Tag Archives: Travel

Southern Comfort

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And I am not talking about whiskey!

I had never tried grits until I moved to North Carolina. Let’s face it, the name doesn’t sound appealing, and on their own they aren’t very pretty to look at. My first experience was with shrimp and grits and that’s when I fell in love. Every so often I cook some grits for breakfast. So yummy with an egg. What would have made this breakfast over the top? I little crumbled bacon, but that’s not something I keep on hand on a regular basis. A sprinkling of chopped green onion added a nice fresh flavor. Served in my favorite Ron Philbeck bowl, those grits are looking quite attractive.

Jeff and I ended our day with a drive into nearby Asheboro for early voting. It’s great to get it done with no long lines. Early voting times coincided with the exhibition at the North Carolina Potters Conference. The gallery was jammed packed with people. In no time at all, nearly all of presenter Tony Clennell’s pots were sold. Lot’s of red dots on the other presenters work as well. I would have liked to attend the conference this year, but money is tight. Maybe next year.

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Untitled…

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Nothing too exciting has been going on around here. We have had some great weather, so over the weekend I cleaned up the yard. Last week’s storm brought down lots of tree limbs. They are now out back in the burn pile. We will have a big bonfire very soon.

The kiln building is moving along. More work would have been completed this weekend, but we needed ceramic mortar and none of the local suppliers had it. Jeff ordered some last week and we are expecting delivery today. Still no word on the propane tank. As long as it’s here by the time the chimney is up, we will be happy.
I have been feeling like I am in a clay rut. I have been completing orders, but not doing any creative exploring. Without our larger kiln, it feels like we are in limbo. Making and carving these two small bottle vases has been the extent of my creativity these days.

The daffodils are blooming everywhere, many of them off into the woods. I had been cutting some to enjoy in the house, without stripping the yard of blooms. Last night I snapped this photo of the dining room. I glanced in from the kitchen and the shadows of the flowers and large pot caught my eye.
I thought about deleting this post, it seems rather scattered, but in the end I decided to publish it, because this is where I am at right now. Scattered and trying to get my sh&t together.

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Buying Power

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The great thing about living in a community of potters is that we often all have the same needs. One of them is shipping and packing supplies. We are fortunate to have a packaging and shipping supply company in nearby Greensboro, NC. They will deliver for free with a minimum order. Since we often can’t meet that minimum on our own, we get together with other Seagrove potters to place a large order.

This was delivery week at our studio! 
We were inundated with peanuts, bubble wrap, and paper!!!
It all had to be brought inside due to our wacky weather. Thankfully, everyone came quite quickly to pick up their share. Jeff and I still have to store our portion. Some goes into our office, some resides in our trailer until we have more room in the house. How is that we have doubled our living space and still don’t have enough room?!!

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The Week is Blowing By…. Literally!

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We had quite a day of weather yesterday. Extremely high winds, heavy rain, thunder, and throw in a tornado watch, to add to the excitement. Of course we had important plans for the day. Earlier in the week, Jeff had dug a trench and laid our gas line for the kiln. The propane company was scheduled to come and set our tank yesterday. We also had a very tall, and very dead pine tree situated close to where the tank was going. It was also a little too close for comfort to the kiln shed. Jeff made the decision to cut it down yesterday morning, before the propane tank arrived and before the wind took it down. He was able to drop the tree just as the wind picked up. He limbed the trunk and we started hauling the limbs to our burn pile behind the house. The sky opened up just before we finished. Drenched to the skin, with thunder overhead, we decided to call it a day.

We woke to sunshine, but continued high winds. I made quick work of moving the remaining limbs, while Jeff took the chain saw to the trunk. Local potter Chad Brown will come in a few days for the big chunks. He will split them and used them to fire his wood kiln.
Jeff has been making progress on the kiln. My job has consisted mostly of sorting through brick and stacking them in the shed.
Jeff determined that we won’t need to order any new arch brick, he has been cutting some of the brick we have on hand into the correct dimensions.
and I almost forgot to mention… the propane company had to cancel on us because they had too many weather related emergency calls. Our new date is March 15th, which is way too late for our schedule. They promised they would try hard to get here sooner. They know we are a business and a delay affects us tremendously. We will sit tight and be patient.
Everything works out in the end.

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A Belated Korean New Year Celebration

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Jeff and I like to celebrate the Korean New Year each February. It’s always a fun evening where we can cook together and enjoy choosing which pots we will serve with. New Year fell on February 8th, we had other commitments and no time for a trip to the Korean market. So we celebrated a little late!

This year we invited our friend and potter neighbor, Phil Pollet to join us.

We started the evening with an appetizer of pajeon (green onion pancake). This year we added a little seafood – shrimp and mussels. Traditionally, the seafood version has squid, but not everyone cares for it so the mussels were the substitute.

The main course was the traditional New Year soup, Tteokguk. A rich beef soup with mushrooms, onions, bean sprouts, and a little kimchi and rice cake. The rice cake isn’t the puffed rice cakes that we are familiar with here in the US. They are a thick, dense, rice noodle. Often slice on the diagonal. They are my favorite!

Along with the soup we had bowls of kimchi, rice, shredded jicama and carrot, and a nod to the south with pickled okra. It was all very delicious and fun………. Happy New Year!

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A Generous Gift

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The first thing that I do in the morning (after making coffee) is check e-mail. My inbox contained a message from a potter that lives outside of Winston Salem. She is in the process of moving and has made the difficult decision to stop making pots. Her truck was already loaded with glaze materials and a few sieves, if she could deliver them that day, would we be interested? The list of materials included most of what we use. I replied immediately with a big YES.

When she arrived in the afternoon I was so excited to see that one of the sieves was this Talisman….

Jeff and I had been wanting one for so long! It will be super handy for mixing large batches of shino glaze. Every time I sieve shino, I get impatient and start to use my hand to help the glaze through the sieve. When I am done it feels like I have hundreds of tiny splinters in my fingers, definitely not a good thing. This will solve that issue totally!
Along with the glaze materials and oxides, were some nice pottery books. Some that we didn’t own, a couple that we already have.  We will pass the duplicates on to students. This was such a generous gift, including delivery, so of course we told her to pick out some pots in the gallery.
What a great way to end the week!

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Crazy Cat Lady?

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I love cats. Jeff and I moved to North Carolina with his three elderly cats and my middle aged Sophie. The elder kitties have all passed on and we are now a one cat home, with no plans to add more at this stage in our lives.
This week I discovered a new way to satisfy the kitty urge.

Neko Atsume… Kitty Collector!

I can now collect cats inexpensively, on my smart phone, with an app. Yes, there really is an app for that! Cats are attracted to your “yard” by placing food, toys, and boxes. They arrive at different times to play and eat. 
You can take their picture and save them to an album. The more attractive you make your yard, the more cats you will attract. So far, I have only had three at one time. Usually there is only one. Sometimes when I check in, the food is gone and so are the cats. 
My real-life cat doesn’t like to have her picture taken. Occasionally I am able to sneak up on her. Jeff and I love our Sophie. She gives us hours of pleasure and entertainment. I adopted her from the NH Animal Rescue League when she was just a kitten… she will be 15 years old next fall! She LOVES being an only cat… I won’t tell her about the new virtual pets.

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New Pots from the Temporary Kiln

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We should only have to fire one more time in the raku kiln. Yesterday we unloaded and had some really good results. What a relief, because everything but a few items were orders.
I have been letting Jeff handle most everything about firing in this little kiln. I have done the occasional burner turn up and that is it. He has done the loading and putting it into reduction. I am afraid of what would happen if I made any adjustments. We are so very anxious to be firing our new kiln.
After the unloading, yesterday was spent sanding and packing pots for shipping. Today is a day of meetings and other obligations. We will get back to kiln construction on Saturday.

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Kiln Building Begins!

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The weather has been perfect for kiln building. Jeff and I were very fortunate to have fellow potter, Richard Hattaway give us a hand for two days. 
Yesterday most of the floor was completed. Isn’t it so pretty?!
Today Jeff and Richard reconfigured the arch form. This kiln will be just a few inches larger than it’s last incarnation. We want to be able to use more of the larger advancer shelves this time around.
By the end of the day, Jeff was able to set the arch form and lay out the bricks so that we can get a count of what we have. It looks like we might have to order a few more arch brick. They come from Georgia, hopefully they won’t take long to deliver. I can’t even tell you how anxious we are to have our kiln back up and running!

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