day TWO open studio

(new bowls by Gary Rith--I have been fiddling with this dark green glaze, dang it is a nice color, with a metallic sheen...big surprise!  It shows ridges and textures nicely, and is always begging for FROGS)

So busy open studio Friday I didn't even GET PICTURES?  NEVER!
I figured it would be quiet Friday, unlike my October open house when the weather is nicer and tourists are out.
NO NO!  A minute after opening I have the nice people in here looking around...as a matter of fact, yesterday was TWICE as busy as the October open house, gosh I am grateful....I explain to people that "If I worked at WalMuck everybody and anybody would come in...but here?  Ohmygosh, only the absolute nicest people ever seem to shop for pottery!".  I mean, wow, a cold day of warm fuzzies!

It was a hectic day.  I have 2 cat sitting jobs this weekend, Scoop and Puffy!  Talk about WARM FUZZIES! Have a great Saturday yourself!

MY black Friday...

Open studio here today 11-4, tomorrow too!
If you can't come over (540 Main, Etna, NY) then never FEAR!  Click here and shop online. Have a great Friday :)


(new pottery by Gary Rith--the above vase is new but an old favorite shape of mine, and below?
I keep making covered cups, wanting one for myself and this one is MINE--the appeal, I have found, is you have a built in saucer, but also I make tea in the kitchen and wander off to the cold studio, and sip here and there, this can keep it warm, it won't spill as I walk AND keeps tea warm while it steeps if I don't use a teapot! One last thought the lid can also hold your teabag...)

small blessings..

As a full-time retailer for 16-17 years,  Thanksgiving weekend has always meant BUSINESS (click here for my online etsy gallery!) I have open studio tomorrow, Friday-Saturday, and then gallery sit Sunday at the coop in Owego.... I also have, as you know, the pet sitting business with 2 cat jobs this weekend...today I empty the kiln, and get the studio ready, visit Puffy the cat, finish making some orders, then Friday it gets REALLY busy...for a month, or until the 24th.

SO, as I have said, Thanksgiving is something I looooove.  People make the mistake of thinking when I tell them it is a working weekend for me "poor Gary!" said my mother-in-law...and I had to tell her, aside from the fact that I love to work and DO NOT work at Small Mart "are you kidding?  It is HEAVEN getting paid to do this".
I suggested to the wife that she visit her sisters and Girl With a Pearl Earring on display in NYC.  So, in minutes, I clear all the gawdamn snow off the car and we go to the bus station...

We had Thanksgiving eve celebration yesterday, HOLY CATS so yummy, as you see in the pics:
--gluten-free sweet potato latkes, a new recipe for me, baked in muffin tins!
--curry chickpea fritters with bell pepper, spinach and carrot
--sliced avocado, spinach and tomato and
--another new recipe for me, cranberry chutney with hot peppers and a ton of ginger, yeOW!
--and finally, no dairy no gluten rice flour crust pumpkin PIE (look at the picture--has Spike cat fooled, right?) which tastes MORE delicious than the average pumpkin pie I swear

So, basically, I am the opposite of a traditionalist...you could say "he doesn't give a sh!t about family or tradition, all he does is try to make money!" and, well, if I don't make money we can't buy groceries, and I have NEVER paid any attention to tradition.

Small blessings:  to do what I do for a job, DANG it is fun
-we make ends meet, do what we want, eat what we want
-we are warm inside and it is fiercely wintry out there
-we have great friends and neighbors
-my sweetie:  it will be a tart and sweet ache in my heart all weekend, her off partying in NYC with her sisters.....

some curiosities and cuties

(bowls with dog by me --they are a good size ice cream bowl and the first time I have put a really big dog on there--I tell people I make dogs blue or turquoise, because other than white and black, I find glaze schemes for dogs tricky, so I go OVER THE top sometimes...why not turquoise?:)

OK, the other day I am at Pastimes antiques getting the wife the killer...let's see, mother's day gifts...why mother's day you ask?  Becuase the closet is FULLfullfull of the Christmas, birthday, Valentine's, Easter presents and soon I will be working on the presents for 2015....so anyway, I get her a present for TODAY.

I pick up this post card to buy her, she is from Kansas City and this is a view of the stockyards and part of downtown nearly 100 years ago.  You go into the cemetery, and their family goes back a lot further out in KC...and lately we have been reading her great-grandmother's diaries about her grandmother's childhood in like, 1906.

So, I got this post card at the antique store..and flip it over...it had been sent, as you see, to the house around the corner from our house!  The prettiest house here in Etna is the Lumbard House, as you can see...... it is actually kind of a boring message, but anyway...





The house is in the center of downtown Etna, next to, below, the post office and Baptist church..pretty huh?  This is our town :)  Have a great day!

winsome and winning and SUDDENLY wide awake!

You ever been dreaming that you and your wife are trying to walk your dog through a SWAMP infested with ALLIGATORS?  I woke up from that and thought it was morning and the Grateful Dead's "Playing in the band" has been happily pinging around in my head lately.....

In other news, Sarah is like "can ya make my Lucy on the handle of a turquoise cup???" and you know I can!  The wife and I got a yard sale coat for the dog....you can see it down there, it is pretty sharp.  But as somebody said to me last week "they never seem to like coats much".
And speaking of snow, we had that little bit there, but it is s'posed to be snowy for the next 48 hours...maybe not a lot of inches, but constant  slick streets?...ick!

OK, gonna head off to bed again, have a great ...what is it, Tuesday?


ANYWAY, I make a cute croc or gator don't I?  Click here and get some for yourself at my etsy shoppe! 

the cow jumped over the moon...or maybe flew over it in a rocket!

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

I put drawings and notes into the wife's lunch box.  Lately it has been Paloma Panda...who parties with penguins!  What a seemingly cute yet depraved panda she has been....
also, Smartcat has talked about footed pots. And I love the idea, BOWLS WITH FEET! This patterning and green glaze really do it, right?  And finally:  you know I love the cow jumped over the moon and have made many many many (click here) of them for kids...but what if the cow went SPACE AGE????

And then, of course, we got a HUGE, or maybe I should say BIG ENOUGH snow storm Saturday into Sunday. A few inches, high of 20, huge wind...same expected ALL WEEK?


 

gluten-free pumpkin bread, part TWO!

In other news, I bumped into my friend Lesli the other day and got some of her honey which gave me a chance to make some KILLER PUMPKIN muffins, except I made the recipe like a loaf (extra 20 mins to bake)....it uses honey!  It is a WONDERFUL recipe (click here) and I also added raisins and walnuts....and, well, apologies to bee keepers, but I suspect you could also use molasses rather than honey. You will recall that I made killer gluten-free pumpkin bread earlier this month, which turns out to be the MOST read post I have ever done, hundreds of readers, wow....

I was rolling.  I also made rice bread and since, luckily, the pumpkin bread uses only part of a can of pumpkin and  pumpkin snickerdoodle chocolate cookies also only uses part of a can, AND since a huge SNOW STORM was expected, and looking out the window at the snowy dog in a few inches fresh snow, I can tell, old man winter is here.... and what better way to spend a snowy Sunday than with baked goods and hot coffee, like I am doing now, right?
Have an awesome day yerself... :)

POTATO pizza and PIGS IN SPACE

(sculpture by Gary Rith)
I thought, taking the idea of pigs flying, of taking it to the SPACE AGE, and remembered, also, of course, the Muppets famous clips of Pigs in Space...which was pretty silly 30+ years ago :)

OK, so I roll out of bed Friday and tell the wife "I wonder if you sliced a potato, could you make a pizza???" and she tells me "bake a potato, scoop it out and mix it with all the pizza stuff, then bake it some more!" and I tell her "good idea, I have had rebaked potatoes, I will DO BOTH and we will see what we like better!"

Anything can become pizza.  Pita, tortilla, we made eggplant not long ago and the store sent a good recipe to turn zucchini slices into pizzas.

OK, so I had these huge baking potatoes.  I sliced one into 6 long, flat, 1/2 inch slices, dabbed a tiny bit of oil on there, baked them for half an hour at 400, took them out and topped with killer tomato sauce, veggies, and (nondairy for us) cheese, baked again for 20 or so minutes.  And did the rebaked potato too, and we served both with some avocado slices.

The winner?  FOR SURE it was my original idea, potato pizza! Forget rebaked, yummmmmmm! Have a great Saturday!

from the cute files: when pigs fly again....

I have made, as you have seen, airplanes flown by pigs....a biplane is twice as nice, eh? Have a great FRIDAY!

(sculpture by Gary Rith)

in which I get a NEW video camera and immediately film Penny and Yogi playing....

I have a new video camera.  I havn't made a video and posted it in awhile, WATCH OUT!
(I am reminded of David Sederis describing his voice as "sounding like a little girl" which I think describes me as well....)

RED stuff

Why YES, yes, I did make a fire truck pot... sure, I sculpt a bit, but I am usually connected to pottery...the wheels, cab, front, etc were all made on the pottery wheel and assembled...I knew I had a good red glaze for it.
I have told you that when I saw PINNOCHIO when I was 5 I wanted to make toys, like his maker Gepetto!  And gosh, sometimes I do make toys (although this fire truck, retaining its potness, um, could hold something useful).  The fire truck is special though:  I had a great bulldozer when I was little but always wanted a firetruck...

Speaking of red stuff, check out this ketchup fried rice!  You didn't know it is a Korean-American comfort food did you?  (click here) I will admit, I use the red stuff I like, such as chili sauce, hot sauce and Chinese garlic-chili sauce rather than ketchup...oh GOSH, yum!
Have a great Thursday!

green STUFF

You suddenly have a day where everything seems GREEN!
I made green enchiladas last night, a big favorite.  The basic idea is:  use Goya's green salsa, fill corn tortillas with STUFF (tofu, potato, onion, spinach in our case) and roll them and place in a casserole pan, lay some salsa under and a lot OVER the tortillas and top with cheese and bake....remember:  the Goya salsa is the key--how easy is that?

In other GREEN news, I was thrilled to see a minute ago that the green thing in the kiln turned red....yes, my red glaze goes on green and bakes red....you are wondering WHAT IS THAT THING IS IT WHAT I THINK IT IS???? And a couple of recent items out of the last kiln firing:  green and green! Have a great Wednesday!

the best damn gluten-free muffins you have EVER had in your life

I know, you're dying to talk muffins but let me talk about dream land here:
I was just dreaming, MINUTES before I was eating these muffins, that I was back in high school, a place I did not care for.
I was enrolled to start my senior year 2 weeks after the start of the year.  I had Penny with me and was lost all day AND she was sick.  The school had a vet onsite, and he pulled a tick off her and wrote all this stuff down and never said anything to me...which was NOT helpful.  Then I needed to pee and couldn't find a bathroom....having wandered around lost all day in a school with my sick dog I finally make it to trig halfway through class...and Penny goes up on top of a bookcase to rest.  But whereas I had a big stack of books, I had lost my new trig text and couldn't find it anywhere and I was late and 2 weeks into the school year UGH.
I was asked a question and I stood up and said "I am 47 years old, my dog is sick, and coming back to school is REALLY hard.  I hope it gets easier." and some kid in back says "No, it gets harder!" and I turn and flip him my middle finger and say " f**k you, kid"
and woke up in a cold sweat with a healthy dog and no plans to go anywhere near a school :)

OK, let's talk gluten-free AWESOME muffins!

 

I saw the simple recipe listed below and have made many many chenges to it, still simple, but my version is very moist and tasty.
Molasses is a wonderful sweetener, rich and full of iron and good nutrients, unlike sugar, and makes it a softer muffin.  I also like to add a little cinnamon sugar to the tops of my hot muffins---just a trace makes them so good!

http://www.bobsredmill.com/recipe/printer.php?rid=441

Ingredients:

1 Egg  1/2 cup soy milk 2 Tb molasses 2 Tb Canola Oil  1/4 cup apple sauce 1 cup brown Rice Flour  2 tsp Baking Powder  1/2 tsp Salt  (1/3 cup nuts, 1/3 cup raisins or craisins plus cinnamon and nutmeg shakes) (1/2 cup blueberries or diced apple) spoonful of cinnamon sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a 6 cup muffin tin or I use muffin papers, set aside. In a bowl beat the egg then add all ingredients; mix well. Then add mix-ins. Pour into prepared muffin tin. Bake for 17 - 20 minutes. Sprinkle hot muffins with cinnamon sugar. Allow muffins to cool for 5-8 minutes before removing from tin. Makes 6 large muffins. You might need elephant mugs for you and yours, right?  Or something else at my etsy gallery! click here!!!!

close to home...

The fun part about fairs in your own town is you spend all day chatting with the friends you havn't seen in awhile!  I was at Temple Beth El fair yesterday and saw Tommy and  his pots and Lesli and HER pots...and fiber work...  it was a terrific day...I came home, walked the dog, had some soup and fell asleep not long after 6 pm :)

....Santa????

I was the guy minding the shop Saturday...artist coop Gallery 41 I belong to in Owego, a little town south of us, and WOW the town was nuts.  It is a cute place anytime, but especially Saturday!  Thousands of people out on an unusual warm and Sunny November day, the radio station broadcasting from the corner, no parking...and then SANTA goes past on a horsedrawn cart...
carolers came into the gallery...and these people with cameras and a frame too :)
Up until the end of the day I was on my feet with dozens of customers at all times and wow, the place has never been so busy!

interpreting what I am up to....

This blog was begun in August 2006 (well, maybe the first blog was, the one that I filled up and is linked below) with the idea that I would share 3 things every day:  what I am up to, esp. the studio, what I am dreaming and what I am listening to.  I have since added, of course, a lot of pet action and cooking!
But I neglect the dreams and I also neglect the music.  Sheesh! You probably feel cheated!
NOT TODAY.

I dreamt Thursday into Friday that I was inside a house.  It was a bit disturbing, there were 3-4 stories and a lot of windows, but I couldn't figure how to get out.  There was a snake in the basement and outside was a huge snake with front legs...ugh, I am not crazy about snakes, right?

THEN LAST night, just now, I actually had a JOB.  I was sitting there trying to do my job (whatever it is, that was not clear, maybe it involved loafing, napping, guarding my stapler?  But still:  it was a JOB) and this bossy-boss type comes over and acting like we do this all the time, tells me to DO SOMETHING.  Like, NOW!  I was really miffed, it was obvious he could have done it in ten seconds on his way down the hall, but he was making ME get up and do it for him.

I like the idea of walking a mile in somebody else's shoes, to understand them, like my wife and her work and all the rest of the world.  GOOD GOLLY think of all the azzh*le bosses who get a kick out of making somebody else do all the little sh!t they don't feel like doing, just so they can be a big boss....
I tell the wife I am PRIVILEDGED to be my own boss and I AM.  Even if (during my side gig as a dog walker) you see me scooping one of Yogi's Godzilla size poops.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I have doodled a new dog, for mugs and bowls....


The wife was asking the other day "what was that song about OLD FOLKS?" and I corrected "you mean the one about YOUNG FOLKS" Have a great Saturday!