Wednesday, May 8, 2013

More Weeds


I did some more intricate bowls yesterday using the burdock leaves.  This one is so big and fragile, I really don't expect it to make it through the first firing.  It is pretty though.
I thought about adding the vine, but ran out of time.  Last night was my daughter's senior night for track and I had to work the event.  Last track meet EVER for me!  whooo hooo!


I liked this one a lot.  It was a more manageable size and I liked how I made the vines intertwine.  It would make a great wedding gift.  I call it the double dipper because it's a perfect size for dips.
I made some more single leaves without the vines.  They add about 50% more time to each piece.  I'm not sure how I'm going to end up pricing them.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Pretty Weeds


I found a nice patch of common burdock or "wild rhubarb" this weekend.  I love this plant!  Since it's considered a weed, it might not always be where I found it from year to year if someone sprayed it.  It looks a lot like rhubarb, but I don't think you can eat it.  It DOES make some fabulous platters and since it is an undesirable plant, no one minds me stopping off the side of the road and picking all I need. 

I got 13 of these guys made yesterday.  


These are smaller for a cheese tray or an appetizer dish


I love the long ones.  Some of the vine handles I pulled are shaped so you can hang them as well


This leaf had a nice wide shape.  It made a fairly deep bowl although the picture doesn't show it well.  I could see using this for serving a salad in.

I can't wait to see them glazed!


Sunday, May 5, 2013

Secret Garden - one week late

First of all, I would like to thank my sister and my brother-in-law for helping me get my pictures from my phone to this page.  I would have thrown my phone through the computer screen after about 10 minutes.  I have absolutely NO patience with technology!

Last week I had a show at the Secret Garden in Waynesville.  It was a wonderful small show.  Debbie and Bart have an amazing place on St. Rt. 73 with garden paths, a chapel on a pond, and the most adorable shop with everything you would ever need to decorate your garden - from the usual bird baths and feeders to unusual sculptures, peace poles and whirly gigs. Here's the link to their website:  http://www.secretgardenwaynesville.com/.   Every spring they have an open house and invite the artists that they consign with to come and promote their wares.  There's entertainment by (I'm going to say her name was Gina, but I'm probably wrong).  She is an amazing singer from Oregonia.  We had fried green tomato sandwiches, beer and loaded potatoes and it was just a perfect day for an event.


I had a lot of my own visitors and I appreciated all of them.  Especially Greg who went on a Mike's hard run for me.


Selection of garden decorations


Nice chicken display


I love this

And I was going to add more pictures, but they are gone.  I guess I should step away from the computer now before someone gets hurt.  




Friday, April 26, 2013

Open House at the Secret Garden



Debbie at the Secret Garden will be having an open house tomorrow the 27th from 11 to 6 at 4107 E route 73 near Waynesville, Ohio.  I'll have a booth there with some of my new bird feeders and chalkboard mugs.  Come out and buy a special treat for your mom for Mother's day.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Getting back on the horse




I'm getting back to the studio and trying to do some decal work.  I love how these mugs turned out.  It takes a lot longer to design than I thought it would and my desk looks like a bomb went off on it.  I have a show this weekend at the Secret Garden near Waynesville.  This will be a new show for me and I'm excited to get back to doing some work after Rob's passing.  I need to finish organizing the garage since I'm using my show tables to put the "what is this for?" stuff.




Sunday, February 17, 2013

Fear of the Unknown and Procrastination


Have you ever wanted something so bad but then once you got it, you were terrified to use it?  This is the story of my new programmable kiln controller.  (the picture is of my incredibly handy hubby installing it)

When I first started doing pottery, a friend of mine talked me into going to a workshop.  We met in my instructor's garage every Thursday and made pottery for a couple hours a week but this was not nearly enough to satisfy my addiction to mud.  I started in July and by the end of August, I was addicted to Craig's list as well - checking several time a day for an unwanted kiln to find a home in my Gardenhouse.  I had started dreaming of turning the original house that was on our property from being part storage for chicken and pig feed, garden tools and any other unwanted junk to a full time studio.  Eventually in January, Rob and I found a suitable kiln for sale in our price range north of Columbus - about 3 hours a way.  Luckily it was snowing and the truck decided to start stalling out on us about 20 minutes into our trip so after one false start, we were on our way with a van and a trailer and a lot of straps.

They actually had 2 kilns, and they were both huge.  We took the better of the two and 14 shelves and headed back to Maineville.  I was so excited!!!!  Of course then I was so scared because I had never touched a kiln let alone install one.  I was clueless.  It took about a month or two (or 4) for Rob to get it installed and me to have enough wares and nerves to try it out.  It took a few times and a lot of questions but now I am very comfortable with my "Buela" although she takes up a lot of my time.  My kiln is totally manual which means I have to spend 2 hours flipping switches to get it started, and then after waiting 12 hours, I have to spend 2 hours shutting it down so it doesn't cool too quickly.   This does put a cramp in my social life of PTO and high school sporting events (ha!).

So - to get to the point of this tale, I asked for an automatic kiln programmer for Christmas this year.  I was so excited!!!!  I picked it up myself in November, wrapped it, took it to my in-laws on Christmas day, opened it, and ohh and aaauuhhhed about it till the middle of January.   Rob installed it for me and I took all of February making wares once again so I could fill it and figure out how to work this thing - AND working up the courage to try it out.

I did start it up yesterday.  It seemed to be working just fine until the very end.  I got an ERROR reading!!  Apparently I didn't set the backup timer for long enough and it didn't get up to it's final temperature.  Let's hope I don't have to ask as many questions for this!

I'm still excited and a little less scared. One step at a time.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Winter Blues

Photo

Ok - I'm done with this weather.  It's way too cold to even begin to work in the studio.  I have had 2 flat tires in 2 weeks, and did I mention I want to work in the studio?  I'm going to be like my Pollyanna friend Heather and Look to the bright side.  My house is clean, I have all of my items done on my resolution list (except start and etsy page), I applied to all the shows I possibly can at this time, and I have had lots of time to think about what I want to work on when I finally get back to the studio.  Specifically some work with graphics and vintage illustrations.

Tomorrow morning I'm helping out with my daughter's Senior class breakfast, always fun to see such a great group of kids. Saturday is her one of her last swim meets.  The weatherman has agreed to be good to me next week and I am looking forward to finally being productive.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

I had some friends stop by to make some things at the studio today.  Barb entertained us with her stories about her cruise to the Carribean.  The overrated nude beach story was the best.  It really is a boost to your attitude to laugh till you cry!

Plates seemed to be the theme of the day.  Both Barb and Heather had orders from the Christmas gifts they gave.  Gives you a good feeling to know that they want more.  I got a set of sushi dishes started for the Kings Athletic Boosters' Knight to Remember.  It's like prom for adults with alcohol.  Since my kids participate in so many sports, I donate several items for the silent auction each year including a girls' night out at the studio.  I'm also including a set of chalkboard mugs like the one here.


It was way too cold for me today.  The studio is heated with a wood stove which means I have to drag my butt down there, light a fire, come back to the house and warm up, and then see it the fire caught.  It didn't - They wood was wet and hard to do anything with.  We did get a magnificent sunset tonight.  The picture really didn't do it justice but it was close.


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

I'm Back!

It's been about a month since I've spent some time in my "happy place" and I'm finally back!  I grounded myself until I got some serious time in the basement de-hoarding.  I spent most of last week doing just that and after 8 cans of garbage and 2 trips to Goodwill, I'm ready to get back to the clay.  Of course I would have to clean the studio before any real fun would start.

One of the big things on my resolution list was to get a photo booth done.  It's such a pain to take a good picture of your work when you have to drag out your whole booth, set it up, take pictures and put it all away.  Way too easy to just get the stuff out of the kiln and put it on a shelf without documenting it.  I saw a couple good examples of a permanent set up on Pinterest and if I cleaned out my inventory room, I had the perfect spot.


While I was cleaning out the basement, I came across an old card table and a couple desk lamps that would work perfectly.  I still had some vellum from my drafting days to diffuse the light and I made some hoops to support it out of a piece of flexible wire casing from Lowes.  It's pretty rough, but it works for me.


A minute later and I have a picture


This is the inventory room before I started - YIKES!


And after - Much nicer


I was on a roll so I cleaned the kiln room as well.  

Saturday, January 5, 2013

The twelve days AFTER Christmas

I finally got around to finishing up and delivering my Christmas gifts to my friends.  I made bread bowls out of the dark clay and baked a loaf of olive oil, rosemary bread in each one.  It was fun to go around surprising everyone.


Bread bowls lined up ready to go


Dough after it has risen overnight


Ready for one last rise


This is when the kitchen smells wonderful!


All wrapped up and ready to go

This is the recipe I found on pinterest and adapted for the ceramic bowls.  I used half of the ingredients for each one and did not preheat the bowl or oven for fear of thermal shock.
http://www.frugallivingnw.com/frugal-homemaking/amazing-no-knead-bread-step-by-step-recipe/

Basic No-Knead Breadslightly adapted from Jim Lahey’s My Bread
6 cups bread flour (recommended) or all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1/2 t. instant or active-dry yeast
2 1/2 t. salt
2 2/3 c. cool water
  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated; the dough should be wet and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest 12-18 hours on the counter at room temperature. When surface of the risen dough has darkened slightly, smells yeasty, and is dotted with bubbles, it is ready.
  2. Lightly flour your hands and a work surface. Place dough on work surface and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice and, using floured fingers, tuck the dough underneath to form a rough ball.
  3. Generously dust a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with enough flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran to prevent the dough from sticking to the towel as it rises; place dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran. Cover with the edges or a second cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.
  4. After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, such as a cast-iron Dutch oven, in the oven as it heats. When the dough has fully risen, carefully remove pot from oven. Remove top towel from dough and slide your hand under the bottom towel; flip the dough over into pot, seam side up. Shake pan once or twice if dough looks unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
  5. Cover and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes, until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. The internal temperature of the bread should be around 200 degrees. You can check this with a meat thermometer, if desired.
  6. Remove the bread from the pot and let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New year resolutions

Happy New Year!

Starting a pottery blog has been a resolution that I have been breaking for the past two years.  After a full day of trying, calling my sister, cussing and then finally cracking open a beer, I got this far.  Pitiful!  Let's all hope I get better with practice and that you really can teach this old dog some new tricks.

I love reading other pottery blogs out there.  I'm pretty sure this one will not be as well written - I'm a math and science girl myself - but I do hope to show people a little bit of how much fun we have here in our "happy place" and share some ideas.

This year my resolutions are:

To write in my blog at least once a week
To set up an etsy shop (this should happen this week)
To set up a photo booth for my etsy shop
To reclaim the basement that hasn't been the same since my son, Logan, took it over two summers ago
To start a funky line of pottery using decals. 

Tomorrow I plan on figuring out how to post pictures from my phone, because that's the best part of a blog for me.


Here's an example of the decal work (from my camera -not my phone!)