a boatload of visitors ...

A police officer sees a man driving around with a pickup truck full of penguins. He pulls the guy over and says, "You can't drive around with penguins in this town! Take them to the zoo immediately." The guy says okay, and drives away. The next day, the officer sees the guy still driving around with the truck full of penguins -- and they're all wearing sunglasses. He pulls the guy over and demands, "I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo yesterday?" The guy replies, "I did. Today I'm taking them to the beach!"



A prominent lawyer calls a plumber to fix a leak in his shower.

After about 25 minutes the plumber hands him a bill for $200.00.

The lawyer, enraged, says: “I’m a famous trial lawyer, and even I don’t make that kind of money for 25 minutes work!”

“Neither did I when I was a lawyer”, says the plumber.



What did Godzilla have at the "All You Can Eat" restaurant?

The waiters!

helluva belly

I was making more dragon pots Tuesday. Gosh they take forever, especially when some of them are eating PEOPLE or UNICORNS.....

wicked new work....

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

There is A LOT going on in my work life now, and here is a bunch of it. I have another load of pots in the kiln now cooling, and so I just figured I would put all these up from the last couple of days. A lot of experiments and messing around. This teapot idea is something to keep thinking about, it looks pretty sharp.

I have in this kilnload which is cooling a glaze test. I was so excited about it that I dreamt about it last night (potters will know what this is like). In the dream the glaze spattered and melted all over the inside of the kiln, a real horror story, a potter's nightmare! A quick peek inside just now shows that this did not happen, although I will want to change the colorants in the recipe further....maybe more white and blues in it....

The dog and the cat are not for sale, but these mugs are at my etsy gallery!

baby you can drive my car.....

You saw last week the first cars and pickup I had made. I keep thinking of improvements, and THIS ONE has wheels that rollllllllllllllll!


(new pottery by Gary Rith)

fire breathing dragon....

I get all kinds of odd requests and try to keep an open mind about them.
A pal from a very long time ago in college contacts me, asking me for a special item.
I remember the first week or 2 of college, when she and I were freshman. I mentioned I had been throwing a pot, or throwing pots. She was puzzled a bit, until I explained clay and a wheel were involved, because she thought it involved a new method of smoking p0t. It did NOT.
Anyway, we had classes together, lived next door to each other, that kind of thing, until graduation in 87. Thanks to FB, here we are again, gossiping about the weirdos we lived with back then and such...
SO, the point is this. She wishes somebody would make a dragon. She wants to be able to write down her grudges and set them afire in the belly of a ceramic dragon, thus relieving her of her grudges. I think it is a hilarious idea, and gave it some thought and made this yesterday. I tried it out, although it is not finished yet, not fired, not glazed, but impressive, no? I think small ones would be esp. funny, for a cone of incense....

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

adrenaline RUSH

The wife is on the road for the day and I needed to do some errands out there
(TAR-JAY! Tabasco, btw, was on sale, Starschmucks bags too)
and rain was expected, according to the radio, at 9am. With horrendous winds warning until midnight. I was like
"saddle up the kites before it rains!" and so on my way to Tar-JAY I stopped at the park, dogless for a change, and pulled out first the shark kite, then the fish kite. Holy cats, flying kites is the biggest rush. I told the wife after Megan invited us cliff climbing
"they will need somebody at the bottom, guarding the cooler---that would be me"
because I do NOT do that kind of adventure. I don't do any kind of adventure actually, but flying kites is MY KIND of wild outing. The winds were superb, and just before 9 I was cold and packed up and was leaving, and here came the MONSOONS...perfect timing....

seaside scenes......

The wife is on the road today. I will try to stay out of trouble. :)


(bowls for sale at Gary's etsy gallery)

excellent High Five Friday mishmash....

High Five Friday, get it on.......!


I love Easter and we are getting READY. I bet you cannot wait to see my Easter card. I sent one to some of you, entirely hand drawn! The rest of you will have to wait and see the copy posted here next week...




I watched the documentary film Touching the Void last night, and you should too. I did not know it was a reconstructed documentary until at least halfway through, it was so real. Then I dreamt I was a high school soccer star, who knew??? Guess I should learn the game!


(impossibly awesome red mugs just out of the kiln, get them at my etsy shop!)

that's the last time I go to Mexico for lunch....

OK, I woke at the usual time but in the middle of another horrific dream, so vivid. I was walking into Mexico with the wife and her sisters to have lunch, as though it was a routine thing, because we lived in El Paso or San Diego or something. (I have never been anywhere near Mexico, btw) They walked in, but there was some 'problem' with my driver's license and I was pulled aside with the woman behind me, a stranger. We were not initially scared, but the oily border guard was obsequious in that polite way that shows he is being welcoming but ...there is a problem. He escorts us down into the basement cell area, and shows us these cages, which are filthy, and big enough for a cat, and seats us at a desk near them. He says they are for the mentally ill, but we are not mentally ill, ARE WE? As if he was not sure yet...then he leaves. Then the 'good cops' come. Except they are full of questions, and we are still in this basement. Then I awoke. I s'pose that is where I should have dreamt my release or escape, but I awoke feeling pretty messed up, even physically sore head to toe, literally like I had been beaten. Sometimes my dreams are so vivid and real that it seems like I was in somebody else's head experiencing it for real. Who knows, sixth sense?
*update: found the first four leaf clover of the season whilst walking the beagle just now :)

I am pretty upset but will soon get back to my usual happy skippy self, I mean, with teapots like this in my life, who wouldn't be happy? This turquoise glaze fired in the baby kiln looks sooooo good. And so there is the baby kiln, which holds a few mugs or bowls, or 2 teapots, for example.....


(new pottery by Gary Rith)

Laura, Tommy and teapots....

FIRSTLY, Hilary at The Smitten Image, the most classy and wonderful blog, has selected me for a POTW award.
I have won her award a couple of times before, I am very grateful for her support :)


(above--new teapots by Gary Rith, below, Tommy unloading the kilns at Cornell ceramics----they are closing us down over at the university, unless something really big and good happens)




Laura has been a student of mine at Cornell ceramics this spring. You hate to have favorites when you are a teacher, but you always do...Laura learns easily and she likes to put animals on pots like the snake on her bowl here PLUS she is awesome at illustration...and I wanted her to get those drawings onto clay. So that is what we did Tuesday---a lesson in using underglazes to draw on clay. And yes, she has an awesome new blog going showing her artwork, have a look!

facing the hangman

Oh gosh, Monday was the best in every way, so I don't know where this dream came from (Monday: great pots out of the kiln, 80 degree temps, windows open, biked for the 4th day in a row, got soooo much good work done, made pizza at dinnah)

SO, this dream. Quite clear and real. I dream up a storm every day, very real, totally vivid, usually fun, and I survived this one. I was sentenced to hang with minutes to go. I rehearsed the whole thing over and over in my (dreaming) mind. The walk to the stool, the rope around the neck, the tied hands, everything up to the wrenching fall. OVER AND OVER it went through my mind. I was accused of something unclear, 100 some years ago. Then it was time, my lawyers had a lot of paper to try to avoid the execution, but it did not work, and so they had me on the stool, they had the rope around my neck and....I ran. Nobody was holding the rope yet, hands untied. I was chased by the marshalls but not caught. It is quite a thing to experience, a near brush with death like that. I don't know where the dream came from. (I remember that Clint eastwood movie that begins with him on a horse being hung from a tree...but I have not seen that in years, which makes you think that there might be something to reincarnation and the memories from a past life?)

I am, overall and in every sense, a very fortunate person. I remember reading NIGHT by Elie Wiesel--he was a boy sent to Auschwitz and survived the most terrible things. The book cover drawing, though, as I remember it, was people hung with barbed wire--representative of millions of innocent people executed. There are times you say that the things people do to each other are unimaginably horrible.


(new pottery by Gary Rith---some ideas I am monkeying around with: I like the super-wavy texture in front a lot, but look what my turquoise glaze decided to do! It is is so deep blue-green and speckly, NICE! The baby kiln fires at a lower temp than the big kiln, which apparently changes the look of that glaze entirely (see pickup truck below for turquoise)

Here in my car....

(new pottery by Gary Rith)
I showed making the pickup and one car, all are fired now and looking awesome. Wait till you see the next one that I am making :)

UNdignified

You know how it is, you have to use your little snoot to get every last yogurt drip out of the tub. Does not look very dignified, but then, maybe the wife there in bed with the cat and dog on her chest is not terribly dignified either?

NOT Dogue's Harbor....

OK, just so you know, last summer we trade in the big wagon for the tiny silver subie, and suddenly you're like "crapola, where do we put stuff?". I mean, 99 percent of the time its good, but no way are 2 bikes going in there. We have a big thule cartop box which I use for craft fairs. I don't do many ofairs anymore, but the box holds a lot of stuff up there, like having a second trunk. ANYWAY we got a new rack system for the silver subie to mount the box...and bike racks too, I am so excited! I love my bike. I love the wife's bike. But I don't like biking in traffic as much as I like biking on the numerous car-free rail trails around here, which are a short drive away. SO, yesterday, got the rack and it was mild and so me and the bike went on a big trip to east Ithaca rail trail, etc. You always forget, over winter or what have you, how much you love biking...like your own personal roller coaster carnival ride.

Then, of course, me and the wife had heard that the excellent old inn (1835! so pretty) near us had started brewing their own beers and we had to go to Rogue's Harbor. I give it an A+ it was so good, and look at the "mugs" they serve in, more like buckets! The sat us next to the fire...tres romantique!

Everybody was staring at my hand as we left. I had a handful of fries for my dogs. Yes, dripping ketchup and goo, a fistful of fries....

The wife gave me a Human league cd this week, were they not fantabulous????