just this one thing...

(teapot by Gary Rith....kinda put a lot of things together here)
Have an awesome Monday!

it went like this...

(new bowls by Gary Rith)
I am visiting a new gallery yesterday, soooo nice (and why did I forget the camera?) to, I don't know, show them what I have...and I had a lot of examples.  They wanted it all....RIGHT then....and more! SOON!  My goodness that is an awesome boost....later that same day, I am driving past, and there is my work in the window.....again, where is the camera?  A rather fortunate warm fuzzy amidst winter's depressing GLOOM....
I hope you have a great weekend :)

tiny teapots...

(tiny teasets by Gary Rith...next to regular size!)

I had a request for a new small teaset for a new small grandaughter and just SO HAPPENED to have recently gotten small bamboo handles.... each teapot will be the size of a small orange and...terribly cute, I think....I had so much fun making them I GAVE IN and helped myself to a new cup and saucer that I have wanted in the studio... sort of like rewarding self by shopping...in my own store!
Have an awesome weekend!

if you are lucky, you GROW old but do you have to get CRABBY too?

(I am NOT crabby or grumpy, how could I be, I gave the wife a sunflower!)

Here is my point: I am a very positive person, right?  Or I try to be?
 I tell the wife:

me:  "I am at the checkout and say "thank you!" and the seen-it-all young woman tells me "not a problem!" and I walk away thinking "ARGH!  I WANNA BLOW CHUNKS!"

she:  "a bit dramatic..."

me:  "I hate that "not-a-problem" sh!t.  Do people get old and then get grumpy????? Fuch!"

she:  "Totally understandable.  It's like she is saying "you might have been a problem, but I chose to ignore the fact that you were almost a problem...this time"

me:  "THAT's it...see, she INSULTED me, or nearly did, by not saying "you're welcome", so I can crab about it, shout out sh!t like "KIDS THESE DAYS!."

she:  "Where DID that not-a-problem thing come from..."

me:  "Right, so we can say that old guy thing "KIDS THESE DAYS!"  BTW, Lorde is only 17 and she kicks ass....so I can go back to being Mr Positive :)"


In other news, our blizzard wasn't TOO bad...just 5 inches and 5 degrees.  I have been babysitting my best pal Ray's cat Scoop, who is famously at the top of my list:  PETS I WANT TO KIDNAP I LOVE THEM SO.  Scoop is so named for her mittens...extra toes...and she is a killer mouser, wicked smart and playful, loving and fun.  She is like a golden retriever with bottle caps, throw them, she catches them, and BRINGS THEM TO YOU!


Penny is so dang cute is she not?


Everybody likes Lorde's Royals, which is pretty good, but this is the one for me...have an awesome day!
 

we can't all live in San Diego... I guess.....

(doodle by Gary Rith)

Yesterday a friend from San Diego is like "Oh, wouldn't it be awesome to buy your parents' farm and live in bliss as your neighbor???" and it is like "well, I AM an amusing companion, it is true, but it is gonna be 5 degrees tonight with, like, 8-14 inches snow..." and you get the usual "well, it is gonna rain in So Cal, and was that an earthquake???". The grass is always greener, right?  Except when you have not seen grass since November and San Diego is 80 degrees and sunny everyday!

Today's storm is unusual, but not for reasons you think:  I have seen many snowy Easters, and at least two snowy Mother's Days (May 10!), so snow in March is to be expected.  And our particular hamlet is actually 8 degrees right now with only 5 inches snow so far, maybe.  But unusually windy out there!  The wind is very strong and something is banging at my neighbors' house, keeping me awake, and I start thinking of what I want for my birthday and decide maybe the small is better than the medium...
have an awesome day :)

(below--Wednesday:  it begins...)

gluten-free brownies that knock your socks off, and OH, a pot or 2...

Nicole Hunn of gluten-free on a shoestring comes through again!
The wife and I are talking yesterday morning:
he:  "but I liked those brownies" (skillet brownies last month)
she:  "well, next time you can like them all by yourself!" (said more politely than that reads)

LATER that same morning, and you KNOW THERE IS A WISE and generous God in our universe, Nicole Hunn sends out her latest brownie recipe...cute little 2 bite brownies!  You could have 75 of them for lunch and it would hardly fill you up ;)

They taste perfect:  cakey, yet fudgy and the wife SWOONS and wants them all..... :)

(new pottery by Gary Rith)
In other news, just outta the kiln, denim blue with teal swirlies!
Have an awesome day!

jet lag?

Felt like I had just flown to London on Monday...but I had not.  Anybody else feel a bit whacked by the time change?  Had a 7 olive martini Monday with a fiery burrito and woke up feeling like a million dollars ;)
Alright, the wife gets it "oh, those bowls look like flowers!".
Have a great Tuesday!

meaningful Monday and the Met...

Not the Metropolitan Opera!  NY's Metropolitan Museum, which has a vase (VASES!) that I love...

But you have heard me say that before.....but do you see its meaningful influence on my work? Good GOLLY I love that shape and glazing....

Have an awesome Monday!

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

(OK, I admit, the time change has me feeling fouled up...and I am a morning person!

"oh crap, what was I excited about LAST week?"

I was talking with some folks Saturday whom I had seen last week and was asked "hey, you were working on something last week that you were excited about, how is it coming?" And I was like, thinking to myself "dang, what WAS I excited about last week?" because I tend to, you know, get hyper excited about the MOMENT and what I am doing, not being so good remembering the past...

Have a GREAT SUNDAY!

(new cups by Gary Rith)

my rural roots?

(my mom, my dog, me)

I don't consider myself a country person at all, I don't like bugs!  I don't like MUD!
Like Lou Reed said

"When you're growing up in a small town
You know you'll grow down in a small town 
There is only one good use for a small town
You hate it and you know you'll have to leave."

I remember kids riding snowmobiles to my school, and kids with cowsh!t on their boots (dairy farm families, they had to milk cows first thing in the morning THEN go to school). There were 30 some kids in the graduating HS class: the whole school district, every single student, fit into one k-12 building.
 Sure, I live only an hour away from there, but I got out to the first city I could, living in Miami, Boston, NY and eventually Chicago for several years in my 20s. What I LOVE about Ithaca is that we are the 6th borough of NY city :)
 (which means we ignore the miles of countryside between here and there, drink a lot of dark roast coffee and read the NY Times;)

I absolutely love pretty countryside, trees, hills, etc, and like to hike in it but would go crazy if I had to live in it.

My parents have a small farm just 42 miles from us.  It is surrounded by thousands of acres of woods.
They don't farm anything, and my dad uses the barn as a converted painting studio (see below!) upstairs, their tractor downstairs.  They have a river (see below!) and a pond (impossible to see...deep snows and ice covering it) but there are old apple orchards and you can see that a neighboring farmer cuts their 33 acres of hay and that the Christmas tree farm of the 1970s has become the PINE FOREST of now....

Anyway, it is a total treat to visit there and see the deer and bunnies and feel rugged in snow not quite up to your nose...

"I'll take your negative eight and raise ya 2 to negative ten..."

 This is a shot of the waterfall in downtown Ithaca, frozen solid! It is Fall Creek which goes behind my house....also frozen solid for the most part....

Nook and I were walking yesterday, felt so dang WARM!  It was 20 degrees at noon!
The conversation with my mom on their farm an hour away, in the frozen hills:

me:  "we had 8 below zero this morning..."
my mom who has a competitive streak:  "oh yeah, that's nothing! It was ten below here!" which it may or MAY NOT have been....she likes to win, even if lying cheating and temperatures are involved ;)



Some things I am working on.  That teapot with the twisted handle...I kinda went to town there.
Gonna make another like it this morning, but for a bamboo handle! (see post I did recently on BAMBOO LUST :)
Have a great weekend!

cooool celadons and five below....

Yep, hopefully that is the last of this baloney:  five below outside now, which is asking a bit much, don't you think?  I mean, this whole March-is-in-like-a-lion-actually-a-very-cold-polar-bear thing?!

ANYWAY, it will end and OH YES, this month, MARCH I will certainly, as I do at some point every March, be riding my bike on a warm sunny day...just not today.

You hear me talking about celadons, those light green/grey/blue colors....well, at the moment, it is all I am doing...and the blue looks good under there as a splash too, hmm?  I am realizing, though, to be careful not to have more than one decorative thing going on at once with these....
have a great Thursday!


(new pots by Gary Rith)

how long can I push this joke????

Quite a while, I guess :) Have an awesome day!

like trying to hit a target with an arrow wearing a blindfold

(new teaset by Gary Rith)
It is true:  in pottery, I know what I want but getting there, hitting the bullseye?  Not exactly hit or miss, more guiding yourself down a path with your eyes closed,  and if you get where you want to be, you are pleasantly surprised!
Of course, all too often you fall off the path into a creek, right?  That is NOT where you want to be...
Anyway, you have seen me working on patterns of loops under glaze in 2014, and the other thing I am working on is a series of celadon pieces..just light greens.  Where do I go with this, what makes best use of a simple glaze, simple form, what is balanced, what is cohesive design?
This stuff stuff hit the mark :)
Have an awesome Tuesday!

Mr Hublot and speaking of teapots...

FIRSTLY, the wife and I went to the screening of OSCAR NOMINATED ANIMATED SHORTS back in winter 1992...one of our very first dates!!!! It is the 8-9 short films nominated for an Oscar, packaged together and screened at the cinema. We went last week, and have gone almost every year since. Afterwords we consider our favorites and why. Mr Hublot was our favorite this year by a LONG SHOT...and it won! Here tis, and it is wonderful.

 

(new pottery by Gary Rith)
It is the sometime treat, making a miniature pot....I showed you the yellow ones last week--dollhouse size!  Which means one inch to a foot in scale... but the neighbor's daughter was talking American Girl and so I tried to make a little bigger...which is a LOT easier, and you see the little blue teapot here.  About the size of a clementine!  Holds and pours a couple of spoonfuls of tea...

And in other news a customer from waaaaay back writes and requests a teaset with cats...and I was like "wouldn't it be funny if the cats were having some tea themselves....."
have an awesome Monday!!!!

of shells and sea glass...

You may not live by a beach, at the moment, but still be inspired by the sea! Or at least by sea glass and sea shells.
What was I thinking with these bowls?  yes, exactly that, shells and sea glass and, well, flowers have been guiding a lot of the shapes and decorations in some of my other pots lately, have you noticed that?
Have an awesome Sunday!

BIRTHDAYS and the GLUTEN-free and dairy-free cake that went to ELEVEN

(if the treasure hunt is EVER solved, this present is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow:  I made the tile for this jewelry box (click here)! (I should make more of these) Outta the kiln it came Friday, and was glued in place whilst still warm....guess what?  the jewelry box is full of presents too, shhhh!)

March 1 is a big deal in this house, even if it happens to be snowy and zero outside...like today.  But still, days are brighter and maybe one day this month we will have some...WARMTH!  That whole in like a lion out like a lamb thing....

It is also meaningful and celebratory because there is a birthday in the house.... of course, the dastardly treasure hunt may prevent anyone EVER finding their birthday presents!

I baked Nicole Hunn's gluten-free chocolate cake (click here), SHOCKINGLY good.  I did not have sour cream, not even a soy substitute on hand, so used apple sauce instead and instead of water used soy milk, and used my mom's choco frosting recipe (a little margerine and cocoa in a pan heated, add a little vanilla and water and powdered sugar until it looks, acts and tastes like frosting) ....but WHOA!  I was gonna make a small layer cake with 2 small rounds on top of each other but the result was 2 rounds that baked huge! Apple sauce did that?  I still just dumped frosting all over it....too lazy to smear it on neatly, I thought it looked more ARTISANAL to dump it on there....one wee cake with pecans, the other with choco chunks...