2016-11-05 - Saturday - Sycamore

I'm constantly amazed at the size of sycamore leaves. I found this one outside my sister-in-law's door and it's huge. My hand is not small and it dwarfs it in this photo.

Wonder is all around us. We just have to see it.

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2016-11-03 - Thursday - Missing a good man

Thursday my father-in-law passed away. I was lucky to know him for many years, and we were lucky enough to all be with him at the end of his 87 years on this earth.

He was a good man who did everything for other people his whole life. He loved his family more than anything else and he considered me a part of that family from day one.

He is and will forever be missed.

Here's something I wrote for his funeral. It's not much, but I felt a need to honor him in some way.

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How do you define the word “hero”?

John Pellow found ways to thrive in the aftermath of the Great Depression as a child.

He abandoned the religion he was raised with to marry the love of his life.

When he found out he was going to be drafted he volunteered for the navy.

After the service he became a teacher and taught day and night classes at three different colleges.

He moved his family to the country when he thought the city was too dangerous.

He put in a swimming pool even though he didn’t swim.

He built a corral for his daughters’ horses and a chicken coop for his son’s chickens.

He did everything in his life for someone else without hesitation.

To me, that’s a hero.

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Go with God, John, and you're right; "There's nothing like family."

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2016-10-30 - Sunday - Third face

Sunday I finally got around to putting a face on the third blank. He's a happy fellow.

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2016-10-27 - Thursday - Voting and nozzles

On Thursday I took advantage of early voting and got my civic duty done.

Later, I added a nozzle to the face pot I made.

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2016-10-26 - Wednesday - Another face

Wednesday I put a face on the second blank. Each of these faces evolves a bit more as I do them. My goal is to put more life in them as time goes on. Like everything else, it's a learning process.

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2106-10-22 - Saturday - Face pot

I started work on the largest blank on Saturday. So far so good.

2016-10-20 - Thursday - Updates all around

Thursday I pushed the three blanks out more from the inside to increase the volume and started molding the foundation for faces on them. The next step will be to add more clay and sculpt the rest of the faces.

Remember the face pot that I rushed to get finished for the Clayworks fundraiser? It's fired and it's on my shelf in the photo below. I will show you a better photo later in this post.

In the photo above you can see a poem I have pinned to my shelf. It's "The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski and I re-read it whenever I can. I really like this poem and it inspires me.

Remember those first cone packs I made? Here they are after the firing. The left one was in the top of the kiln and the right one in the bottom. It's usually hotter in the top of the kiln, but the number 10 cone on the bottom flattened out first.

Here is "Michael" in a much nicer photograph taken by Adrienne Dellinger --with an iPhone, no less.

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