cow tipping galore!

Do you know what cow tipping is? Some sort of country prank where you push sleeping cows over at night....but HEY! You can play the COW TIPPING GAME! Then check out my rather cute cow pieces below....

more scenes from a slightly snowy Saturday

(this person is NOT my wife)
Goofy Kim, seen below here squashing Penny, came over to join us at the movies (see post below!) and twas a great time involving also green curry and you can see Buster in the snow and with me on the couch, Penny was cold and snuggling with me, and Missus Hawtness was playing with curlers and this was the cute result. Remember in the 70s when we were kids, like the neighbor's mom would be this old crazy looking creature in slippers and a house coat, chainsmoking with one hand drinking a beer with the other, curlers in her hair, standing in the driveway hollering at everything and nothing? (maybe you had different neighbors than me) Well, my wife wearing her curlers does't look ANYTHING like that.

Mary and Max

We went and saw the movie Mary and Max is the animated claymation true story of a girl in Australia and her pen pal in New York. It is a slightly twisted cartoon, including the funniest scene with a mime you have seen in your life.....

scenes from a slightly snowy day...

Goofy Kim came over late in the day for movie and din din at Sticky Rice (more on all that later) but it was unexpectedly snowy this afternoon, although usually (not this year) it is snowy all the time. It has been super warm and mild this fall and winter so far, but I hear that it was snowing in Houston, Georgia and Virginia, and just enough here to make everybody feel festive :) Holy cats, Goofy Kim, a little snow, movie and Sticky Rice = heavenly day :)

the perfect teapot

I can say that can't I? I am making a series of small teapots--sorta quick tries at trying some shapes and textures. This is the second of 5 so far. I think there are gonna be a bunch of them.
Dreamt that I was at a pond and a bullfrog bit my beagle and she disappeared! I was pretty upset and never found her...until I awoke and she was snoring in my ear then hopped off the bed and vomited on the carpet. I was quite happy :)


(teapot by Gary Rith)

my wife: Senator hawtness

Before you admire that daring and awesome little froggy teapot below, dig my dream:

SO the wife, in this dream, gets her hair dyed black with white bits (skunkish???) and she never dyes her hair, but she has a new persona, and runs for Senator in New Hampshire (where we lived for years before moving to NY). And, just like the real elections of 2006 and 2008, although she is a total underdog and well-known progressive, far-left democratic candidate, she WINS, swept in on the tide of people pissed at W and his gang. It was a great dream. I love my wife and am very proud of her accomplishments, in my dreams and in real life.
I was kind of figuring we would be going back and forth to DC and I would be her office helper or something, brewing the coffee and making the cookies, just like now....



(before and after, wee little teapot by Gary Rith)

frolicsome Friday!

I have a great post which as soon as the kiln cools and I can get a photo I will post. For now, lemme plot my weekend with you then you tell me what you are up to:
--lessee, Chapterhouse at 4, c'mon over and join us at the demon lamp! Then, lessee, probably Goofy Kim comes up Saturday and we go to the cinema and then early Sunday I am helping a former student look at a used kiln for sale and later Sunday setting up for Cornell Pot shop's slae all next week....kinda busy weekend actually.

Yawn.....

BAMF of the week: Spike the cat

Let's say you spend part of the day flat on your back, nose running like Niagara. Let's say your main comfort is a friendly and clownish and cuddly cat named Spike. That would earn you BAMF of the week.
Spike is VERY clownish and sweet natured. Like, he thinks he is so clever, hiding under the carpet and swiping at anybody that passes...until he falls asleep under the carpet. As if nobody could see his big azz hanging out the other side....

sick as a dog....

I was sorta wondering where that expression came from. Here is one answer:

'Sick as a...' is a phrase that has been applied to a whole variety of things and creatures...dog, horse, cat, parrot and so on. Even 'sick as a cushion'! These have been around for the past three hundred years.
Presumably, the idea came about because dogs and cats certainly just do vomit whenever their bodies tell them to.
Apparently, horses cannot actually vomit, so 'sick as a horse', strictly-speaking, meant a feeling of nausea whilst being unable actually to be sick. And the 'parrot' connection just came about relatively recently, particularly in circumstances of disappointment in football matches.

and further:

People use this expression to describe someone who’s very sick. It may have something to do with the fact that dogs will eat just about anything – and some of the things they swallow make them feel pretty sick!

I don't feel THAT sick. And I am not dead yet...


Doggy mug for sale now at my etsy gallery...

raku baby...

Carol just sent along this pic of me post-raku firing a week ago, you can see I was jumping up and down with happiness and joy!

wee little teapot

I was thinking lately about how to, oh I dunno, make a certain teapot shape, and was walking the dawg and it came to me and then I came home and made it here :)

partying with Carol and Nance...

Well no, not really, but my pottery student Carol came along for coffee and errands with me this am, when I went to resupply stores and get money back and then, of course, I had to go to Nance's store in Groton and she always has this SAUCY look on her face when somebody pulls out the camera...

I got what you NEED

(large elephant jar by Gary Rith, for sale now at my etsy gallery)

so I was telling Christi and ....

(elephant sugar bowl or whatever by Gary Rith)
I was telling Christi yesterday that I want to make little gems. Not a truckload of identical bowls, but single, cute, perfectly made and sculptural pieces. A little gem. Exercise the flamboyant and most creative parts in the back of my muddled little head.

CHRISTI comes ovah for the cookies

Hadn't seen our best pal Christi in a couple of months. She is a painter and illustrator, and like me, she is working hard to make moola before the Christmas sales season is ovah. She came over to SWAP art for pots, and of course have the cookies and see the dawgs who LOVE their auntie Christie.
YOU could come over here too and have cookies. Just email me :)
On the other hand, you could also go to my online store and buy some pots, like these babies down below....

sorry gals, I'm taken.....

57 dollars and the fridge challenge

My pal Stevo somehow took a pic of himself staring into his fridge. Sort of a fun challenge, eh? Except, I dressed in my cat in the hat tee, grabbed the cat (although sadly you can only see an ear) and put the little Felix doll into the fridge. ARTSY!
Once, long ago, like 1994, we were getting ready to move Chicago-Boston area and were loading junk onto the wagon for the Salvation Army and the wife sez:
"I won't have to get rid of my Felix doll will I?" and it's like
"Holy cats, you can't donate FELIX!!!!!".
Last year on about January 1 Dan and Kai of Ohio, bloggers who kinda disappeared, starting filling a change bottle to see where they were at Christmastime.
At that time I had a massive metal box full of years worth of change and decided to turn it in before it was too heavy to lift. It was almost 1000 dollars believe it or not.
Then I started again, to see what 11 months might result in. On the upside: I counted 57 dollars! On the downside, well, it ain't a thousand is it?

le cat und le mouse....

(cat and mouse and dog and cat mugs by Gary Rith)
I came home one day wanting to make basically a cat painted all the way around a mug, then added blue along the top...and of course, a mouse inside the cat mugs and a cat inside the dog mugs. The look, I think, tres cute and tres sweet.
Even if the weather oustide is shirty you have GOT to love December 1. I gave the wife, as I sometimes do, a lottery ticket advent calendar. She scratched the first today and won.....another ticket! Ho boy, its gonna be a great month :)

Golly these are good jokes.....:

What do you get is you cross an elephant with a cat?
Very nervous mice.



Momma mouse was getting food in the kitchen with her baby when the cat pounced in. Snatching up the kid Momma ran for the mousehole but it was obvious she wasn't going to make it. Finally in desperation she whipped around and shouted "Bark, Bark" at the cat. The cat skidded to a halt and ran away. Momma mouse turned to her baby and said, "You see how important it is to learn a foreign language!"

I was reading in the paper the other day that REO Speedwagon has a Christmas album and that it is fantastic. The thing is, you have to admit that like the band Boston they made some expert and super catchy music, like this one below. Funny though, the band is over 40 years old and has maybe as many as 20 EX members! Same singer all this time, of course.

more popular than...

The wife sez:
About as popular as beans on a bus trip....

which got me thinking....

whole lotta love.....

(me and Missus Hawtness, 1992)
OK, can you believe it, met the missus 20 years ago today, last day of November 1989. Famously, of course, we knew each over 3 years before we even had a date in 1992, after which we quickly got married December 24, 1992. This pic is from July of 1992.

I currently teach pottery classes at Cornell and work in the Pot Shop. It was the same 20 years ago at University of Illinois at Chicago. Both Cornell and Illinois have open studios for anybody to use and there were non-credit pottery classes people could take, and Illinois had 2 studios. I had moved with my art degree to Chicago to get a graduate degree in special education. Just so happens my future wife was the director of one of the 2 studios at Illinois, but I worked at the other.
You must keep in mind that I am super shy, almost crippled by shyness sometimes.
In late fall 1989 Maude had decided to run a made in the 2 craft shops exhibit for Christmastime. I needed to take my teaset and pitcher to the second studio and exhibition space which I had never visited, and there was a very pretty woman at the desk. I could not meet her eye but just ran in and said "here is my entry" and ran out. Soon thereafter I moved my workspace and started working at her studio, teaching pottery classes there, and was artist in residence for awhile too. In fall of 1991 I was breaking up with the person I was with, and mentioned this to Maude who said she would help me move my stuff. I thanked her and said I didn't need help, but it is always a special friend who offers to help you move. A few months later, the end of January 1992 I had a party and gave her the first kiss, and well, that was it, we were TOGETHER.