preserving the last of this summer's peaches and running have been what I've been up to. My pottery-making has stunk, and rather than report constant struggles and failures, I've stayed out of this space and in my kitchen. But I've been frustrated by glaze failures- entire kiln loads need to be reglazed and fired, because no matter how much I mix the glazes, what I add to them, or how smoothly I apply them, they come out streaky. I try really hard not to be a perfectionist, but I want my work to be consistent. Work from this week hasn't made the grade. The few pieces that I did think were good enough to send out got complaints. Swell.
My throwing has been Craptastic. My arms are beginning to hurt again, but I think that's from what I'm knitting more than pottery work. But if my arms are hurting, I can't throw for more than 45 minutes a day. Not much time to get things done there. I managed 20 egg cups and some butter bells this week. Not the best way to build up inventory. I think the solution is to put away the knitting.
I got a new mixing tool for my drill that promised to mix everything more quickly and smoothly. I had hopes that this would help solve my glazing problems. It did mix quickly. All over the carport. I lost 1/4 of a gallon of new expensive glaze to the carport floor. I wanted to cry about it all and quit pottery-making entirely by Friday.
The single good pottery-related thing this week: some ceramic icons for the Martyrs of Memphis celebration this weekend (those did turn out well, happily, but Sister Constance is with me whenever these works are concerned- everything goes smoothly, and for that I am very thankful).
So I give you peaches. We picked more than 40 lbs on Labor Day. I canned, pureed, froze, dried peaches all week. And made splendid peach sangria out of the leftover syrup from canning. The plain syrup is all gone, but I have two 8 oz jars packed full of basil and peach syrup for later. Pottery- no progress. Peaches- a dwindling pile of fresh, a growing stack of preserved food. Yeah, that's what I'll focus on.
I'll get back to pottery this week. Much glazing to do, more throwing. Figuring out some different (safer- for my lungs) ways to do my speckled egg glaze (so far these experiments have been failures. I have another idea or two up my sleeve, but essentially, I want to avoid breathing in particulates. I don't need work-related lung cancer) . Better mixing (maybe a slower drill? My drill is eons old and has two speeds: off or in a blur). More tinkering with chemical additions to make glazes less streaky, because that streaking thing is not working for me. Less beating myself up about not producing "perfect" work. I am not a machine. I am not a factory. One customer complaint should not negate a dozen happy customers. No more peaches. More running. A better week ahead.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
new groove
I feel like I've still been a little quiet here since school has started. I've been working really hard on a lot of different things- some success, some, not so much. Ten years ago I ran. For at least an hour, every day. I had two labrador retrievers, one very young, one adult. I was in graduate school, very busy, and running helped keep all of us better-behaved. I married, moved to the country, and twisted my ankle too many times (on trails used by horses) to keep running. Five years ago we moved back to the city, to a neighborhood with a great 4 mile greenline, a college, a huge urban forested park, and I've been sporatic. In July I started really running again. I felt like I hit a plateau where I couldn't get much beyond 3 miles. Today I ran with my neighbor, an English professor and women's running coach. We did seven. And I didn't die. Or walk as much as I thought I would (maybe 1/4 mi, if that). It was a huge push for me to do that much more.
I've also been testing new glazes. I've gotten so many requests for red that I bought a pint to test. It's pretty happy, isn't it? A pint was just under $20. A gallon is well over $100. Red pottery = higher price. So. I also bought a new green. It was an affordable gallon- but it didn't come with any mixing instructions at all. When I first mixed and used it, it went on too too thick (see the splotchy berry bowl? the clay underneath is white. Bare spots aren't white anymore). So I'll thin it, test again, and see how it goes. I've been looking for a good grassy green for quite some time. I'm 90% happy with this. I've also been trying a new method for my eggshell glazed pieces that doesn't involve inadvertently breathing in fine particulates. I tried mixing my stain with water and flicking it on, but the color faded away to barely visible. That's still a work in progress. Perhaps I just need to wear a respirator while I make those pieces.
I made myself some buttons! I think I'll make more for the sewers and knitters in my life.
I'm working really hard on filling orders and building inventory. I just made twenty egg cups. I've made a ton of ladybug pottery (and yet, not enough). I have no mugs to speak of, no platters. A few berry bowls that I'll put out after the orders for them have been filled. I'll be back at the Memphis Farmers Market in late October and am planning to have a pre-Thanksgiving sale at home. I haven't had a home sale since June 2008. It's time to do another.
My weeks are flying by. I'm out the door to run before 7:30, working (making, glazing, and yes, interneting), picking up little boy again at 2. Lunches, suppers, Catechesis work, laundry, cleaning. I'm finding my rhythm. It is bumpy sometimes, but I'm getting there.
Have a great holiday weekend. We're going to go pick peaches again (unless I luck out and get a box of culled peaches at the farmers market). It's almost time for apples.
Oh, and Sunday was the last of the one local summers. It was harder this year because I had more going on, but eating local is part of how we eat now. I may highlight a special meal every now and then, if you don't mind too much.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
one local supper: 13
this is a pretty typical supper for us. One pot, simple, little bit of meat, plenty of veggies, some cheese, filling starch. I grew up eating cheese grits- it is one of my favorite comfort foods. I cooked stoneground grits with just a little salt and butter. It is topped with less than 1/4 lb of sauteed local sausage, onions, diced, salted, pan-roasted baby eggplants (outsides crispy, insides creamy, in 1/2" cubes so that the boys didn't even know they were eating eggplant. It is NOT their favorite.), chopped cherokee purple tomatoes (finally getting tomatoes in from my garden) and peppers, basil ribbons, and goat cheese crumbles. Since this had four vegetables (one 1 lb baby eggplant, 2 bell peppers, 2 tomatoes, a whole onion- that's more than four!), we didn't do a salad. We all cleaned our plates.
What I like most about this tasty and easy meal was how very little it cost. When I bought the sausage it was a father's day $1/lb special. I cut it, partially frozen, into quarters to use in bits. Some meals need a quarter, some only need half of the quarter. The grits were $7 for a 5 lb bag, I used one cup out of maybe 10 for this meal. The eggplant was $1/3, as were the peppers. The goat cheese was $6: I used about 2T out of the 8T in 1/2 cup. Tomatoes and basil from my garden, and the onions were $2/lb. That would make that big onion the priciest part of this $5.50 meal! I think we'll be eating it again before summer's out.
I think I feel compelled to break down my meal's cost because I'm reading my way through More with Less, a Mennonite (but not horse and buggy Mennonites) cookbook emphasizing conservation in relation to world hunger. I want to be careful with our resources, use meat sparingly, use inexpensive, plentiful, healthful foods more. This book really gives a lot of food for thought.
What I like most about this tasty and easy meal was how very little it cost. When I bought the sausage it was a father's day $1/lb special. I cut it, partially frozen, into quarters to use in bits. Some meals need a quarter, some only need half of the quarter. The grits were $7 for a 5 lb bag, I used one cup out of maybe 10 for this meal. The eggplant was $1/3, as were the peppers. The goat cheese was $6: I used about 2T out of the 8T in 1/2 cup. Tomatoes and basil from my garden, and the onions were $2/lb. That would make that big onion the priciest part of this $5.50 meal! I think we'll be eating it again before summer's out.
I think I feel compelled to break down my meal's cost because I'm reading my way through More with Less, a Mennonite (but not horse and buggy Mennonites) cookbook emphasizing conservation in relation to world hunger. I want to be careful with our resources, use meat sparingly, use inexpensive, plentiful, healthful foods more. This book really gives a lot of food for thought.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
school lunches
I made a pdf with school lunch ideas (with a LOT of help from on-line and real time friends- THANK YOU!!!), specifically using the laptop lunches bento-style box- for my boy. So, this isn't quite how I wanted it to publish, but it is here for all to see, use, enjoy, alter, tinker with, whatever. All I know is that now I can pack a lunch and snack in 5 minutes flat. We choose our main dish on the weekend and fill in the rest with what we have in the pantry and fridge. I do it all the night before and everything is fine when he eats lunch at 10 am (YUCK! I know! But school starts at 7:30 am). I'm still planning to get a thermos for soup and/or hot pasta during the winter, but our daily highs are still reaching the 90s, so we won't think about that until mid-late October or even into November. Enjoy it!
Bento Lunch Options
Bento Lunch Options
Thursday, August 27, 2009
egg shell
On my last weekend at the Memphis Farmers Market back in June, a customer asked me if I'd make mugs in this egg shell glaze. I told him I'd think about it and try. This is what I came up with. I really puzzled over the form. I wanted it to be curved, delicate, like an egg, but not so delicate that you'd be afraid to use it.
The handle bothers me a little- but honestly, all handles bother me a little. My favorite cups have no handles; I like to cradle the cup with both of my hands- like I do with my bamboo cups (speaking of which, my friend Melissa asked me if I'd consider making them as planters- to hold succulents or small african violets. Those are forthcoming). I want to work with this form a little more, but I was really gratified to find that several friends echoed my preference for tumbler-style cups and expressed interest in seeing these without handles. I was almost excited to see my preference echoed (unasked, even) by my friends.
I've come up with another application for the egg form. Not just vases, now, but salt shakers. Molly showed me a picture of a stopperless stoneware salt shaker she'd been given. I noodled around and found something like a tutorial for this double-walled vessel and made a few. I only use coarse salt, so I made the funnel quite large, but I'm working on making a smaller one for fine salt.
I'm excited to be getting real work done in the studio. I think that I'm going to do an etsy update once a month. If you are interested in berry bowls, I have orders for about a dozen right now, but I'm going to try to have another dozen ready to sell in a few weeks. I haven't been able to get any up on etsy because other people have contacted me about them. So if you REALLY really need one, and sooner rather than later, just shoot me an email. Or leave a comment (but blogger doesn't give me email addresses unless you specify on your account that your email address is public, so if you comment and don't hear back from me, that's why). Or go to my etsy page and convo me.
Have a great Thursday!
The handle bothers me a little- but honestly, all handles bother me a little. My favorite cups have no handles; I like to cradle the cup with both of my hands- like I do with my bamboo cups (speaking of which, my friend Melissa asked me if I'd consider making them as planters- to hold succulents or small african violets. Those are forthcoming). I want to work with this form a little more, but I was really gratified to find that several friends echoed my preference for tumbler-style cups and expressed interest in seeing these without handles. I was almost excited to see my preference echoed (unasked, even) by my friends.
I've come up with another application for the egg form. Not just vases, now, but salt shakers. Molly showed me a picture of a stopperless stoneware salt shaker she'd been given. I noodled around and found something like a tutorial for this double-walled vessel and made a few. I only use coarse salt, so I made the funnel quite large, but I'm working on making a smaller one for fine salt.I'm excited to be getting real work done in the studio. I think that I'm going to do an etsy update once a month. If you are interested in berry bowls, I have orders for about a dozen right now, but I'm going to try to have another dozen ready to sell in a few weeks. I haven't been able to get any up on etsy because other people have contacted me about them. So if you REALLY really need one, and sooner rather than later, just shoot me an email. Or leave a comment (but blogger doesn't give me email addresses unless you specify on your account that your email address is public, so if you comment and don't hear back from me, that's why). Or go to my etsy page and convo me.
Have a great Thursday!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
on custom orders
I believe I said that I wasn't going to do custom orders anymore. Well, I don't mean that. I mean that I won't do twenty at one time, or do custom orders to the exclusion of building up regular inventory. And I am still making berry bowls. I just can't let myself get to the point where I am only making berry bowls.
This is a custom order that I was pretty happy with. A fellow in town contacted me about making a shaving bowl for him. He has some very specific guidelines, and he wanted it to be locally made. I threw what I thought he wanted, got his approval, and glazed it last week. Yesterday I reglazed the little white spots where the glaze didn't stick. He hasn't seen the final result yet, but I hope he's pleased. This is a perfect example of what I want to accomplish with my pottery. Something you use every day, something that adds a little joy, beauty, satisfaction to your day. Something you aren't going to just DIE about because it breaks.
I don't use this glaze, Opulence's Antique Iron, frequently. I water it down to make the sepia-toned herb markers and saints icons, but it has literally been years (2-3) since I've used it to glaze a functional piece of pottery. I take that back, I did use it on the Mississippi River clay I dug this time last summer because everything else turned chalky white due to the mineral content in the clay. When I did use it more regularly, men liked it. So when this fellow requested something masculine, I mixed up this bucket again. I do like how it breaks greyish wherever the glaze pools. There's also the slightest hint of iridescence to the glaze, but I only noticed that yesterday when I was spot-glazing in the sun.
More new work to come.
Oh, would you like to see a spectacular failure? I didn't know whether to laugh or gasp when I pulled this out. I had to use a chisel to get the top out, which I did solely because I wanted to see how much butter it would hold. Lidded vessels are so finicky. Next time I will fire the top and bottom separately. They fit together when I made them and when I'd bisque fired them. I'm not sure if one was thrown from reclaimed clay and the other from new clay, but they certainly seemed to shrink at different rates. Oh well.
This is a custom order that I was pretty happy with. A fellow in town contacted me about making a shaving bowl for him. He has some very specific guidelines, and he wanted it to be locally made. I threw what I thought he wanted, got his approval, and glazed it last week. Yesterday I reglazed the little white spots where the glaze didn't stick. He hasn't seen the final result yet, but I hope he's pleased. This is a perfect example of what I want to accomplish with my pottery. Something you use every day, something that adds a little joy, beauty, satisfaction to your day. Something you aren't going to just DIE about because it breaks.
I don't use this glaze, Opulence's Antique Iron, frequently. I water it down to make the sepia-toned herb markers and saints icons, but it has literally been years (2-3) since I've used it to glaze a functional piece of pottery. I take that back, I did use it on the Mississippi River clay I dug this time last summer because everything else turned chalky white due to the mineral content in the clay. When I did use it more regularly, men liked it. So when this fellow requested something masculine, I mixed up this bucket again. I do like how it breaks greyish wherever the glaze pools. There's also the slightest hint of iridescence to the glaze, but I only noticed that yesterday when I was spot-glazing in the sun.
More new work to come.
Oh, would you like to see a spectacular failure? I didn't know whether to laugh or gasp when I pulled this out. I had to use a chisel to get the top out, which I did solely because I wanted to see how much butter it would hold. Lidded vessels are so finicky. Next time I will fire the top and bottom separately. They fit together when I made them and when I'd bisque fired them. I'm not sure if one was thrown from reclaimed clay and the other from new clay, but they certainly seemed to shrink at different rates. Oh well.
Friday, August 21, 2009
what I learned this summer
The summer is over. School's begun. Summer was great and easy and fast and hard and awful and frustrating and sad and joyful and I learned so so much. Some things I learned:1. I just cannot make pottery during the summer when my child is at home. Can. Not. Do. It. Next summer, I'll need some sort of work-around. And I'll need to have a lot of inventory built up in preparation for summer (see why I quit my job).
2. If I focus on trying to work when I just can't, not only do I frustrate myself, but I frustrate EVERYONE.
3. I can't pre-sell/do custom orders anymore. I'm talking to you, Berry Bowls*. Making a customer wait 6-8 weeks for their pottery that they've already paid for is just not something I can live with. I'm thrilled for people who can do that, but I'm so task-oriented that the weight (real or imagined) of other peoples' expectations is almost enough to drown me. And this process doesn't take into account crazy things that happen like tendinitis in both arms, losing power for a week, unseasonably hot temperatures which mean I can't run the kiln.
4. I don't like making excuses, so I will not promise what I can't easily deliver. Is this the same as #3?
5. I am NOT going to please everyone. Some people are unreasonable in their complaints. Some people are justified in their complaints. I need to figure out which is which and deal with them appropriately. A measly $15 or $25 or even $100 isn't worth throwing myself into despair because someone didn't like their vase.
6. My friends really help me to see things more clearly. See the last sentence in #5.
7. My work doesn't have to be perfect, just my best. I am very hard on myself and my standards for my work are nearly unattainable. But at the same time, I'm not Target or a factory in China.
8. I need to take breaks more often. This last break from pottery to enjoy the end of summer with my boy was filled with productivity in other areas. I kicked home canning's tail feathers and have a nicely stocked pantry as a result. I read some books. I knit some sweaters. I was (mostly) a nicer person to deal with (see #2).
9. I'm online a little too much sometimes. Life is for living in real time and real place. The internet is a great tool and can provide a great community and information (and sales, support, inspiration, you name it). But do I really need more than about an hour of screen time a day? If too much screen time is bad for my child, shouldn't it be bad for me, too?
10. Y'ALL. I finished my first year as a really registered business. I paid my business taxes to the city and county. I keep up (and have been for 7 years) with my sales taxes. It didn't kill me or make me crazy, and I don't have to pay an accountant to do it for me. This was a big thing. I'm more than a little proud of myself to have it all finished and paid weeks before it was due.
So. I'm back to work, waiting for my kiln to cool so that I can unload it. I've just trimmed about 20 ladybug pieces for a an order and to rebuild my inventory. I'm looking at heading back to the farmers market in October. I'm planning to have my first home sale after a year and a half (pre-Thanksgiving). I'm testing a new red glaze and a new green glaze. I'm making new forms and thinking about pottery and food and sustainability and creativity. Life is good. I'm so glad fall is just around the corner.
Have a happy weekend. I'm enjoying the cooler temps this weekend. I hope they find you, too.
*This is not to say that I'm not making berry bowls anymore. I just can't let them take over my production time OR my life. I'm grateful that they're popular, I just need to moderate their production a little better than I have for the past two summers.
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