Over the river and through the woods: looking Christmassy here...

WHY YES, there is a river and woods behind our house, and although we get snow October-May, yesterday was our first that looked like a snowy day....(and more falling now, of course).

Our back yard.  There is a river back there...


A steel bridge around the corner takes you across the river. Cool pattern, eh?


Ducks!  Looking off the bridge toward our house and yard  at that bend there, to the right....

a day in the life...with YOGI

I have to remind myself sometimes "Yogi is NOT your dog...you just hang out together a lot....".
Next door to Yogi's house is a small farmlet with chickens.  He is used to them and they are used to him.  As a matter of fact, Yogi's family tosses old veggies from their own garden into the chicken pen, so the chickens get REALLY excited to see him, thinking he might be bringing them an old summer squash.
My own beagle Penny has a totally friendly and winning personality, but she is not good in the studio.  She eats clay.  beagles eat everything.  Yogi naps and does nothing.  Guess who gets invited into my studio to work?

(Chicken jars by Gary Rith)

I sculpted a couple of wall pieces yesterday, Godzilla eating an airplane and Godzilla eating a car....


The wife came home early and found us hanging out and got the pics....at this point, Penny and Spike were sound asleep off camera and Yogi still following me around...have a great Friday yourself!

mug shot for throwback Thursday....

Lori was blogging about shaving bowls for customers:  a bowl easily held in the hand, used with a brush and soap for men to shave with.  I made this mug 20-25 years ago and it was a favorite of my wife's back then, but somehow I took it over and began filling it with bar soap scraps.  I STILL toss in the the end of every soap bar and use it for shaving!  One of those ancient things used all the time and kinda ignored...until you realize how long it has been in use!

We are gonna see an end to our super-fine fall weather.  That wintry sh!t is coming....but the last 2 days were GOLDEN and Yogi came over to play with Penny...have you noticed that sometimes when other dogs come over to her yard (esp. a big one) she gets up on our Own Personal Stonehenge...just to assert she is King of the hill or Queen of the yard????

an unexpected turn.....

I had doodled a complicated teaset on a scrap of paper, all loops and whirls and curlicues and sat down and the clay blob started to spin and....this came out.  If I plan something on paper, I don't  have any trouble turning it into the clay project I imagined, but somehow as I got started a new and different idea came to mind and I did the opposite of complicated and highly decorated:  a minimalist, not a maximalist teaset.

I love fat round shaped pots.  (amongst other favorite shapes!) This idea started with thinking about the cup being just a curve but with the groove and small handle, for one finger, the whole thing easily cupped by your wrapped fingers.  (you will recall that last week I wrote about dreaming of the cup's handle...and woke up and made the improvement) I was SO pleased with the cup I imagined what would match it, to make a teaset.  I first planned to make a clay handle on the side of the teapot, but realized cane over the top would be better. HUZZAH!


(new teaset by Gary Rith)

CURE for the blues: corgis and beagles!

On the heels of a snowy weekend comes some damn fine weather, and so when it came time to babysit Soupy the corgi, I brought her to our yard to play.  She is so cute...our beagle Penny is so cute!
Again, you are thinking "Gary's life is so dang ENVIABLE...when he isn't sculpting or drawing cute dogs, he's playing with them!".

flower vases with flowers on them...

(vases by Gary Rith)
Even if you have no flowers to put in these, you can still enjoy flowers! All 3 going for sale at my etsy shoppe!

green stuff, more of the white stuff (PESTO PIZZA!)

hey, I made that sculpture when I was 17!

Yep, snow.  Our first real.  Sure, flakes have flown around, but this wintry mix left something behind....after, as I said yesterday, I drove 200 miles on it Friday...OK, sure, left a pretty and Christmassy scene behind, too!

It was with great pleasure that in the midst of such cold I was in my studio harvesting MY OWN fresh basil.  My plants are not the biggest or most robust, but they do OK.  And, rare for me, the guy with the black thumb, they have been doing Ok for about 5-6 months!
I was gonna make pesto with a new recipe and pasta, but my THICK CRUST GF PIZZA kicks azz and...oh my, so tasty..... ****


****original Nutrition Action Newsletter almost classic basil pesto recipe
grind up in your food processor, with a little water if needed, then top pasta or whatever:
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup grated parmesan
garlic
4 cups basil leaves
4 cups spinach leaves
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

the way I MADE that pesto recipe because I can't use dairy and made a half recipe

some walnuts
a few shakes nutritional yeast
garlic
2 cups basil leaves
2 cups spinach leaves
large splash extra virgin olive oil
salt
spoonful lemon juice

IT IS SOOOoooo good, so green!

white stuff....

I had to make some deliveries Friday, driving a couple hundred miles through SNOW...an icy wintry mix.  This is me along the way at my mom and dad's farm, their pond below....
just 5-6 more months of this sh!t .... ;)

dawn...

It just dawned on me that:

25 years ago NOW I met my wife. She ran an open arts studio at University of Illinois-Chicago, and I became a teacher and artist-in-residence there.  But the day I first met her was when she had organized an exhibit and sale of items made in the studios.  I was dropping off my work and she was so pretty I couldn't look her in the eye and I ran out as soon as I could....and then
we were friends for 3 years and
23 years ago we had our first friendly outing, also in November (we would not become an item until the next year) and of course
22 years ago on Christmas we got married.
Those are some big numbers, aren't they?

(below, 1992 in that very studio she managed... :)

when dreams become reality

Maybe this is one of those posts that non-potters find as interesting as watching paint dry?  because OH YES, potters together talking about pots or glaze will bore you to tears...
But I AM NOT boring, no way..

SO, I tell you yesterday that I was fiddling with some shapes then I had a dream about them, telling me I WAS PUTTING the wrong handle on them (a ring), and to do a different handle (a small strappy loop).  So I woke up and thought about and tried both and HUH!  I think my dream was correct!

Above pic show the first ring handle on the mug to the left, then strappy loop handle on the mug and creamer to the right.
What I am aiming for here is a simple shape, nice and round, with what is for me a very small handle, only big enough for a finger, because, as the picture below shows, it is meant to have hands wrapped around the mug....

arrrgh...searching for silver linings....

Well, before we get to THAT, it was interesting dreaming last night that the project I am currently working on has the wrong HANDLES.  Yes, I make pottery 24/7.  So, I wake up and think about those pots and say "I'll make 2 sets of handles and try them both" :)
I also dreamt of summer vacation and biking...a LOT of biking....the bike rack came off the car roof this week for winter, although most of this fall has been SO pretty, it IS November, which can be pretty dang gloomy and grey....

OK, the elections.  I don't understand America's so-called fed-up attitude with politics.  GET OUT AND FUKKING VOTE, especially if you don't like the way corporate money is pushing us all around.  People have been beaten, jailed and killed trying to vote, and some Americans can't be bothered to get informed about the issues and vote...and the rich azzholes and conservatives COUNT on that.  Disaffected voters complain a lot and stay home OR they say "Unemployment is down and the stock market is up and I now have health insurance, BUT democrats are all black muslims from Kenya who want to force gay marriage and abortion on our kids...so I am gonna vote the GOP".

There are 2 slim silver linings in all this, to my mind:  one:  I always like Jeanne Shaheen, our governor when we lived in New Hampshire and for the last 6 years senator.  She beat that sock puppet Brown pretty easily. TWO:  maybe a win like this energizes voters  to ACTUALLY go to the polls in 2 years and elect Hillary....

quilting with qats

The wife is repairing an elderly quilt.  She is NOT alone in this....
these pics, I have to add, are not really all that flattering to Spike:  he looks like he needs some yoga and a jog around the block....

I was dreaming just now that I was visiting Chicago again and having amazing noodle SOUP and beer at a restaurant and needed to use the john and I quickly awoke and...well, you  guessed it.


In other news...it is November.  HOLIDAYS like Christmas are JUST next MONTH! Huzzah! Get your new pottery NOW from my etsy gallery!

post-game recap...

The dog hopped out of bed and noisily puked onto the carpet....nothing wrong, but heck, she figured it is time to get up and so I join her, at an impossibly early moment .... but I was dreaming I was a HS senior football player aiming for a college scholarship and was about to go through something like the NFL combine:  a grueling day of lifting as many and much weights as possible and running fast etc...a grueling day of physical tests.  A good moment to wake up!

You were probably wondering about my weekend art fair:  wooHOO a blockbuster! You could say "who cares about that???" but this IS how I buy groceries.  I mean, if it was 10 thousand years ago and I went out to hunt wildebeast, let's just say I got a big juicy one and my family won't starve this month ;)

ANYWAY, this means that I need to replace EVERYTHING.  You love it when good stuff sells and you have to make more good stuff :)  Have a great Monday!
(new pottery by Gary Rith)

topsy turvy...

So I get up at my usual unGODly hour, 4 something, and start brewing the coffee and breakfast and turn back the clocks...to 3 something.  I am not afraid of that number, or that hour, but I think later today I will be falling asleep at an ESPECIALLY unGODly early hour... I am lucky, I usually sleep super great then get up early, all excited about the day (does that make me a cheerful optimist.. or a NUT?) It has been pretty damn dark in the mornings of late, so I welcome more morning light, but sheesh! Now at 3:30 in the afternoon it starts getting dark....

Speaking of topsy turvy-HA! SNOW down south yesterday?  Tee hee! ENJOY folks!

I am in day 2, as you recall, of a small 2 day fair in Binghamton at the Unitarian church...day one was good, and day 2 is usually better, because of the captive church audience.  I am super pleased, and hope your weekend is also good.

Of the dreams I can share (HOHOHO!  What does THAT mean?) I spent Friday night making pots in my dreams...I woke up and doodled them out to make...you wonder "is this just nighttime craziness or actually a good idea?".  Sometimes it is not a good idea.  And then last night I was playing baseball with friends...hope your dreams are fun too, have a good Sunday!

grand day out...

I am at the Unitarian Church of Binghamton, NY this weekend seeling POTTERY LIKE THIS!  I have been there before and this is a schweet group of people, and it feels like going home to be there.  Hope you have a great weekend yourself!


(new pottery by Gary Rith)

when hummus goes to TOWN....

(new mugs by Gary Rith)
I know, elephants on parade, right?  Who doesn't love THAT?  I always think of the nasty, brutish and short things in the world (like the Giants beating the Royals to win the Series) need to be balanced, nay, OVERCOME by the cute and sweet or beautiful.  It can be a terrible world, but we can make people smile if we try....

OK, hummus!  People buy hummus and it is not neccessarily cheap.  I know someone who wanted to open a farmer's market hummus business, selling a little tub for five bucks each, and I was thinking "but hummus is so easy to make, why would anyone BOTHER? I mean, a can of chickpeas is only 88 cents!".

But people DO bother! To spend money that is.  At its most simple, hummus is a spread or dip made of  cooked chickpeas (and you BETTER cook them, or everyone is gonna fart all over town...) with some olive oil and spice blended together, usually with lemon juice and garlic, maybe some tahini tossed in. Then to get fancier, you chop up some olives or basil leaves or whatever and stir it into the finished dip.

I remember having a sandwich on NY's second avenue with my sister-in-law back in 97...it was called California hummus and had jalapenos and lime juice and it was AWESOME.  So make your own with jalapenos and lime juice, right?  Or anything at all...

I like Mark Bittman's NY Times recipe for sundried tomato hummus quite a bit. (click here for recipe)
What I do is boil a can of chickpeas with some sundried tomatoes about 20 minutes, save a little of the water, then blenderize the chickpea-tomato mix with juice of one lemon, a spoonful each of:  garlic, tahini, olive oil, other spices and some of the cooking water to make it smooth, huzzah! Done! Costs about a dollar or two to make quite a lot...seen here with a loaf of GF bread I made....but WAIT!  Once you have some for lunch on bread, maybe you'd like to have the rest for a fun dinner:  hummus pasta!


Mushroom-pepper hummus pasta!
-boil 8 oz pasta per usual
-dice 4 oz mushrooms, half an onion and a small bell pepper, saute in olive oil
-once veggies are soft, mix in 8 oz hummus plus a little water to make a nice sauce, plus spices
-stir together with pasta, can top with:  olives (I love olives on ANYTHING), sliced tomato, sesame seeds, etc....