2018-02-21 - Wednesday - Spring!

Spring has definitely taken a foothold in our yard.

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2016-02-21 - Sunday - Bad design and night flowers

Driving by some new apartments or condos on Sunday I was struck by how bad I thought the design was. The first thing that caught my eye was that the stone blocks on the front were way too small for the expanse they covered. Next, there was just too many different surface treatments on one building for my taste.

I know there is a huge building boom happening, but it's not all pretty.

Sunday night I took some photos of the daffodils in the front yard by streetlight. It made for an interesting effect with my phone.

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2016-02-06 - Saturday - Glazing like a crazy man

Saturday was a marathon.

I started out with one of my new favorite breakfasts.

Took some photos of the flowers blooming in the front yard.

Went to the farmers market with Karen and Stephanie.

Went to Clayworks and helped Kimberly remove some stuck fuses from a misfiring kiln. Re-slaked some of my clay. Did a little housekeeping on my shelves. Talked to a few people for a while...

...and THEN the real day started.

Eggs and oatmeal and sriracha.

Daffodils.

Vinca Minor.

Remember all of those Empty Bowls I've been making? This year I decided to glaze them all at once instead of doing them in small batches.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I had to wax all the bottoms and after that I started experimenting with painting underglaze as a wash and using my squeeze bottle as a pen to fill in details. Suddenly I realized it was 7:00 pm. I dropped everything and ran to the grocery store. I bought some food for supper, went home and fed us, and then back to Clayworks to finish the glazing. I left Stephanie making a batch of fudge while her boyfriend, Brett was on Skype with her. Crazy kids.

Everything was where I left it (I left a note saying I'd be back after supper) and I was alone. I turned the music up and got back to it.

While I was having a lot of fun trying new things, I had to keep a pretty good amount of pressure on the squeeze bottle to keep the flow going and after a couple of hours of it I realized I was hunched over and my mid-back was killing me. I stretched my back out on one of the tables for a few minutes before continuing the process.

I finally got finished with the underglaze at about 11:00 pm. Next I had to paint clear over all the paintings. After that I painted wax resist over the clear. I dipped the bowls in the main color glaze for the non-painted areas. Finally, I wiped all the excess glaze off the feet of the bowls and took them to the kiln room.

By the time I finished cleaning up my mess it was almost 2:00 am and every joint hurt from standing on the concrete floors for so long. I'm almost 58 now, and these marathons are not getting easier.

Next year I'm going back to glazing small batches.

Stack 'o bowls.

Waxing the bottoms.

Having fun with underglazes. These are just some of them.

Stephanie making fudge with Brett's support.

Finished the underglaze.

Almost finished the glazing.
I still have to finish the six in the foreground.

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2016-01-08 - Friday - Also...

With the unusually warm December we had, some of the plants are very confused. The daffodils are coming up about a month early and the holly ferns are fiddle-heading two or three months ahead of schedule. I hope we don't get a heavy snow that damages them.

I noticed this blanket thrown on the bed looked like a hooded robe which made me think of jawas from Star Wars. It's the little things, and the nerdy things... ok, it's the little nerdy things that make the day.

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2015-03-21 - Saturday - Yard, museum, and pots - oh my

Saturday I was all over the place.

I started out in the yard reveling in spring's progress. The daffodil show is over and we're moving into the heart of spring where everything else starts to emerge and the overpowering green of summer gets a foothold.

I used to joke with a friend years ago that during early summer in the Carolinas everything was such a vibrant green that there seemed to be a green haze hanging over the wooded areas. We would laugh, but we still marveled at it. I miss Jim. He's been gone a long time now, but I think of him most in the spring and summer.

I am glad to see the may apples
I transplanted last year are propagating.

The native orchids are looking a bit rough after the winter,
but they're still here.

I think this native plant is called spotted wintergreen,
and it always makes me think of peppermint candies.

The lenten roses I transplanted from a neighbor's yard last year
are happily blooming. Thanks Sheilah!

The hydrangea is peeking out.

The vinca minor in the front yard is filling in nicely.

I love the fiddle heads on ferns.
This one is a holly fern.

Here is another holly fern past the fiddle head stage.

A close-up of the vinca minor flowers.

In the afternoon I went to the Mint Museum to hear Rose B. Simpson speak about her art. I arrived at the last moment and found a small contingent from Clayworks to sit with. Rose was amazing. She is a skateboarder, punk rocker, poetry slammer, multimedia artist from the Santa Clara Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico. She told us about her life and strong connection with her heritage. She amazed us with her artwork and her vision. She even treated us to one of her poetry slam performances. It was fun just to be around that kind of energy for a while.

Lindsay, Cathy, and Jeff.

Rose B. Simpson.

After the talk at the Mint I went to Clayworks to do some more work on my pots from March 11. They waited patiently under plastic for me to return so I decided to alter them a bit. The left one is softly altered, the right one is done with my usual method of adding clay to make the facial features. The middle face was made only by removing clay, so it appears a bit flatter.

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2015-03-10 - Tuesday - Plants

A while back I planted the stump of a head of romaine lettuce and it took off. I think it bolted since it went all straggly and never became a head. Oh well.

When I took the trash out the that night I again noticed the daffodils in bloom and decided to see if I could capture them in low light with my phone. The streetlight across the street was providing some light but I wasn't sure if it was enough.

In each pair of photos below the first one is the actual photo and the second one is after clicking the "I'm feeling lucky" button in Picasa. The button tries to make the best of whatever you give it, no matter how horrible the original photo is.

I really love my shadow in the first group as it looks like it was badly photoshopped in after the fact. I assure you, it was a valid part of the original photo. It makes me think of someone standing up in a movie theater taking snapshots.

While I submitted fairly awful photos to the tool, I think it really made new art out of my lighting disasters. 

Photos are fun.

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2015-02-17 - Tuesday - Ice

Monday evening we had sleet and freezing rain so we stayed in on Tuesday and let everyone else slide around the roads if they wanted to. The temperature didn't really get above freezing on Tuesday, but the sun came out and melted a lot of the ice on the roads and sidewalks.

The daffodils didn't like it one bit and many of them fell over. (I think they were being a bit dramatic, but that's their way.)

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2015-02-11 - Wednesday - Spring is early

Spring is starting even earlier than usual this year.

The daffodils are blooming along with the lenten roses. I hope the daffodils make it through the much colder weather that's coming.

When I did the wash today I found an unopened Star Brite mint wrapper in the bottom of the machine. The candy was completely dissolved, but the wrapper was still twisted shut. At least my clothes are minty fresh.

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2015-01-19 - Monday - Leaves, sprouts, and new forms

Monday I went outside late in the afternoon to get some more of the leaves up. It was 64 degrees and sunny. It was so warm I had to take off my denim shirt. When I hung it on the lantern arm it blew off twice in the breeze. I finally resorted to putting it over both lantern arms to keep it there and I was struck by the silliness of it.

It's the second half of January, so the daffodils are poking up, and barring any frozen weather, should be blooming by month's end.

I was playing with torqued cylinders tonight and was struck by how human they looked so I decided to add faces to them. They're blanks right now, but I hope to add more detail later.

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