the first tomato

I think today we can eat the first tomato.

You will recall that every year I start seeds in the house at the end of winter and then a few months later I have nothing to show for it but dead plants and miserable hopes.  Until next year.

WELL, last year I noticed that one of my plants, from a saved heirloom seed, a medium size pink tomato, survived the blight OK, as did the grape tomatoes from neighbors across the street.  We sometimes get tomato blight fierce, and those 2 seemed to survive, so I saved some seeds, and WOWIE, my plants are having a great summer.  I have dozens if not hundreds of green tomatoes on the back deck in the wash tubs…I am still careful about getting too hopeful that they will not still all turn brown and die, but…. :)

Mr. Mug…on a mug

Sure, I doodle all the time.  The fellow with a cup of coffee for a head is Mr. Mug…and why shouldn't he be on a mug?

putting it together…before and after...

Yesterday I was finishing a few mugs…they needed to dry a bit and I thought it would be amusing to get their before and after…it was a fairly dragon day…

AND I have made small flying pigs many times before, as you know, but only one plane with a spinning propeller and rolling wheels.  Now I have made another! I thought you might like to see the before and after….the metal bit for the propeller is a piece of special metal used to hold kiln elements, it looks like a paper clip but can be fired to 2300 degrees!

that HOLY CATS glaze combo

You may recall last year Mike and Sandra's granddaughter Tori was over in my studio messing around, and wanted to glaze her piece in colors I hadn't used in awhile (but that Mother Nature loves to use all the time) purple and green. AND WHAT a combo these 2 make, going all NUTS where they overlap, I am so glad she reminded me.  I have like 18 glazes, and am also forgetful….

I made this teapot the other day and thought long and hard (amazing how much time you can spend on a little thing…) about the glaze combo for it, difficult because of the wavy groovy surface…thought of this or that and then AH HA! Again, I needed to remember the awesomeness of this purple and green...

SO, like I say, I am entering a competition this month in an exquisite small show…this will likely be one of the 3 entires (still thinking) and it is the size of a baseball….

and the latest...

The kiln is cooling from a firing yesterday (HOO boy, with baking on a hot day it was a bit warm in here) and there will be MORE pots to see, but these are the last from the previous firing a couple of days ago…trying out more color schemes with wavy-groovy pots….

stable

Many of you will recall I had 2 surgeries in January to slow down the progress of my glaucoma.  Not like having open heart surgery, but still, not the most pleasant procedure.  ANYWAY, the question at the doctor's office Monday, after a couple hours of exhaustive eye exams and tests, was, since glaucoma has no cure and all the doctor can do is try to prevent further damage, when would I need surgery again.  And the answer, for now, is very good, the eyes are stable for now and probably won't need surgery for 2 years at the soonest.  VERY good news indeed….

and so I got back to work, and loaded the kiln and later had a wee toast to good health and vision :)

beagle belly

Yes, it has been hot.  The only air conditioning in this house is memories of January…or we get high tech and have a cool shower and sit in front of a fan.

Beagles deal with it any way they can….

A winery on a lake, what's not to love????

The wife and I have enjoyed Lamoureaux Landing dry riesling for a few years…from grapes grown and pressed on Seneca Lake, one lake over from our Cayuga.  The stuff is wicked terrific, and I had seen photos of the winery (there are maybe over 100 wineries within 100 miles of us) and it looked SO beautiful.  Like, if I had a lot of class and taste and money and designed a winery, THAT is what it would look like.  It isn't very far away, and so we finally got over there….

2 things…it was almost 100 degrees, VERY rare for us, very hot, with all the humidity, and the lakeshore was a lot cooler.  2nd:  when we got there, about a thousand, so it seemed to shy, introvert me, 22 year old women in little dresses were flitting about.  I tell the wife

"If this is a wedding, I am LEAVING" but it wasn't, and THEY were leaving.  There were still plenty of other people around tasting and such, but we quickly realized that it had been a large group (groups???) of sorority sisters from Cornell getting taken around in limos to wineries to get blotto.

The setting is stunning.  Grapes and solar panels line the hillside down to Seneca Lake.  The winery, tasting and sales room are all in this perfect building.  The dry riesling is very popular and sold in stores all around, which is how we got to know it, but they have a LOT of other varieties I didn't know about.  I filled my little box with moscato (I have no idea what it will be like, I was driving and the tasting will be at home), chardonnay, chardonnay reserve (!) AND unoaked chardonnay (?) and, of course, the dry riesling.

Everybody was inside whooping it up, and we asked if they minded us poking around.  They did not, ("Just don't touch anything!") so we wandered, in and out.  It is a very small winery, really, and it all happens in a place the size of a large house…..

Tom's

Drove down to Tom's of Binghamton yesterday with a load of mugs… funny story, of course:  the broken down kiln I told you about, that I repaired and got going again?  Guess what was in it, due to be delivered Friday afternoon…AND guess what fired properly and cooled and many many mugs were boxed and delivered :)

and so the kiln is fixed…again...

(step one:  unplug that thing!)

A couple of years ago, it seemed mysterious, until I realized the kiln had been working overtime for a while:  one after the other, over the course of a few months, the 4 elements all burned out and I replaced them.  Again this year, March and June I had to replace 2 of the replacements, and I had a misfire Wednesday, and surprise! Another element needed replacing…you imagine in a month or 2 the 4th will go, right?  Just like a lamp with 4 bulbs.  EXACTLY like a lamp with 4 bulbs--kiln elements burn out after a while.

It is not as easy to replace elements on a kiln as replacing a light bulb, but not too difficult.  You can see below the burned looking spot, it marked the brick that holds the elements (I love how L and L electric kilns have these hard brick REPLACEABLE element holders, brilliant).  So, I had to tear out the old element, the brick it melted into and then get it connected and tested…and I did so by 9 am Thursday and got the kiln properly fired by the end of the afternoon, right on time :)





New element on the left with the new element holder, on the right removed element and holder...

Below, the connections….



Later:  red hot, firing correctly :)

what does today hold…?

WElllll…the kiln unexpectedly misfired, or didn't fire, or I am not sure which…so I need to take it apart early today and see if I can figure it out, reload and refire.  Finish a bunch of other pieces.  Roast and sweat, myself, golly it is hot and humid…that is August, right?

New pitcher with a different wavy groovy glaze idea…..

NOT a cat on a hot tin roof...

…a beagle breakdancing on a hot front yard….

SO, as I said yesterday, I had an IV iron treatment for anemia yesterday, get another on Friday (I didn't know I would get a chance to get a pic…next time :)  It is brown liquid pumped straight into my arm for 45 minutes.  I felt pretty run down all yesterday but was suddenly hit with superpowers in the evening.  I had wondered about that:  will getting the iron for energy strike at the WRONG TIME?  It is supposed to last 3 months, so you figure there will be an adjustment followed by a new normal…I just don't need a new normal (feeling ALIVE!) at midnight :)

But then I dreamed…I played football in my high school once again (I did, believe it or not, for 3 years) but this time instead of losing all the time we were state champs….

news updates…..and bowls and bowls….

I have been, as you know, working on this wavy-groovy thing….looks good for bowls, right?  Inside or out!

News:  have you noticed that a certain idiotic, orange-faced asshat always seems to be at the top of the news?  His experienced and intelligent opponent is always a quiet second….I find it very disturbing that the news world likes to focus on the bloody car wreck you know?

So lets talk about MY news.  Several years of anemia and today I go to the doctor for the first IV iron treatment…yep.  Hook me up to a bag and fill my veins with iron.  Then they do it again Friday, and if it works, I will have it regularly every 3 months.

Other news--a series of crazy dreams last night, perhaps because the sheriffs and troopers were screaming past at full speed, sirens blaring, lights flashing, for part of the night…and WHY?


And in a return to times of old, here is my song of the summer, love it so much…

gluten-free torte...

I know, every summer I share the torte recipe when the berries are EVERYWHERE.
Blackberry torte this time with gluten-free batter, wicked soft and moist and yummy.  I based the original recipe for this on one shared by the wife's aunt and grandmother…full of butter, sugar, etc, but along the way this became something else entirely….recipe follows and have an awesome day!

Gary's gluten-free tasty torte

1 1/4 cup brown rice flour

2 Tbs (plus one Tbs sugar to top)

2 tsp baking powder

dash of salt

2 eggs 

2/3 cup apple sauce

1/2 cup milk (I use soy)

1/4 cup canola oil

fruit! about one cup of berries or sliced plums or peaches or apple rolled in cinnamon

-preheat to 350, grease 9" circular torte pan or 8 x 8 inch brownie baking pan

-combine dry in a large bowl

-bowl two, stir the eggs then add apple sauce, milk, oil

-add wet to dry, stir thoroughly

-pour into pan

-push fruit into batter, then you can sprinkle one Tbs sugar over the top

-bake 38-45 minutes, until golden brown and toothpick pushed in comes out clean

-cool on rack, slice and eat!

buried in elephant pots...

There has been a lot of interesting my elephant pots.  I have NONE.  You see Yogi here?  All of those sold.  The kiln is filled with more, the table has several freshly made.  I really do love them, and don't mind some repetition, as I am EASILY BORED.  Famously so…..

the badass tea party….

Even monsters like tea! New sculpture by me.
Have a great Saturday!

the "exquisite little item" show...

I am entering a competition soon which wants people to submit their 3 entries of exquisite little pots…in the very small (not smallest!) range.  I have shown you 4 of my possibilities, and this is a fifth.  I was kicking around feeling bad about something and got this idea for a little wavy-groovy pot, I quickly set down what I was doing, and went and made this… I'm in Looooooovvvvve….

baking blueberry tarts during a stinky earthquake...

The house is from 1865 and the road out front is a state highway.  Our front door sits just a few feet from the road, as houses did then, and the level is a couple of feet lower than the road bed.  It is now 2 inches lower than this time yesterday….because every ten years or so, apparently, they resurface the road…never scraping anything off, just ADDING couple of inches.  One of our driveways is fairly level but the other has an absurd upward angle (just try it in winter!) which is now slightly MORE absurd.

Last week, fast moving traffic be damned, a guy with a spray can goes down the middle of the road painting numbers.  Should have tipped me off.  But I have always imagined that before road work a state engineer would knock on the door with his clipboard, and tell me when work starts, and I could tell HIM the state owes me a damn level driveway, so you better bring a few extra truck loads of gravel….but there was no warning and no there was no state engineer.  Just several truckloads of guys and their hellacious equipment and stinky tarmac….it was awful.  I am sorry, I don't like to complain too much, but it was such a BAD day.  The machinery ensured a constant noise and vibration like an earthquake, 7am-7pm, with this foul, smoking paving material, RIGHT OUTSIDE the window….the cat is pretty bold, but he his under the couch.  The dog barked at it….I felt messed up.


SO I baked a blueberry tart.  When I was little my mo would give me the end of the pie crust dough to make a little jam tart, so I made that too….it was all I could do :)

that wavy groovy thing….

SO you have heard me say a time or 2 that I am trying to make these waves on pots, and using my teal glaze called ocean….the idea is working out pretty well, hmm?

a bit worn out, overdone...

I have been exhausted lately, sorry I have not been around visiting other blogs and all…the combination of a fair plus orders plus, well, LIFE has worn me out…

so many of you said such nice things about me blogging (almost) daily for ten years.  What would a blog be without sweet readers?  Thank you :)

I wanted to sculpt a bunny holding a bowl of carrots…so I did :)

ten years blogging…whoa :)

YES, some of us still blog! And as you know, I post almost every morning.
It started with an anonymous myspace thing in August 2006, where I wrote all sorts of ideas….but a little later that August started a blog…the link is below somewhere (I never look back).  I used up the memory in that and started the second, used up the memory in THAT and then got this one going, having figured out how to fake out the memory, mostly….and for years have posted a little on Facebook and then more here.

Back then I knew a lot of bloggers from all over and have met so many of you. The original idea was post what I am doing, my dreams, then music videos.  In the early days there was a lot of music.

It has been an awesome ride :) Thanks for coming along!

New wall piece by me, fresh from the kiln….