up tomorrow. It's been a long day with kitty dramas, etc.

More kitty drama

I managed to lure Tommy our feral (not so feral these days)cat into the studio yesterday; but he freaked out once in there, and started climbing along the window edge where I have some throwing tools. He freaked again when he knocked down some of the tools and ran to the back of the studio and hid under one of of my raw material bin tables. So I decided I'd better tidy up and make the studio more cat friendly and moved some of my unfired and bisque pots high up on ware carts, made sure all glaze buckets were well covered, etc.

After that I sat at my desk doing some paper work, while talking to him and trying to coax him out from under the bin table, but he wouldn't budge. After an hour I put some food in front of the table and he peeked his head half way out, so I left the food and gave him some alone time.  Later when I went back in the studio, I saw that he had climbed on top of one of glaze bins tables, then up on the shelving and then higher along a narrow shelf where I had a lot of pots displayed. From there he settled on top of the bathroom ceiling as you can see in the picture. That's about 11 feet high!  He knocked down a bunch of jars and other containers, as well as a favorite shino piece which of course wound up on the concrete floor in pieces. Fortunately that was the only pot casualty. So I got Jim to help and we removed all those pots.

This morning Tommy was back under one of the glaze bin tables and I was able to lure him out with petting and food. Once I had him in front of the studio I opened the door, giving him the opportunity to go outside, which he did, but he came right back in twice! He was more interested in being with me and getting petted. So, I'm going to spend a lot of time in the studio today and hope I can get him to use the litter box.  I can smell male kitty in the whole studio from his having sprayed.  I'm beginning to wonder if he's ever even seen kitty litter! Jim is going to get a bigger litter box today and hopefully the new box and fresh litter without Bonnie's smell, will get him to figure out what he's supposed to use it for!

I've got some re-constituted porcelain to spread on plaster, wedge and get bagged and a few other studio chores. I dare not turn on any machinery for a day or so because I think that will freak him out even more!

Our daughter Erin Perry Kosmic Blue Janis Joplin tribute concert

I think, with friends help, that I finally learned how to get a video to show on the blog. Here's a promo video of our daughter Erin's Kosmic Blues Janis Joplin concert. She's has great reception throughout Europe with this tribute. She also has a couple of other bands, and is a good songwriter to boot. Do I sound like a proud parent!

Cat Jarosz booth

 

Here's Cat Jarosz's booth at the Asheville craft show this weekend. We treated ourselves to a set of her lovely, extruded, salt and pepper shakers.You can get some better looks at her large body of work at her web page:      http://www.catjarosz.com/

After breakfast I'm going to get my cucumbers in the crock for my small batch of pickles. Then I need to get over to Johnson City to see if they have any dill heads, since  no one around here carries them. Some critter ate the ones I planted so next year I need to plant a lot more (maybe in pots next time, or definitely in another, safer spot).  It looks like the peaches will be ripe soon (some are falling off the tree already) so I'm going to be busy with getting those processed. We have a huge crop of very tiny freestone peaches on the one tree, and not so many, but larger ones, on the white peach tree. I see peach pie and peach jam in our future!

I'm limping along with either a pulled groin or my good hip is now going the way of the other one, so I'm staying out of the garden and studio for a couple of days in hopes that I just pulled something and some rest will take care of it. Otherwise it could be that in my near future I'll have a matching titanium right hip to match the left one.

New pallet fired wood kiln at the Energy Exchange

Here are some photos of the new pallet wood burning kiln that Mark Peters designed and built for the Energy Exchange. The kiln was started around 6am and at 1:30, when I got there, it was at cone 08. Earlier they were cutting the pallets in half but just after I arrived they started loading full pallets.

I can't wait to see the results in another 4 days or so.Opening a kiln is always done with great anticipation and more so with a new kiln. Fourteen of the fifteen pots I brought to help fill the kilns, 40 cu ft setting space are in this maiden firing. All my pots have either Linda's Yellow or Randy's Flashing slip on the exterior with two  my celadon based liners. Some have oribe accents in the leaf and fish designs.

In my soda kiln I try to position the oribe pieces at the front to protect them from reducing too much; but I wasn't there for the loading, so it will be interesting to see their placement and the results. When the oribe is reduced heavily you can wind up with an unpleasant liver red instead of green. Sometimes I get an interesting combination of the green and red which I kind of like on some pieces.

English breakfast

I promised Jim a big English breakfast this morning - kippers, sausage, eggs, pan fried tomatoes and the non English blueberry muffins. Needless to say my plate was a lot smaller!

As soon as I get the photos on the computer, I'll post them on the blog this afternoon; but first I need to finish getting my veggies prepped and cheese grated and margaritas mix made for tonight's nachos dinner.

Warren McKenzie video

Here's a link to a recent video interview of 86 year old Warren McKenzie - still, joyously, potting away!

http://www.mnoriginal.org/art/?p=1749

Can someone please tell me how you get those video links to show up on your blog posts. I need the idiots, step by step guide on how to do this! The only thing I can find is a button that wants me to link a video that's stored on my computer.

Our Asheville play day really trashed my one good hip and knees and this right hip is starting to feel like the left one did before it was obvious I needed a new, titanium hip. I'm hoping it will quiet down, because I have way too much to do this time of year!

I've got a batch of blueberry muffins with streusel topping in the oven and the house is smelling soooo good! They're going to go great with this morning's boiled egg breakfast.

Kyle Carpenter at Southern Highlans show

Jim and I had a play day in Asheville yesterday. Our first stop was the Southern Highlands craft show at the Civic center. Here's a couple of pictures of Kyle Carpenter and his exquisite salt fired pots. 

After the show we joined Jim's niece Andrea for a delicious Indian lunch at Chez Pani and then headed to the Fresh Market to pick up a few groceries and sushi for dinner.

This morning I dug up some perennials for friends and neighbors, did a bit of weeding and picked and cleaned more cucumbers. Jim is off to the store to get some dill and dill seed and when he gets back I'll make a small batch of Jewish, deli style, crock pickles. They're made without vinegar - just salt, lots of garlic, dill and some some spices. I also put a little bit of dried hot red pepper to the mix. In this weather I'll be munching on them in three to five days. I like them best when they're mid way between a fresh cucumber and a pickle, which is they way I've had them in some of my favorite Jewish deli's in New York and L.A.

I'm hoping I can get into the studio for a couple of hours before getting together with friends later for porch sitting. There are still a couple of pots to decorate and a few other studio chores to take care of before I start another throwing cycle next week.

The saga of Tommy the feral cat

Here's Tommy, the feral cat who's been visiting for a couple of months. As you can see he's certainly gotten to the point of making himself at home on the front porch during feeding times, and he's fattened up quite a bit. Initially he'd run away when we approached, then he graduated to only running a few feet away while I put down the food. Eventually he sat on the top of the porch steps and that quickly accelerated to him coming right up to me and the food.

Well, this week I decided to put my hand out for him to smell, which he did, and the next day I touched the top of his head. He recoiled a bit; but didn't run away. Well, yesterday we made great strides. He not only let me touch his head and rub it, but it was as though he had memory of this being a good thing. I'm now thinking that he was at one time someone's pet, who was dumped and went feral.

He's a massage junkie! I'm now giving him head and back rubs every time I see him. I think he wants a tummy rub too, since he rolls over on his back, but I think I'll stick with the head and back for a while. Trust takes time to develop!

Yesterday I delivered a couple of small boxes of pots to the Energy Exchange. Mark Peters pallet wood kiln is most impressive. I peeked into the clay hut but didn't check more of the site. It was pouring rain and Jim and Bodhi were waiting in car. I'll try to get back there during the maiden firing on Friday and check out the rest of the facility.

Today I'll be cleaning out the reclaimed clay in the mixer and  dumping it down the hill off the back side yard where there's some erosion. Some of this clay must have had a piece of sponge or something similar that got broken up in the clay mixer and didn't show up until some of the pots were bisqued. I wound up with a few ruined pots where this stuff burned out and let gaping holes - not fun.

Salad Nicoise

Here's the salad Nicoise I made for dinner last night. It's a great summer, main dish,  meal. I picked the yellow wax beans and tomatoes from the garden and got the potatoes, beans and eggs  cooked earlier in the day.  Before serving I poured my garlic, honey, ginger vinaigrette dressing all over. It looked like we'd have leftovers, but there wasn't a speck of food left when we finished!

I managed enough studio time to press out the other version of the stamps I made the day before, and dug out a badly settled celadon based blue liner glaze that I'll be straining this morning.  First I have to unload the bisque kiln and get my regular celadon liner mixed and sieve both glazes. I think mixing and straining settled glazes is probably my least favorite studio job.

The plan is to finish glazing and decorating today or by tomorrow morning and then get the pots delivered to the Energy Exchange for the maiden firing on the 15th of the new wood fired pallet kiln that Mark Peters recently built for them.

Time to water some of the potted plants and head to the studio.

New stamps

Our house guests (Jim's sister and husband), left after breakfast yesterday and I managed a full day in the studio. I made these new stamps after I finished slipping and decorating pots and getting the bisque kiln loaded. Over the years I've amassed a collection of antique, wood carved stamps that are used in India and other places to print fabrics. These stamps were made by impressing clay into small sections of some of the stamps. After they're bisqued, I'll impress them again so I'll have both positive and negative impressions to play with. I may even test impressing them again today if they haven't dried too much from the over heated studio overnight from the bisque firing.

The was done by 7am. I'm hoping to get into the studio around 11, hoping it will be cool enough to work. I need to mix up some liner glazes that have been sitting unused since November. It's a job I'm not looking forward to.

We finally got rain yesterday. It was heavy at times and rained for about 3 hours. This is the first day in over two weeks that I don't have to hand water, other than a few seedlings left on the front porch.

What's wrong with this picture?

I was going through some old photos and found a bunch where I reversed the background paper. It took a while for me to realize what I had done, and some of the pots got sold before I could redo the photos.

Husband and house guests are all napping, so I snuck out to the studio, vacummed the bisque kiln, re-mixed some flashing slip, dipped a bunch of pots and filled 3 half shelves.  House guests leave after breakast so I"ll get a full day in the studio to finish slipping and decorating and will be firing a bisque over the weekend.

I've been busy this week with the garden, getting the house ready for house guests and getting software on to the computer that should work with my Windows 7 upgrade to Windows 7 pro. My other 7 version would not let me load some of my old XP program but this upgrade seems to be working. 

The blueberries keep coming

Jim and I picked more berries after watching the woman's Wimbledon final. There were some very annoying, flying and biting critters who were nipping away at me the whole time and not bothering Jim at all.

I've got dinner covered - took meatballs and sauce out of the freezer yesterday, so it will be a pasta comfort meal tonight. Since dinner is covered, I need to get my hand watering done, then get into the studio and see if I have some decorated pots that I can bisque in case they need more pots to fill the new wood kiln at the Energy exchange. I also need to look for some other blueberry recipes. There are way too many to use in a day or two so I'll probably be freezing the majority of them and keeping some for my morning cereal and maybe some for making another batch of muffins or something else.

Blueberry muffin morning

Made blueberry muffins to go with the boiled eggs for breakfast. The crunchy top was delicious. I think I'd like to try this topping on a lighter recipe. These muffins were tasty but a bit dense which did keep the berries from dropping to the bottom, so I guess there's a trade off.

Looks like we have a bit cooler weather which should make it comfortable for some weeding after these women's semi finals Wimbledon matches. With no rain in the forecast for a week or more, it's time to get those water stealing weeds away from my corn, squash and cucumber patch today.

Yesterday I spent the morning having an MRI - 1 1/2 hrs in the machine. The only down side was a bit of nausea on the last section from the intravenous dye. Now I wait for the results. In the meantime, I have to pick out a pot for the TRAC fund raiser auction, and then there's some hand watering and weeding, computer and paper work to deal with today, and an early dinner with friends.

I'm planning on some studio time tomorrow - finally!