Checking in post Thanksgiving

 Hope all who celebrated, had a great Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast and post Thanksgiving leftover dinner thanks to our amazing daughter-in-law Nicole's efforts and talent in the kitchen, and our son sharing some of the best of his cellared wines! Nic cooked for about 25 guests. So tonight Sean is taking the family to the country club for dinner and give Nic a well deserved kitchen break and the rest of us another treat.

All my interior Christmas decor is done, and the handyman is coming Sunday to do the outside lights for us. Neither Jim and I are in shape to get up on ladders these days, so we're ever grateful to George to help with that chore.

The family heads back to California tomorrow, so if the rest of my soap supply orders arrive I'll be making more soaps next week. I've ordered a shredding tool - meant for veggies, but great for grating and shredding soap, as well as more colors and fragrances. My soaping education continues thanks to the several soap forums, books and generous you tube videos.  My first cold process soap continues to cure and may be ready by the end of December. I used my own recipe and it needs a long cure because of the high percentage of soft oils. It still smells good from the Nag Champa fragrance oil.

I've been busy creating more recipes that I think will be suitable for us, friends and family. Other than our three grand kids, most of us are in the 50 and older range , so my recipes are geared to nourish dry, aging and aged skin. It's been fascinating learning about the chemistry of soap and I know there will be a lot to learn from future soap making wins and more from the failures. 

Originally I planned to do my soaping in the garage/studio area; but that necessitated keeping the soaping oils, butters and fragrances in the house. It would also kick up  our heating and cooling bills to a ridiculous level. So a couple of days ago I reorganized a couple of cabinets  in the kitchen  and moved  all the soaping tools and ingredients into the kitchen, which makes more sense. For safety sake, I'll only have to lock up curious, Bonnie kitty when I'm soaping. Another bonus is that our powerful kitchen range vent will also come in handy to exhaust the lye fumes.

Monday I have to call and find out why I haven't heard from my doctor or the surgeon and see if there's a fix for this post hernia surgery problem. It's been over two weeks since they sent the x-rays to the surgeon . Guess they've been on vacation or one office expected the other office to call me.  Meantime medication is cutting down symptoms. Ah the joys of aging!

Until I know what, if any plan there is to fix this post surgery, narrowing of my lower esophagus, I'm not doing any pottery for fear of making things worse. Fortunately, soaping and cooking are things I can still do to satisfy my creative urgings at the moment and I'm really enjoying it. 

Suds and mud

Here's my first Cold  Process soap which is now in the curing stage for about a month. It's my own recipe (I've spent a lot of time the past few weeks studying the chemistry of soap making and I'm hooked!). The rose clay made it paler than I hoped and found out after the fact that the titanium dioxide I put in it tones down color. Always something new to learn.

The mangled bar on the far right was my impetuous self, forcing it out of the mold while it was still too soft after 48 hrs in the mold. Found out later that sticking the mold in the freezer for a half an hour to an hour, will make them pop out easily. It did it for 45 minutes and out they came with just a bit of gently pressure. I had a lot of soft oils in my recipe, because I wanted a recipe that would be slow to trace so I could have plenty of time to mix various colorants to do some more complex swirl techniques.

These smell great thanks to the Nag Champa fragrance oil I used. Some of these oils are amazing. I got a couple of new ones today -  Egyptian Musk (for soaps for the guys; but frankly, I think it's really a unisex scent. I cannot tell you how much I love this scent!  There were two other fragrance oils in this order - Blackberry Vanilla and Pomegranate - both, smelled good enough to eat. I also got cupcake soap molds which are for down the line when I have a lot more soap making experience under my belt.

Today was for cooking and some early tree decorating. I know, I know. It's early, but we had to have the handyman in yesterday to get all those heavy and bulky boxes of  lights and Christmas decorations down from the garage  rafters and help me take down all the tomato cages, beans poles, etc. and help with stage one vegetable garden cleanup. And since he has to come back at the end of the week to put the boxes back on the rafters, do some painting and finish up some other fixes, I promised to have the tree decorated by then. Soaping will have to wait an other couple of days which is fine, because I have an order coming with something to help harden my soft formula soap in these silicone molds, so I don't mangle any more bars.

Green tomato popsicles

I peeked out at 6am and could see frozen eggplant leaves - so sad. :-(  Looks like I'll be starting post season garden cleanup in a few days after this Arctic cold front moves on. That freeze hit hard last night and I know there are a lot of big, green, tomato popsicles on the vine! I know you can make green tomato pickles, but not once they've been frozen.  I'll have to Google " green tomato recipes.". to see if there are any recipes for stewed green tomatoes.

This morning I downloaded the professional soap making software. That's going to keep me busy for a while, since I hear it's a bitch to learn. It has a lot of features that I probably won't be using unless I want to go into soap making as a business, but I will use the soap recipe calculations and inventory and costing features for sure.

After breakfast I'll be heading to the studio to tidy my pottery supplies, since I won't be doing any pottery until I know what they're going to do to fix this post hernia surgery problem. Until then, this is not a time for heavy lifting and throwing, so soap making and cooking will be it for a while.

Found out yesterday that my Nag Champa fragrance oil can be used to scent soap and that's the one I want to use for the first soap I make for Jim and I. We have always used Nag Champa incense for meditation, so it will be lovely to have it in our soap as well. This fragrance has vanilla in it so I will have to use the vanilla stabilizer that arrived the other day. It will prevent the vanilla in this and so many other fragrances, from turning the soap brown. This first batch of Cold Process soap will be a test for one of my theoretical slow tracing recipes. I need a base that will be slow to trace (thickening), so I can do more multi colored swirl techniques which necessitates a soap base that will allow you to mete out portions of the liquid soap, then add the various colorants that you will be layering before you begin creating the swirls; and it has to allow you the time to do all of this before the soap starts to thicken too much.

As you can tell, I'm very excited about soaping; and of course the whole family is eagerly awaiting home made soaps. Now I have to learn this new software enough to put in a couple of my theoretical recipes and see what kind of feedback I get from the software. As long as it doesn't kick up a photo of a skull and bones, or say na na na na na na, I think I should be able to start making my first batch of Cold Process soap by Friday.

Been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs

One of my emails this morning started with "I have been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs y'all!!  That gave me a good chuckle, because that was so my day yesterday.

I had a smorgasbord "to do" list and managed to get it all done; but I was running all over the house and garden, and  by the end of the day  my arthritic hip had me limping badly, to the point that Jim said I should spent all day in bed today; but that isn't going to happen. I will spend a lot of time continuing my soaping studies, though, so I will get plenty of sit down time in between the few things I have to do today.

First thing yesterday morning, I fed my sourdough starter. After breakfast I got the last bit of melt and pour soap melted and poured and did the cleanup. There was email and snail mail to deal with and then mid morning I finally got a call about the results of the upper G.I. X rays. Seems that after the surgery, the lower part of my esophagus has narrowed, which my doctor says is probably the cause of the pain and acute gastritis symptoms I've been experiencing the past two months, so he's sending the xrays to the surgeon for his input. I'll have to wait to see what if anything can be done about it, other than keeping me on these two medications which I was able to stop taking after the surgery, or having to undergo another surgery. It will be what it will be - just have to keep moving forward no matter what life brings you.

After lunch I got my breakfast bread started, then went out to the garden to harvest what I could before the expected freeze (it was 32F at 6am); but don't think it lasted long because I didn't notice any wilting of the tender tomato leaves). I eked out a couple of cups of basil which had pretty much gone to seed, so I'll make a batch of pesto sauce after breakfast. After dinner I baked the breakfast bread and got into the studio and cleared the large section of the slab roller so I can move my soap making tools on there today and get it ready to make some Cold Process soap in a couple of days. My working day ended a 9pm and then I spent another hour on email before lights out.

In my down time I continued my soaping education. With Google's help, I finally found a site that lists the various acids and their  percentages in the many oils and butters used in soap making, as well as the positive and negative things they contribute. That information is a very good first step in learning to create my own soap recipes. At least now, I will understand some of those acid percentages that pop up in the free lye calculation software.

I've decided to bit the bullet and get the professional version of the soap software that some other soap makers have recommended. It will take a lot of time to set it up and learn. Before you can even start using it you have to spend a lot of time entering basic information. That will definitely give me plenty of time of rest this hip! 

This morning our son asked when to expect his first bar of home made soap. Jim naively said, maybe by Thanksgiving - maybe next Thanksgiving Jim, but definitely not this Thanksgiving for Cold Process soap which has to age about four weeks. Christmas is definitely possible; but first I have to create a recipe for slow tracing soap, and make sure the fragrance I use doesn't accelerate trace, so I can jump right in after a one lb test batch of soap to test how long it will take to trace with the fragrance oil I choose. If that goes well, then I'll bite the bullet with a three pound loaf and  try one of the two or three color swirling techniques. I figure there will be a lot of failures whether I go the easy route or  attempt a bit more challenging project - just have to be well prepared and go for it.  So after my days small "to do" list is complete, I'll be working on creating, I hope, a good starter, slow to trace recipe. I have a couple of slow to trace recipes to use as a starting point, and I have all the ingredients listed in some of the recipes, so that's my big, sit down job today.Wish me luck. There's a good chance I'm going to need it! :-)

BRRR Frost on the pumpkins

We got our first bit of frost last night, and there's a freeze warning for tonight, so I think we'll be having some fried green tomatoes tomorrow night with our leftover steak.

It was Jim's 81st birthday yesterday and our usual routine is for the birthday person to pick a place for dinner; but this year, with his back bothering him so, he said that what he would really like would be for me to just buy a couple of steaks. So I found some prime steaks at Costco, made a Caesar salad with home made garlic croutons, and stuffed baked potatoes with sauteed pieces of mushroom and onion mixed in. Those steaks were beautiful, melt in your mouth like butter quality, and had no taste, even though I rubbed them with garlic, and salt and peppered them. I hadn't tried their steaks in well over a decade, and sad to say they are still tasteless. Guess they just don't age them enough, or at all!

The rest of my day was busy with my new passion - soaping. I didn't make any soap, just spent a lot of time trying to create recipes, watching soap making videos, reading old messages on the soap making forum and putting away and cataloging two recent orders of colorants, oil, etc. I'm still waiting for the order with the vanilla stabilizer so I can make my first Cold Process soap.

I also, finally found a embed mold source for making those cute little embeds that are used as part of the inside of the soaps or as topping. That supplier had pages and pages of them; but I used a great deal of discipline and only ordered the smallest raspberry mold.

Watching those soaping videos on You tube is how I found the source for those molds, as well as the name of a soap software that I want to check into a bit more. They sell both hobby and pro versions.  The pro version will analyze your recipe; but the hobby one doesn't have that feature. You would think the hobbyist or newbie would need that more than the pros! The pro version also gives you a product cost breakdown/profit amount, inventory tracking, as well as lye and fragrance calculators, etc. etc. I just need to see if anyone on the soap making forum is using this or has a used copy for sale, or maybe some other software suggestions. My reasoning for purchasing this type of software, is that having a really good software that will analyze my theoretical recipes, can save me a lot of time and money spent on ingredients. It will also be a good learning source.

Meantime, first thing this morning I fed my sourdough starter so I can make some breakfast bread this afternoon, and then, I set up a folding table in the guest bedroom to hold my over wintering plants. Unfortunately, the window shade isn't working so after breakfast I'll have to move the table into the dining room. Then I want to re-melt my leftover melt and pour soap, and get that poured.

This afternoon I'll be out in the garden harvesting whatever I can, and bringing in the lemon grass, cilantro, etc.. If I have any energy left over, I may just get in the studio and get all those wadded soda pots back on the ware cart and clear the slab roller and move my Cold Process soaping tools to that table so I can make my first batch as soon as my other orders arrive.

Dinner is going to be easy, vegetarian Indian - a welcome change after some heavy eating yesterday. Jim says his weight is up two pounds this morning and I'm sure the Eggs Benedict birthday breakfast didn't help!  I didn't have Eggs Benedict, but I'm still not going to get on that scale today!

If at first you don't succeed

Finally made a little bit of soap yesterday. Unfortunately this photo doesn't show the true color of the bar soaps, which is a lovely, pale turquoise/mint color; and I couldn't figure out how to adjust the color using photo shopping software.

My suspicion about the soap failure the day before, was that I just didn't get the soap hot enough, was correct,  because the re-melting worked fine when I got it hot enough.

I was hoping to make soap again today, but wound up dealing with computer stuff again. Either I need a new modem or a new Internet service. It's a pretty bad router (third one they've sent me in two years) that doesn't allow me to get a connection in my bedroom. Yet, I can pick up three or four neigbhors Internet service showing up on my Internet access list, in any part of the house; but not my own; and even when it does show up, it almost impossible to get it to connect on my iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad.

Tomorrow I'm off to the hospital to drink some barium so they can take some upper G.I. snapshots, so there won't be time to make soap because I want to take advantage of what is going to be the warmest (around 68F) day in the foreseeable future, to get some garden work done in the afternoon. We've yet to get a frost and some of the veggies are still producing, but I think it may be time to  think about harvesting some of those green tomatoes and bring my lemon grass and a few other things indoors for the winter.

Monday morning eye candy

I love starting my morning with my first cup of tea and watching someone like this Korean potter demonstrate his skills. Lovely.

Well, yesterday I finally got around to the soap project and my first effort was a disaster. The melt and pour soap just wouldn't work right. So after a few attempts, I high tailed it to the soap making support site that I joined a couple of days before, shared my plight, and within a couple of hours I had a lot of generous responses. Seems everything I did was correct, according to one member, but that sometimes melt and pours soaps can be a pain the arse! Who knew! Melt and Pour was supposed to the easy, no fail way to make soap.There were also several suggestions to use better quality melt and pour soaps instead of the ones I bought from Michaels. So next time I buy melt and pour soap it will be from Brambleberry, which got the most recommendations, or one of the other ones also recommended.

The problem I had was that soap was hardening, even before I got around to adding colorant, so it's possible I should have added those the minute the soap was melted. Someone suggested having a bowl of warm water to set the container of melted soap in, to keep it from solidifying so fast, so I will definitely follow that suggestion today and in the future.

I have a larger pack of Michael's melt and pour soap as well as the other pound from the first, smaller package, so I'll try again after breakfast.. Everything is set up - colors mixed with glycerin, scent mixed, soap re-cubed, etc. so I just have to see if I can get yesterday's soap re-melted. If not, I'll start with the other pound from that box. I'm glad that I was a bit timid and only used half of the soap.That was enough of a disaster to deal with. So disappointing!

After lunch I will either have a few bars of soap to enjoy, or I'll have to go back to square one. If that's the case, I'll just lick my wounds and keep at it with the Michaels soap I have on hand, until I get it, or till I have a lot of back soap to throw it in the trash.  In the future, I will definitely be buying a better quality melt and pour soap.

This melt and pour method was supposed to be the easy way to make soap which is why I started with it instead of the cold process which involves dealing with lye, and then there's a crucial timing thing related to the level of trace, which you have to learn to recognize in order to know when to safely stop mixing and get your colors and scents added and start pouring, before the soap get so firmed up that it can barely be poured.

So if this Melt and Pour works today, my next effort will be to take the plunge and try to make a batch of cold process soap when my other orders of colorants and vanilla stabilizer arrive. Seems that soap fragrances with a lot of vanilla will turn soaps brown, and after checking the vanilla percentage of some of my fragrances, I'd have a lot of brown soap on my hands in the future unless I use the stabilizer. So much to learn!

Post Halloween morning and question for soap makers

Good thing we bought a lot of candy. Jim figured we had about 200 trick or treaters last night. We had a lot of mummies and zombies (a lot of zombies and fake blood), lots of little princesses (one corrected me and said she was Rapunsel!), there was a butterfly, fireman, bat man and one mother came as bat lady, a lot of Harry Potters - male and female, bunnies, etc. etc. I thought one was a skinhead (shaved head, earring in ear), but no, he was Mr. Clean! It was a lot of fun and we should recover by lunch time!

Jim was the main greeter and candy distributor and I joined in for a bit. Most of the time I was in the bedroom trying to keep our dog Bodhi from freaking out, and our kitty Bonnie from sneaking out of the house. I also spent some time in the dining room seed saving, a job I'll finish at some point today.

Tonight's dinner party guests cancelled due to illness, so I'll have enough Beef Bourgignon for today and tomorrow. I've decided that after lunch I will delve in and made some Melt and pour soap. It dawned on me that I don't have to do a whole loaf. Instead, I'll just melt a pound of soap and add color and fragrance and pour it into some single bar and guest soap size molds I have. That will be a good beginning test of the fragrances hold, and colors. Now I just have to figure out what scents to use. Nag Champa was going to be my first choice but I found out that even a smallish percentage of vanilla content in fragrances turns the soap brown, so that fragrance will have to be set aside until the Vanilla Stabilizer arrives in another week or so.

Reading reviews of fragrances at the various soap supply sites has been very helpful. Now I just have to look up the reviews on the other fragrances I have on hand, and make a chart on the pros and cons, amount to use and other mixtures that soapers have tried that work.  A question for potters who are also soap makers.  Have you used the Titanium Dioxide and/or kaolin that you use in pottery in your soaps? I put off buying these from the soap companies since I already have them in the studio.

Time to get back to soap research with the Masters Semi-final tennis matches in the background. Looks like Raonic has learned to do much more than just serve. He just won the first set easily with Berdych, after beating Federer in straight sets yesterday. Very impressive!

Another home run

John Britt has hit another home run - this time with his just published "The Complete Guide To Mid-Range Glazes" - Glazing and Firing at Cone 4-7. If you loved his Cone 10 book, (and who didn't!), you are going to love this one. You won't ever have to buy another cone 6 -7 glaze book. There are hundreds of glaze recipes in here and the oxidation glazes shown, are not the typical, flat oxidation glazes we all poo pooed for years, because of their lack of depth, dull surfaces, etc. This is a whole new generation of cone 6 glazes, both oxidation and reduction. There are recipes for ash glazes, oil spots, shinos, crater glazes,oxidation celadons, oribes, iron reds, copper reds,  temmokus, clears, and every other color you can think of. There are also firing schedules to try, glazing instruction, glaze problem solving, and so much more.

In just a quick scan, I can see a lot of things I can incorporate. There's a photo of a cone 6 electric fired pot that looks like it came out of a soda kiln - fantastic! Can't wait to explore that and a whole bunch of other recipes. Here's a link to the book on Amazon. Treat yourself. You deserve it!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Guide-Mid-Range-Glazes/dp/1454707771/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414790932&sr=8-1&keywords=John+Britt

On a personal note - never did get to the hospital for my tests. Seems the machine for my barium x-ray upper G.I. scan broke, and the re-scheduled next day appointment was also canceled since they couldn't fix it and now they have to wait for a new machine to be flown in from Singapore. So my next appointment is Wednesday.

Those cancellations suddenly freed up some time and I decided I would finally make some soap. I had my prep list made out, all tools on hand and decided to double check my colorants and got hit with the curse of Mercury retrograde again. Most of my beautiful powdered colorants will not work in melt and pour unless I don't mind the admonition that those colors will fade in 3 weeks. They have to be kidding; but they aren't! So it was back to square one, ordering some other colorants, glitter and another soap fragrance, and sit and wait some more.

In the meantime I went back and watched many more You Tube, soap making videos and I think if I feel up to it, I might just tackle a batch of the cold process soap which requires a bit of skill and critical timing for success. At least I have all the tools and ingredients on hand for that. With Halloween tonight and a dinner party here tomorrow night, my maiden soaping session will have to wait till Sunday or Monday.

After watching all these videos, I feel pretty confident that I won't screw it up too bad (she says with the confidence of one who has never dealt with the possible horrors of mixing lye, soap batches seizing, fragrances accelerating trace, and everything else that could go wrong in the world of soap making!) It may not be pretty when I am done, but I feel confident and hopeful, that it will be usable soap. It might be what they term in tennis an "ugly win" - you played horribly, but you managed to come through with a won.  In my case, since I am going to attempt a 3 color hanger swirl,  which may turn out to be the ugliest mess you've ever seen, it may turn out to be an ugly win - a useable soap that lathers and cleans well, smells good, and is ugly as sin! Or maybe I'll just have beginners luck and come up with a winner.

Biding my time

Aidan with his Saturday steelhead catch. HIs twin McKenna caught one just as big, but her photo got lost in cyberspace!

I'm biding my time after a busy, social weekend. Our son and family were up from L.A, so we had some lovely family time. The weather held for parts of the weekend so the twins could do some fishing with their Dad. Saturday night's dinner  was the planned wood fired pizza with Sean doing his usual great job as pizza master, as well as the steelhead and salad. One morning Sean went duck hunting with a couple of friends, using the newly built duck blind at the new pond and was in 7th heaven. He has always been more of a country boy.. I helped Nicole a bit with her garden cleanup and helped her harvest some more veggies which she took back to L.A.

Sunday, Sean and Nicole's friend Alan took Jim and I on a tour of his new property. Years ago it was a dairy farm and he's loving the idea of  using part of the old barn, which is also being refurbished for goats and making goat cheese. It's an amazing piece of property right at the foot of one of the table rocks with amazing views in every direction. The 100 year old stone house, great barn and out building are going to be quite a show place after all the additions and remodeling. It has a nice pond with bass, which are in low supply due to two otters who are also living in the pond, soon to be evicted. I'd probably be prone to leaving them, since they are such playful creatures who would, I assume, give many hours of viewing enjoyment.

I'm going in for a barium cocktail and some X-rays Thursday morning, so hopefully they'll find out what the problem is. It could be that the hernia surgery undid itself, or I got a second hernia or Lord knows what else it could be. In any case, I'm still avoiding starting any long terms projects till I find out what's up with this body. So I've just been keeping busy with the never ending computer work and little organizing jobs. It seems like my life has been on hold so much the past 3 years and it just doesn't stop. Thank goodness I always have other little, time consuming things I can and need to do to keep my mind busy and my body somewhat active.

Yesterday I decided to go into the studio to at least put some of the recent soap supply purchases away. My soap supplies have now exceeded the space I allotted them on two studio shelves, so I spent time yesterday moving all the scents, oils, colorants, and fats in the house is an area of a flat back cupboard space in the mudroom which makes them easily accessible to move back to the studio or the kitchen. I got my soap notebooks organized, updated my inventory list, and spent time on Pinterest and You tube refreshing my memory of basic soap making techniques. There is so much to learn and remember, therefore lots of note books and to do lists.

Today I found another good soap blog site with some some free pdf downloads for labels, soap recipes that are slow to trace which is very good information since you don't want soap to set before you can do all those lovely swirl patterns. I also download and copied the prep list, and a couple of other charts. I don't know why but she suggested waiting an hour after children or animals were in the soap making area before you make soap. I have no idea about why this is the case.- I also found a recommendation for a soaping magazine. I should have guessed there would be one. It's not available in print, just in pdf files, so I subscribed and ordered an old issue from Etsy that I could download immediately. It has photos and instructions on how to do all those fancy tops on soaps. Modern soap making has become quite an art - quite a change from when farm wives just make soap once a year with wood ash and the lard after butchering a pig in the fall.  I've been adding a lot more information to my soap notebooks all afternoon. After dinner I'll run some recipes through a soap calculator and get an idea of how they will work.

With the family up and doctors appointments and household chores, I never did get around to making the melt and pour soap; but at least all my supplies are nicely and newly organized, my electronic devices now have working emails, and JCloud continuea to back up my computer after one or two bad starts.

After buying several soap fragrances I found that some of them don't last very long, but also found that you can purchase something that will keep them from losing their scent too fast. So now I have to find out who sells it and order some. Who knew vanilla scents can turn the soap brown! I know now and ordered some guaranteed to not do that. I found out that  some colors bleed, so I have to check the ones I have and see if they are suitable for the swirl and other soap designs I want to make. Maybe I should just stop reading before I find more things that have to be adjusted or added! 

3 D printer creates a clay house

 It's amazing what these 3D printers are capable of creating. Can't wait to see more such projects as this technology grows.



As for me, my own creating lately has been solely in the kitchen. The rest of the time has been spent on garden and household things and the never ending computer chores.

The garden is still producing enough to keep me busy in the kitchen so I made a tomato based vegetable soup for lunch with our tomatoes, summer squash and broccoli. Dinner was crab cakes with my easy Remoulade sauce, tossed salad and macaroni salad. The freezers are pretty full and the fridge is beyond filled. I don't think I could squeeze one more piece of food, no matter how small, in there right now.

Our weather has still been warm during the day, 75 today and in the 80's a couple of days ago, but it looks like in another couple of days,  with rain coming, we'll be going down to more normal late October days with temperatures in the 60's - soup and bread baking kind of weather.

Two of my stand alone hard drives are definitely deceased, even though one shows that it's healthy but says I first have to format it, but repeated attempts at formatting only bring up the dreaded  Windows can't complete the format". On top of that the two smaller capacity, working ones won't back up using Norton, so I've given up and started backing up files on floppies, and am also using JustCloud which is a joke. After 3 full days of transferring files (that' 24 hrs a day), it's only transferred 26 Gigabytes of files. At this rate it will a month to download everything! So I am probably going to have to give in and buy another stand alone hard drive, but it won't be a Samsung or a Toshiba, both of which died only a couple of months of using them.

I spent another two days dealing with the problems following the downloading of the latest Apple software for my iPad and two other devices which totally messed up my emails, and made it almost impossible to re-sign up on my iPad or to re-synch any of my devices. So it was another couple of days tearing my hair out over that problem and of course there was no way to revert back to the older software. Mercury retrograde has definitely been  doing a number with all these devices, so I will wait till it's well over before I even consider looking for another stand alone hard drive.

On top of the ever failing computer hardware, I've had some health issues which have to be checked out. I finally found time yesterday  to make an appointment with my doctor next Wednesday.  Since I don't know what I'm dealing with, I'm not planning on getting involved in any studio work or any other projects that I can't complete  in a day or so until I know what the cause of this pain is

Since I've pretty well done as much as I can with all these back ups at this point, maybe I can make time to try my hand at soap making using the easy melt and pour soap I bought which looks pretty simple. All I have to do is add my own colors and a fragrance. I've got the push up containers to use for making my own deodorant and I'd like to find time to do that as well. It's been a few weeks since I read all those instructions so I'll have to go back to square one and read those notes and watch one of those very helpful videos on you tube. I used to think that Google was the font of all wisdom, but I'm thinking You Tube is a close second!

Lovely Monday morning eye candy

I've always loved David and Margaret Frith's work and was happy to find this to share this morning

Jim and I are off after breakfast to do some shopping and other things this morning. I have garden chores at our son and daughter-in-laws place - mostly harvesting some veggies; and our larder needs a bit of re-stocking, so we're off to the organic grocery store, with a couple of other stops along the way.

It's October and we're still dealing with hot days It's going to be 90F today! So my own garden chores at home are just going to be hand watering some things and harvesting a few veggies. Then it will be time for a lunch break. Hopefully after lunch, I'll have enough energy  to get my photo setup back up in the guest bedroom. It's a pain to have to take it down every time we have a house guest, but it's the only place I have to set it up. If I'm too tired, which I suspect may be the case, then the plan will change and I'll taking a nap instead. Periodic naps have definitely become part of this retirement lifestyle.

Patia Davis video

This was a lovely clip to watch with my first morning tea. Love the idea of making buttons from the leftover, slip patterned, slab pieces - really nice.

We had a wonderful time with our daughter Erin's visiting this past week. It felt like we were having an in house vacation - lots of lovely meals and wine at home and out, lots of little shopping trips, and relaxing evenings at home with good food, good wine and good chocolate. We discovered an amazing shop with home made chocolate - to die for. We will definitely be going back there again, but not too often. It's expensive and could easily become addictive!

Erin left this morning for L.A. for a couple of days before flying home to Munich, and now we have to get back to our quieter, retirement pace. The house already feels empty without her beautiful, bubbly, presence. :-(

My old HP laptop has been warning me that I need a new battery, so I ordered one after breakfast and am keeping my fingers crossed that this is the only problem. Once Windows 9 comes out early next year, it will be time for me to buy a new laptop.

My plan to do more work in my office got put off when my friend Kay called and asked me to go look at a house with her. She's been renting and has been informed that the owners will be putting the house up for sale and she has less than 90 days to move. That would be a strain for anyone but it's going to be particularly stressing for an eighty year old widow. She doesn't want to rent again and even if she wanted to, none of the current rentals in our area will take a tenant with pets. 

Both gardens are still producing tomatoes, but they're definitely slowing down with the cooler evenings, which is good because Jim says he's sick of beans and tomatoes. Other than some kale and  lettuce seedlings that came up this week, I haven't planted a fall garden because I want to be able to get back in the studio as soon as I put these gardens to bed after the first killing frost.  The lettuce will be fine till about mid December with my heavy remay cover, so Jim may be getting sick of salad by December.

There's no room in the fridge and the kitchen counters are loaded with tomatoes, so it time to cook them and put them in the freezer. Maybe I'll make some stewed tomatoes, or just make some more pizza sauce - decisions, decisions.

John Glick selling contents of his studio

John Glick is selling the contents of his studio. He's moving to California to be near family. Here's a link to some photos of some of his equipment and ontact information:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpglick/sets/72157643365277495/
John Glick

Plum Tree Pottery
30435 W. Ten Mile Rd.
Farmington Hills, MI 48336
248-476-4875
www.plumtreepottery.com
Plum Tree Pottery
PLUMTREEPOTTERY.COM

We finally got some very much needed rain the other day. It was an all day rain that gave us an inch of water - enough to put out a lot of those fires.

With our daughter visiting for the week it will be like a little vacation for us as well. There will be lots of shopping for things she can't get in Germany, lots of home cooking and dining out, and a lot of good old down town enjoying each other. We had dinner at the Mexican restaurant last night. Evidently Germany doesn't have any decent Mexican restaurants. Erin told us that the first time she ordered nachos there, she was served some plain taco chips with what looked like Chinese sweet sauce. There wasn't a speck of cheese to be found anywhere on the plate. That was the first sign that it wasn't going to be a pleasing dining experience! So we will go back for at least one more visit to the local Mexican restaurant before she leaves.

Clay of the gods

Post by Çini Oyma Sanatı Mehmet.

I'd love to get my hands on some of that local, Turkish clay that he's using. I'm a bit doubtful that he and the other potters at this pottery could do that with any of our over processed, commercial clay bodies; but I could very well be wrong.

After morning house and garden chores, I changed focus to electronic chores, and solved the problem and got my iPod touch to send emails. First I had to fool it by typing in a wrong email address, which was the only way to get the screen to pop up and give me the option of either IMAP or POP. I never would have figured that out for myself, but Googling the problem, finally, turned up this solution. Thank goodness for all those computer geniuses out there in cyber land.
Next job was to read the booklet on the new dvd/vcr player recorder, so I could test dubbing. Unfortunately, it turns out that it won't work with the current HDMI cable setup. It has to use the conventional cables that came with the unit, and of course, it says that you also need an  RCA component cable that doesn't come with the unit. So I'll have to put that chore off till I can either buy one of those or see if I have one in my huge pile old old computer and boom box cables and connectors. TIme to head to the office and dig through all those old cables. Maybe I'll get lucky this time.

Lovely Clive Bowen video

Clive">http://vimeo.com/106613974">Clive Bowen 'Born, not made' - film about British slipware potter

from Goldmark">http://vimeo.com/goldmarkgallery">Goldmark Gallery on Vimeo.https://vimeo.com">Vimeo.>
Goldmark gallery also has a show of his work right now and there are some wonderful pots on that page. Here's a link to that show: Clive Bowen show at Goldmark gallery

As for me, I'm dealing with computer stuff. Spent the past two days figuring out how to get around the problems of the new ITunes software so I could sync my iPod. Then there was a full day of changing passwords, since the card with the new passwords, mysteriously disappeared from the only place I keep it. I tore the bedroom apart, to no avail, and since I didn't know if it made itself in someone else's hands, I had no recourse than to change all the passwords. Fortunately, I had saved many of them and remembered a few.

After breakfast and my own garden watering chores, we have to drive to our sons place to harvest veggies, since these computer issues made me cancel that job the past two days. Then I'll have to process all those beans when I get home. With our daughter arriving Tuesday, I'm also behind in getting the house in shape. Fortunately, the house is clean and not a total disaster, I just have to tidy up my books and papers and finishing clearing some of the stuff on the kitchen counters.

Time for breakfast, watering and then off to the river. With Jim driving, I'll use the car time to re-set my iPod touch, which is only offering IMAP instead of Pop, which is what is causing the problem of me not being able to send emails from that device, so I have to fiddle with it. I think last time this happened I had to delete all email accounts. Sometimes I long for those days without computers. I wonder if it's too late to become a luddite!

Unique way to alter a rim

Here's another nice video click from Ceramic Arts daily of  unique way of altering a rim.



Our daughter Erin is coming in four days so I'm trying to get this house in shape as well as dealing with the usual garden and kitchen chores. Our kitchen island right now looks more like a potting shed, with a lot of garden stuff taking up half of the working surface, so this afternoon I'll be re-organizing our small garden shed to hopefully find space for those things.

Since she's going to be going home with a suitcase full of my pots that I've yet to photograph properly, one of the things I want to do is get my photo setup back up in the guest bedroom. I took it down a while back when we had to do some work in there. Unfortunately, it's the only place I have room to set it up so the setup is always going to be a temporary thing, being removed when house guests arrive. Ah, the joys of cutting down!

Fires continue and getting worse

The Gold Hill fire has grown to over 3,000 plus acres in the past two days and the Weed one is over 10,000 acres. Over 150 houses and structures have burned in the Weed fire and thank God, no lives have been lost.

It was too smoky to work on the kiln yesterday. My lungs had taken in enough smoke during morning  gardening chores at two gardens, so I retreated to the safety of our air conditioned house and found enough kitchen and other chores to keep me busy for the rest of the day.

I checked the pilot orifice on the Olympic kiln, and re-drilled it just to make sure it was correct. There was a bit of resistance which was probably because it needed a bit of clean up. That and going through some cone 6 soda slip and possible glaze recipes and making a bunch of notes topped off the evening chores. I still have more paperwork to do with that little job; but it's not a rush chore since I have a lot of cone 10 pots still to fire one of these days.

Mark Knott shared some of his recipes with me a while back and I needed to write those down and compare them to the same recipes I have. Some recipes were the same and others seem to be modifications for cone 6 or other versions. I also went through some of my glaze recipes books to find some cone 6 versions of temmoku, oribe, shinos and a few other likely candidates. Looks like I'll be batching a lot of cone 6 soda slips and glazes this winter.

 Time to solve yet another computer problem - downloaded the latest iTunes software yesterday which then removed an important file and so far I haven't found a recommended fix that has worked. And now I'm getting an error message trying to update the software on my iPod touch as well as having problem synching it. Good thing I have leftovers for dinner, so I'm free to waste my afternoon on Apples software problems. Oh joy - not! Maybe I manifested this so I won't have to do an over do clean out of the vegetable bin in the fridge. :-(

Clary Illian interview video

Looks like today will be as busy as yesterday. After morning garden chores and breakfast I'll be working on finishing up the plumbing on the little Olympic kiln. Then once George the handyman finishes the staining on parts of the fence, and after our leftover tacos lunch I've got to drive to our sons place and do some garden work in the vegetable garden. The newer planted beans are coming in full force now and the tomatoes although slowing down, are still coming in abundance between both gardens.

On the way home it will be a quick stop for a couple of things for tonight's dinner and a few birthday cards.

I might take a nap when I get home, since my body in recent weeks has decided that napping is a good thing to do, and then it will be time to start on tonight's comfort food dinner of Salisbury steak with a mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, and of course, green beans.

Well, that's it for another busy retirement day. Lately I've been thinking about retirement communities. Maybe it's because some neighbors are making that move in a few months, or maybe I'm just a bit more tired than I'd like to admit.

Sunday a day of rest?

Sunday so far has not been a day of rest. Since George the handyman woke up to a dead battery in his car, my morning was now free to do some garden cleanup after breakfast.

When George and his now working car arrived around noon, we took the little Olympic gas kiln off the stand, and he went off to the other job of power washing parts of our fence and our outdoor table and chairs while I wire brushed  the pilot bar and some of the other piping, ground down one of my trim tool points and cleaned out every hole in the pilot bar and put the kiln back together. Afterwards, I realized that I could probably handle the weight of those kiln sections by myself, since it was no problem to put it back together alone. So, next time it will be a one woman job.

Tomorrow morning I'll install the new thermocouple and turn the kiln on for a bit to make sure that the baso valve really is bad, before I iremove it and nstalll the new one.It's just too hot out there right now to deal with it and besides,  it's time to get some early dinner prep done. It's a taco and margartia night, so I've got to get started making some salsa and getting the toppings and filling made.

I've replaced the dead dvd/vcr player recorder and  have been solving some of the problems which the TV guy couldn't fix. It cost $150 for him to pronounce the old unit dead, and then proclaiming this new one "dead out of the box" because the video tape wouldn't play. Seems it's a bit fussy about following a sequence before it will play, which I discovered; but just in case it wasn't just a fluke that I got it to work, I have another ten or eleven days to return it to Best Buy. Now I just have to free up some time to test transferring an old video tape to a blank dvd.  Don't tell Toshiba, but at this point, I'd be happy if it just played those old video tapes and dvds!