Busy morning and now off to the studio

We had a great drive up to Fish lake yesterday - lovely lunch among the pines and then back home. Some packages of buckets for the studio and the last of our light fixtures (two wall scones for the dining room) had arrived and had to be unpacked. We were so relaxed from the drive and time at the lake, that I never made it to the studio other than to put the buckets away! By that time it was time to feed the animals and think about dinner; but this morning is another matter.

I was up early got all the regular morning chores done, harvested the days gifts from the garden,  and got tonight's Thai cucumber salad pretty well finished. Just have to wait another twenty minutes while the salt works it magic on the sliced cucumbers and  then they get rinsed and put in with the dressing. I'll be making egg and ground pork Thai Omelettes (Kai Tord Gup Moo)for dinner - something I' ve never made before; but Jim loves eggs, and I think I'll be OK with the recipe since it has fish sauce, garlic and cilantro in the mix (things to mask the taste of eggs which I barely tolerate).

My goal today was to be in the studio by 10am or close to it and I'm on schedule - just have to take those after breakfast vitamins, grab my Ipod and head out.

After an early dinner we'll go down to the river and I'll harvest whatever is ready at our sons place, let Bodhi have a big run (one of his newest  favorite things) and if I'm not too tired from this busy day I may just bring my fishing pole and cast a few!

Tools hung, tempura and sake night

 Since I lost a lot of wall space in the move, I came up with this idea of making a backing for my jewelry bench that would hold a magnetic tool bar. The other tool bar was installed next to the studio sink and I realize that I need just one more of these for my lapidary area. Slowly, but surely, it's coming together.

It's been another busy day starting with watering my planter garden, breakfast, trip to our son and daughter in laws house to harvest their veggies and visit a bit, then some grocery and other shopping before heading home. 

We were in Ashland yesterday and I  just couldn't resists buying a huge, expensive, Brandywine tomato and some fresh mozzarella. For lunch I made a mixed green salad with a simple vinaigrette and put tomato slices, topped with mozzarella slices,  drizzled with olive oil and and fresh basil. Jim loved it and remarked how pretty it was. I should have taken a picture! Then it was time to get all my veggies cleaned, peeled and cut and ready for tonight's miso soup, vegetable tempura and rice dinner. The sake will definitely be chilled tonight!

George the handyman showed when I was midway into this blog, so I was back in the studio for quite a while. I got my little wall area put together and George hung it for me. He also got my new extruder up and got the two of the magnetic tool holders up. After dinner I need to order another one of those as well as a bunch of 2 cup and 1 qt heavy plastic jars to replace those contaminated with a ferric chloride spill. :-(

The movers had turned one of the boxes with oxides, chlorides, etc. upside down and the ferric chloride saturated the box, got on the studio floor and made a huge mess on all the containers of oxides, bags of stain, etc.etc.. So I put on some heavy rubber gloves, mixed up some soapy water and started wiping down all the containers. I also had a little bit of time to get some small buckets labeled and filled with some raw materials.

My rice is cooking, the oil is heating and the sake is cooling. I'm really going to enjoy a do nothing relaxing, after dinner time watching some tennis and getting to bed early for a good nights sleep to recharge this old battery for another busy day tomorrow.

 

The new electric reduction kiln, The Fallonator

Someone kindly emailed me a link to The Fallonator - the new electric reduction kiln which I mentioned in yesterdays' blog. It uses electric for the actual firing and a small bottle of propane for reduction, along with a digital controller so the kiln can fire automatically and I gather, adjust the amount of reduction.

The Fallonator site doesn't mention the price of the kiln which I believe is available in sizes from 5 - 7 cu feet, but the the puttgarden site says it's $10,00 (probably for the 7cu ft one)- pretty pricy for a small electric kiln, even with the reduction apparatus. If you are already the owner of an electric kiln, you can get on the pre construction list for the $1500 gas reduction unit which they say is very easy to install on your existing electric kiln.

One of the sites mentioned that it's not to be used to do a full cone 10 reduction firing; but instead, is meant for firing down in reduction, yet the main Fallonator site I looked at this morning, doesn't say that. So, I don't know if there have been changes in the design lately which enables a full reduction firing or if the information on another site was erroneous; but if you're interested in this kiln, make sure you find out what if any limitations there are with the reduction firing.

Here are the two main links I found with pictures and information on the kiln and related products.

http://puttgarden.com/crystal/tech/Vendors/fallon/fallonator.html or
http://www.fallonator.com

A do it yourself, inexpensive way of doing the same thing, would be to just get a tiny burner (a small, weed burning torch available for about $50 or less from a place like Harbor Freight or similar, would work and it probably would come with the hose and connector for small propane tank), and set the burner securely in front the bottom peep by setting in for instance on and surrounded by some stacked bricks or concrete blocks to secure it enough, and introduce the gas when you want to reduce; and if you have an oxyprobe or similar, you can insert that in one of the middle or upper peeps and pretty well accomplish the same thing. The only thing it won't do is fire automatically; but you'd save over $1400. You'd probably have to get a top vent for the kiln or fire it under cover outdoors; but I'm assuming that you would have to do the same with their kiln, since it's not pictured with a top vent installed.

I don't know what elements are installed on the Fallonator. They mention heavy duty elements; but don't specify if they're any different than other well insulated cone 10 electric kilns, like my Skutt, which are currently on the market. So you might want to ask about those elements. There has to be a reason for that big price tag, so maybe they have some globar type or other new very expensive elements installed.

In the late 80's or early 90's I had a tiny burner made for my little cone 10 electric test kilns, by Nils Lou, which used the same principle. In that instance, I just drilled a small port under the kiln and placed the burner under the port.

Foggy mountain morning

This is the easy and delicious Lidia Bastianich sausage with grapes, garlic, pepperonici recipe, that I made last night, along with a Thai type cucumber salad and my potato salad. Jim said this was the best sausage recipe he's ever tasted, and I finally found a cucumber recipe that he not only ate but loved!

Yesterday was another man/woman plans, God laughs day. The plan was to make potato salad after breakfast, then head to studio for the day; but I discovered that I had two artichokes which needed stuffing and cooking. That done, I decided to check out the garden before heading to the studio. And, of course, that little decision created a total switch of the days plan.

The garden was loaded with things that needed to be harvested - tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, serrano chiles, and the last of the potatoes and of course, I also did some weeding along the way. Since I had so many cucumbers, I decided to make a Thai cucumber salad for dinner. The cukes were too big and seedy for pickles, but fine for cucumber salad. Before I knew it, it was time to start dinner and I still had a few quarts green beans to wash,trim and store.

I thought I'd continue garden cleanup today; but I'm wiped from yesterday, so I'll head to the studio instead and slip and decorate the latest group of pots. It's pizza tonight, so I'll get the toppings prepped before I head to the studio, and get the dough started after lunch.

Storm system moving our way

Holding tight this morning with that big storm system coming our way. Jim was planning on some morning chores in Spruce Pine but he took my suggestion of waiting till tomorrow. We've already had some pretty strong wind gusts coming through and the main part of the system hasn't yet arrived.

I'm glad I was able to get a good amount of garden cleanup and planting done yesterday. After a bad night's sleep I wasn't up to studio work, but getting in the garden actually perked me up a bit.

Today will be a full studio day. The replacement plumbing parts for my small Olympic gas kiln arrived yesterday afternoon, so I'll be able to do those re-fires once we get a couple of sunny days in a row - maybe over the weekend. I need to slip and decorate a small group of pots today and maybe weigh out another glaze test or two.

Back to work after company leaves this morning

We've had a great visit with our daughter Erin and son-in-law Sven- had some excellent meals with good and great wines, enjoyed a night of song at friend Jim Stapleton's man cave with his "Sugar Daddy" band, and spent some lovely, quiet family time in between their tourist activities. We all look forward to Erin's joining the band for a few numbers every year- such a treat! Yesterday was their packing, and chilling out day. I gave them a demo of no knead bread making. Sven is getting into baking, and after tasting the sourdough pancakes and sourdough bread I made a couple of days ago, he decided that he'd like to try making his own starter.

The live starter I ordered from Breadtopia is doing well on day three and now I'm just feeding it to get it up to the amount I need to start baking. The other San Francisco starter that had been neglected, actually came to life again after almost two weeks of twice a day feedings. With the arrival of 3 more bread books this week, I'll have no lack of recipes to try.

Jim is driving Erin and Sven to Charlotte this morning for their flight to the west coast for the remainder of their vacation. After they leave, I'll be heading to the studio for the day, feeling blessed in so many ways. I watch the news for updates on the disaster in Japan, feeling so much compassion and at the same time feeling so helpless. I read Euan Craig's blog, see the destruction of his kiln, the damage to his home, and his choice to is evacuate Mashiko with his family to a safer place over the mountains with relatives, and wish I could somehow make it all better for all of them.

And I wonder if mankind will learn from this long term, or like so many past disasters, have a short burst of outrage, and then settle back into complacency.

Easy supper of welsh rarebit

On busy studio days like today I look for something easy to cook. This is welsh rabbit with peas, tomato slices and bacon - easy, fairly quick and tasty. It's basically a roux, melted cheese, beer, some dry mustard and Worcestershire sauce.

After re-arranging some pots in the bisque kiln I realized I could squeeze in a few more pots so I'm working on them now. My intention of firing this bisque early this week has now been put off for another couple of days while I wait for these latest pots to get finished. A few got trimmed, waxed and slipped today and on this lovely day I was able to put them outside to dry. Tomorrow I'll decorate them and myabe trim, wax, and slip the couple I threw today.

Delicious Cuban black beans and rice recipe

Yesterday I spent most of my time working on the after effects of a bunch of viruses that hit my computer. Norton immediately filled my screen with bright red, warnings of about 3 viruses and I quickly tackled the problem. Even after Norton removed them the computer kept freezing. After several, unsuccessful reboots, I remembered to hit the F8 key at the beginning of the reboot. A repair button was an option on the page that came up, so I selected that; and it seems to have solved the problem. I'm not really sure if the problem was due to the after effect of those viruses, the several re-installations of Paint Shop pro, or something else.

The day wasn't a total waste since I manged before and after the problem, to free up another 1 1/2 gigs of memory by deleting duplicate and other photo files, and got Paint Shop Pro working again.

I'm making an easy and delicious Cuban black beans and cornbread for dinner. The cornbread will get made this morning, then I'll head to the studio for the day and around 4 o'clock come in and start on the chili. I made this dish a couple of weeks ago and Jim liked it even more than my other, more time consuming, bean dish. Here's the recipe if you want to try it.

CUBAN BLACK BEANS AND RICE Makes 4-6 servings

2 cans black beans
1 tsp. finely chopped garlic
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 c. chopped onion
1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil (I think I used about 2 tsp)
1 can chopped Rotel tomatoes (these are spicy)
1 bay leaf

2 (5 oz) packages. Vigo yellow rice (Spanish flavor)

Instructions:

Saute the onion in olive oil, on medium heat, until transparent. Add the remaining ingredients, except the rice which you cook separately according to the package instructions. Simmer the chili 1/2 - 1 hour. Serve it over the rice.

OPTIONAL: Top with chopped hard boiled eggs,and/or diced onion. It really didn't need the egg for taste; but it does add a little extra protein and color to the dish.

(You can add extra minced serrano chiles if you like your food super hot; but add it after you've cooked the chili a bit since the Rotel tomatoes contribute a good amount of heat.)

Bandana pottery at Spruce Pine Potters market

These two shots are from Banana Pottery's booth at the Spruce Pine potters market. This young couple (Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalglish)as you can see, are making some wonderful, wood fired work.

At 7 am I got my tiny test kiln started and cleaned up some tests tiles and got them into the the larger bisque kiln which is now 3/4 loaded. There are few more pots to decorate and load, and I should be firing it tomorrow and then going on to making and mixing some of my liner glazes. At the same time I'm watching/listening to  the amazing TV coverage of the miners being brought to safety.

More great pots from the Spruce Pine Potters show

Here are a couple of shots of Suze Lindsay and Kent McLaughlin's booth. They always have so many new and wonderful pots.

I managed a half a day in the studio till my back gave out after bending over for 4 hours at the wheel touching up some of the slipped pots, scraping slip drips, etc., so I came in and spent time making some decorating notes and then got started on an early, pasta dinner. The gardening that  I thought I'd do today has been put off since I really want to focus on the pots for the next few days, as well as doing the last bit of cooking for a while.

Tomorrow I'll use the mushrooms and steak and make a beef stroganoff. After that it will be some leftovers for two days and a couple of dinners out later in the week.

The pasta sauce I made tonight was interesting. It's a Giada de Laurentis recipe. The sauce is basically a couple of cups of cherry tomatoes mixed with 1/4 c washed and rinser capers and 1T olive oil,  a teaspoon and a half of kosher salt and about 1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper (I also added a pinch of pepperonici (dried red chili flakes).tossed well, then  topped with about a a cup and a quarter or so, of Italian bread crumbs and  olive oil drizzled on top and baked in about an 8" square baking dish, at about a 350 -375F oven for about  30-25 minutes till the bread crumbs turn golden. After resting 5 minutest the whole thing in put on a pound of cooked tubular pasta, like ziti or rigatoni,  mixed well, then tossed with 1 1/4 cups of fresh ground pecorino romano cheese, and the cooked pasta, and topped with some fine chopped fresh Italian parsley It was easy and tasty and made good use of all these cherry tomatoes we have. If you don't like the stronger taste of pecorino romano, you can use all parmesan or  half parmesan and half pecorino romano.

I'm always looking for some new and interesting, and fairly quick and easy vegetarian recipes to add to our weekly menu and this one is a good choice. The capers and cheese give it a bit of a kick which is often lacking in vegetarian recipes; and pasta is always a comfort food for me.

Pink lilies blooming

These pink lilies have been opening the past couple of days. The garden is pretty soggy and droopy this morning after the powerful thunderstorm that came through last night. The bees were out very early taking advantage of what looks like a short dry spell before the storms come through again; and the hummingbirds and the rest of our feathered friends are munching away at their various  feeders. The feral cat Tommy, is late for his breakfast. The trust is building between us, albeit slowly. He will now lay down just a couple of feet in front of me, roll over and meow sweetly, as I put down his food; but that's as far as it goes. This is huge improvement from his first visits months ago when he wouldn't even come up on the porch to get his food, until I went back in the house.

Yesterday was a day of  running around, doing chores. Jim and I both had appointments for osteo treatments in Burnsville, lunch at the Mexican restaurant, a bit of food shopping, dropping off a propane tank with broken valve to be fixed, and on and on. The only garden time I had was harvesting some broccoli and a couple of hand fulls of snow peas which I made to go with our fried clams dinner. 

I'll be heading to the studio right after breakfast to slip and decorate some of these mostly bone dry pots while keeping my fingers crossed that they won't crack. I won't even attempt to slip the dry plates. They'll get done after their bisqued. I'll be stopping around 4 to make a shrimp with bacon in a mustard cream sauce recipe from my new Pub cookbook, and after dinner I need to make another loaf of bread. It's amazing how fast a day fills up!

Picking the first snow peas

Yesterday was a total wipe out day. I perused the garden and saw all was OK. I picked the first couple of snow peas, saw that some pole beans finally sprouted, and the potatoes didn't seem to have any more damage, so I decided to take a real day off and just tend to some of my email dating to 2007 and file some things, write out recipes etc. There's still so much of that to do but it will have to wait. Today is a studio day.

I got a bit of studio time Sunday mixing very hardened decorating slips and accent glazes; but a strong headache shortened the work day. Right after breakfast I'll be mixing a couple of my flashing slips and start dipping and decorating some pots.

Lawn sign

After dinner I finished up a few things in the garden and then got on line and ordered 3 lawn signs for the pottery. Vista Print has pretty good prices and I was able to upload a color photo of my work on the sign. Hope it looks as good as it does on line. I don't currently have a sign for the pottery and this is just a test to see if it will be worth it to have a more permanent sign made for our somewhat hidden location.

Workers are here putting on a new door to the mudroom and some road work; but before they leave they'll put my small Olympic gas kiln on the cart. I didn't get to the studio as planned yesterday to spray the kiln with ITC 100. Just as I was heading for the studio Jim came home from the post office with the package of Escar-go, the organic pellets to get rid of the snail and slugs. Since they have been such a problem I dropped everything and got areas wetted down and got the pellets distributed. As always, when I get in the garden, one thing leads to another and before I knew it, it was 4:15, time to come in and start on the linguini and clams sauce for dinner!

I'm heading for the studio as soon as I take my vitamins and get that kiln spraying done. Jim is off to the propane place in town with my 7 gallon and 5 gallon tanks that I'll use on that little kiln. They say it can be fired with 5 gallons but I'm a bit dubious, so I'll start with the 7 gallon for glaze firings and use the 5 gallon as a backup. I want to do some strike firings which will require a cone 10 firing, and then a drop and  4 hour hold at bisque temperatures; and I think the extra gas will definitely be needed for that.

After I spray the ITC, I'll have to do a bisque first and I have more than enough dry pots to fill that tiny 4 cu ft kiln. Then I'll test it with some soda re-fires. I already had Will Baker cut larger holes in the kiln for soda introduction, so there's nothing else I have to do but fire it when ready.

The workers promised to take a few of these tomatoes off my hands, so the porch will soon be back to normal as opposed to looking like a seedling nursery.

Melissa Cadell at Spruce Pine Potters Market

 Here are some pictures of Melissa Cadell's booth at the Spruce Pine Potters Market, and her amazing.sculptures.

This morning I'm feeling a lot better, so I'm going to get in studio time as soon as I post this and take my vitamins. I'll work till around 4 and then come in and start on tonight's dinner - a ziti casserole.

Jim came home from Asheville with sushi last night so there was an abrupt menu change. The new premium Haiku sake was really good, even served cold. After dinner we watched the movie "The Proposal" - predictable, but very cute. That was followed by "Defending Your Life" one of our favorite. I think I stayed awake for the first 20 minutes and then woke up to see the very end.

If anyone has to go to Asheville, from Mitchell or Avery and maybe even Yancy counties, know that Hwy 19 was a  huge  mess yesterday - lots of construction delays, detours on to a dirt road, etc. Take I40 through Marion if you want to avoid it.

Cone 6 soda tests

Yesterday flew by so fast and I didn't get anywhere near the work done I had hoped. I got 4 test glaze batches made, 3 of them sieved and each dipped on 3 different clay bodies. I was mixing the 4th one when John Britt called to say he had unloaded the cone 6 soda kiln, so I dropped everything, cleaned up and called Joy Tanner in case she wanted to come over, and headed over to John's studio to pick up the tiles. Here are all the tiles I had in the firing. I'm very encouraged by the results even though most of the flashing slips were on the dry side because there was no borax in the soda mix, which is needed at these lower temperature; but the flashing slips flashed beautifully. All in all I think it can work once we tweak the soda mix.

We'll get them re-fired - probably after the TRAC studio tour. That will give me more time to batch up more Cone 6 glaze tests.

By the time I got back from John's it was time to make dinner- London broil with red wine beef stock reduction, sauteed mushrooms w/shallots and sherry, salad and a baked potato with sour cream chive sauce for Jim.

After dinner I didn't have any more energy for the studio, so I called it a day, went through my soda recipe book to make a list of the test glazes I want to batch today and stayed up late to watch the Lakers win. They're now 3 to 2 in the NBA playoffs - one more win to clinch the western division.

Time for breakfast, then on to the studio. First job this morning is to rebuild the bag wall, then on to batching more test glazes. I'll probably load tomorrow because they've changed the forecast and Saturday is going to be the only non rainy day!


Till later,
June

Linda McFarling

Here's one of the Linda McFarling pieces in our collection - crackle slip on soda fired jam pots. I love her forms. She also happens to be one of the nicest people around!

We're starting slow this morning after a late night and a restless one for me. We watched the woman's final of the Australian Open which wasn't one of the best matches; but it was nice to see Serena Williams add another major title to her list of career wins. Watching her play earlier in the week, we didn't think she'd be able to raise her game enough; but she fooled us and many of the broadcasters. Safina not being at the top of her game also helped. I think the nerves took over and that definitely puts lead in the feet and shoulders. I used to play a lot of tennis and recognize the symptoms. :-(

I'm off to to the studio for the day. Dinner is leftover ribs from Cheddars,and all I have to do tonight is bake some potatoes for the potato skins for tomorrows Super Bowl viewing. I found the recipe on line for Ruby Tuesday's potato skins, posted by someone who worked there and figure this would be a good time to make a batch from scratch. I have pate already made and bought grapes and cheese and other munchies for the game. As Jim likes to say "honey,we're stylin"!

Till later,
June