I have been a terrible blogger this year. Jeff and I continue to make pots, cook great meals, and work on our gardens, but blogging seems to have been put on the back burner. I keep waiting for that spark that will ignite the flame for me to get back to writing.
Escargot Begonia
Hibiscus – I bought this in the Spring. It was my mother’s favorite flower. Lately I have been dreaming about Mum three or four nights a week.
We finally had some tractor work done in the back lot and burned a lot of brush. Our garden looks a little scrappy, but we will work it some each year to make it more attractive. In the end it’s the veggies we produce that really matter.
Arroz Borracho con Pollo (drunken chicken with rice) and chile rellenos with salsa rojas
Sorry for the out of focus photo!
I recently spent a Sunday afternoon icing a very swollen, bee stung hand. Since I was incapacitated I watched a couple of cooking shows on PBS. I really enjoyed Pati’s Mexican Table and decided that as soon as my hand was working again I would make the dishes she demonstrated on the episode I watched. I knew the arroz borracho con pollo would be easy… I wasn’t sure about the chile rellenos. In the end the chiles and the salsa rojas were time consuming but not difficult… and worth the effort! I can’t wait to make the salsa rojas with our own garden tomatoes. Here is a link to the website with recipes from the show: Pati’s Mexican Table
So I have finally put some words out here on the internet and the only connection to pottery is the plate in the last photo! The plate has a little history. It’s the first plate that Jeff made that he was really happy with and kept for himself. He made it when he was living in Wilmington, NC. That makes the plate about 34 years old. I imagine that means it is either vintage or an antique.
These are my favorites out of all the boxes. Particularly the one on the left. The ash glaze was sprayed on and it worked well with the blue slip.
This one is also among my favorites, except for the fact that I knocked the edge of the rim off while getting it ready to load in the bisque kiln. I was going to scrap it, but Jeff sanded the broken area down. I guess now I get to keep it for myself.
I liked this one a lot… and then I took the lid off!
The crack goes all the way through. My guess is that I left some water inside when I closed in the form. As you may remember, these were made in one piece.
This one is my least favorite. It just doesn’t do anything for me. I guess there are bound to be clunkers every so often!
I promised a blog post about my small jars when they came out of the kiln, but I am going to wait until the last couple come out of glaze firing we did this weekend. In the meantime in between making pots, we have been spending many evenings working on our yard and gardens. We have been have a problem with bugs eating our basil and the leaves of our cone flowers. We spray with an all natural bug repellent and have had mixed results. I decided that what we needed were praying mantis!
I ordered a habitat cub that came with to mantis pods. The cup is filled with a straw like material and the pods rest on top of it. We kept them on the peninsula in the kitchen where we could check on them a few times a day.
One pod hatched on Saturday afternoon, nineteens days after they were delivered. It’s hard to see, but inside that cup are at least a hundred baby praying mantis. You have to release them within a day of hatching or they will start to eat each other. We put half on our flowers and herbs in the front of the house, the rest we released in the vegetable garden, and among the blackberries.
Sunday we could still find little babies crawling over the plants. They even seemed to have grown overnight. Now we will wait for the second pod to hatch. If we are lucky these little bug eaters will grow up and produce more over time.
I promised a blog post about my small jars when they came out of the kiln, but I am going to wait until the last couple come out of glaze firing we did this weekend. In the meantime in between making pots, we have been spending many evenings working on our yard and gardens. We have been have a problem with bugs eating our basil and the leaves of our cone flowers. We spray with an all natural bug repellent and have had mixed results. I decided that what we needed were praying mantis!
I ordered a habitat cub that came with to mantis pods. The cup is filled with a straw like material and the pods rest on top of it. We kept them on the peninsula in the kitchen where we could check on them a few times a day.
One pod hatched on Saturday afternoon, nineteens days after they were delivered. It’s hard to see, but inside that cup are at least a hundred baby praying mantis. You have to release them within a day of hatching or they will start to eat each other. We put half on our flowers and herbs in the front of the house, the rest we released in the vegetable garden, and among the blackberries.
Sunday we could still find little babies crawling over the plants. They even seemed to have grown overnight. Now we will wait for the second pod to hatch. If we are lucky these little bug eaters will grow up and produce more over time.
I promised a blog post about my small jars when they came out of the kiln, but I am going to wait until the last couple come out of glaze firing we did this weekend. In the meantime in between making pots, we have been spending many evenings working on our yard and gardens. We have been have a problem with bugs eating our basil and the leaves of our cone flowers. We spray with an all natural bug repellent and have had mixed results. I decided that what we needed were praying mantis!
I ordered a habitat cub that came with to mantis pods. The cup is filled with a straw like material and the pods rest on top of it. We kept them on the peninsula in the kitchen where we could check on them a few times a day.
One pod hatched on Saturday afternoon, nineteens days after they were delivered. It’s hard to see, but inside that cup are at least a hundred baby praying mantis. You have to release them within a day of hatching or they will start to eat each other. We put half on our flowers and herbs in the front of the house, the rest we released in the vegetable garden, and among the blackberries.
Sunday we could still find little babies crawling over the plants. They even seemed to have grown overnight. Now we will wait for the second pod to hatch. If we are lucky these little bug eaters will grow up and produce more over time.
As always, there were lots of piggy banks in this firing. The copper red came out great. I had an order for one, but made two. All too often the red crawls, so I wasn’t taking any chances. I was happy that both came out great. One was shipped to it’s new home, the other is available in my Etsy shop.
The flower pigs are always cute.
I had mixed results with the first little boxes to be glaze fired. I will post about those as soon as all the piggy banks are packed and shipped. I think I have been wearing a path from here to the post office!
I have been working on a series of little boxes thrown in one piece. The first ones I made are cooling in the kiln. These I finished up on Friday.
I decided to combine some slip trailing with the carving.
And one with just slip trailing. I haven’t done much slip trailing in recent years, other then the occasional dots. I soon realized I am way out of practice! I sort of felt like I had old lady shaky hands.
While these were fun to make, I do think that throwing a jar and a lid separately is actually less time consuming. I will go back to that method on the next go around.
April sure did fly by. It was a busy month for us with orders, Empty Bowls, and the Celebration of Spring Potter Tour. In between making pots we needed to clean up the studio, gallery, and yard.
I had it in my head for some time now, that I wanted a picnic table in the front yard. A place for pottery guests to rest or even have a picnic. As many know, dining in Seagrove is rather limited, but when the weather is good it’s a beautiful area to picnic. We bought a picnic table kit from Lowe’s. The price was right but it needed some elbow grease. Lots of sanding and then a coat of weather seal before assembling. When we were finished, we realized the seats are too low. The pre-drilled holes were an inch lower than they were supposed to be. Even with the extra inch the height would not have been great. Jeff is going to take it apart and drill new holes.
Next on my wish list is to hang a swing from this giant tree! They now sell a swing that comes with tree-friendly straps. Finding someone with a tall ladder (or a boom truck!) to hang it, is a whole other conundrum.
The Spring tour was successful. Our sales weren’t any better than the previous year, but we sure had a lot of people through the gallery. At the end of the weekend we were happy and I got some work completed by giving carving demonstrations.
Today we are glazing and loading the kiln. If at all possible we will fire tomorrow.
I was up early this morning and unloaded the kiln before Jeff even got out of bed. It went quickly because he had un-bricked the door last night. It was a really good firing with a variety of work from piggy banks, sugar & creamers, mugs, and our 50+ bowls for the Empty Bowls event next week.
Early in the week I posted a “before” photo, here is the “after” photo…
This is the BEST looking mug from the STARworks FireFest wood/salt firing.
It’s also the one with the small S-crack, so it’s mine to keep.
Jeff was part of the wood firing crew at STARworks last week during FireFest. He brought of few my pots to be fired in the salt chamber.
These were made with Laguna B-Mix. I had some lackluster ones and a few with some good toasty-ness. Of course the ones with the best color had other issues, like a slight separation at the handle join and one with an s-crack. I plan to keep the s-crack mug for myself, which I rarely do. The others are still sale-able but at a reduced price. That’s the crap shoot of wood firing and persnickety B-Mix.
The plan this weekend was that when Jeff was done his shift of stoking the wood kiln, he would come back to Seagrove and bring me to FireFest at STARworks, in Star NC. I really wanted to see this year’s giant sculpture, that was firing throughout the event, being unveiled. At 7pm it was drizzling and 46 degrees outside. I opted to stay home in my pajamas, curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine. Jeff had a few great photos and there was some cool videos posted to Facebook. The sculpture this year was created by Sunkoo Yuh. Firefest is an annual thing. You can read details about the event here: STARworks FireFest
