Copyright and other blogs currently being worked

Happy Year of the Dragon. Here is my Dragon Girl Bird sculpture from 2018.

My info

Friday, August 30, 2013

Leaf imprinted mugs









I admit I these are my first attempt to press leaves into wet clay right after the mug is thrown.  Then wait till leather hard and carve the name in.  And of course at that point I add the handles.  Next comes bisque firing...then put some detail on the leaves and words with Red Iron Oxide (RIO we call it) then some wax over that, then dip each mug into glaze, then fire it to cone 5.  I will keep trying.  And I think I'll skip Chrysanthemums...just too hard to write!

But they are for sale (pretty low prices) tomorrow at the TailGate market here in Black Mountain.  Unfortunately I won't be there in person tomorrow...got a retreat to go to.

Hope you have a happy Labor Day Weekend (if you're in the US).  I understand it's Father's Day in Austrailia (or was it New Zealand?)

Monday, August 26, 2013

Ice Cream Dishes



Yes, you may ask, there was a fourth one.  It didn't get into the bisque kiln before being damaged while waiting for several weeks, being moved about as other students brought their wares in and put them on same shelf...so it cracked where it was joined at the base.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't a structural crack, just accidental bump as it waited to fire, when it was in it's most fragile bone dry condition.  Anyway, I tried gluing it together and then glazing it, and it stayed together, but isn't such that I could sell it...the crack still shows where the glue was.

These dishes are so pretty, but mean throwing a base separately after they are trimmed, and that's a lot of extra work.

I'm linking to the MudColony blog down under...come see what others are doing...

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Matt bronze green pot

Now there are 2, big planters for the Lantanas...ready for on the porch.  Potting will happen soon.  Not the kind where my hands are in clay, but where I can take dirt and a plant and bring them together inside a pot.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Sculptural trade



has been traded for a Blair Bear mug.





Blair's mugs are for sale at Morning Sky Pottery on Cherry Street in Black Mountain.

And come over to http://mudcolony.blogspot.com/ to see what other potters around the world are up to. 

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Or a cup of cheer?






Don't blink, yes these goblets are looking back atcha.  They are at the Tailgate market this weekend in Black Mountain.  Won't be around for long.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Friday, August 16, 2013

Them big mugs



To be at this week's Black Mountain Tailgate Market

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Tailgate fun

Bette and Barb try out the new phone's camera...which makes noses very big, we found!

My Mud Buddies display with the entertainers right next to us.  Sometimes we have to shout because the music can get a bit loud.  And it's folk music, not rock!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Customer connection

It happened this morning...the feeling I need to have, to make pottery.

I have the new "square" on my new iPhone.  So I can make charge card sales.  It's great, and it's free.  The purchase price has a 2.75% fee taken out when the sale is posted to my checking account.

Of course my first day with it, and I'd just gotten it out of the box half an hour before setting up at the Tailgate Market.  I did log on with computer and made sure I had the right password.  Geese, I have so many passwords now, I need a password to look at the list of them, cause of course that's the master list.  And now they (whoever They are) won't let me use a previous password again, so I can't cycle through the list.

Anyway, I arrived, helped set up, and had a crick in my neck.  You know, shoulder neck tight and won't let you turn your head a certain way...

So the first person who sees one of my mugs, also sees the credit card sign, and I say, you can be the first to try it out.  He also has one on his, he says, but we can't get the card to swipe.  So we try entering it by hand, but it asks him for not only the card number, but something neither one of us had heard of - CVW or something strange.  And his Zip...but he didn't know either of those.

I thought it strange that it wouldn't work, actually it said the register wasn't connected...which meant the little "square" thing wasn't reading.  SO, I wiggled and pushed, and pulled, etc.  All you are allowed to do before breaking technological things.

Did I mention 2 of my USB ports started to not read (i.e. were dead) on the computer yesterday?  I have an external mouse which uses one, and I wanted to download some photos with another...and only one USB port was working.  Goddess alive, what was going on?

But this morning they all are healed.  (I attribute that to believing in magic, elves and fairies.)

Yep.  But back to the Square.  I figured perhaps I couldn't push it in far enough because of the super duper heavy duty case...so I moved case as far out of the way as I could, and wiggled the square sideways, and voila! it worked.

And there was my customer playing banjo for the whole Tailgate market, right in front of me.  So when he had a break, I walked over and told him I'd got the square to work, and I'd buy him another cup of coffee if he still wanted the mug.  He said yes, and no, he gave me the credit card, and poured his cup of cold coffee into the new mug, and signed his name with his fingernail on the phone.  Yeah, my first Techno sale, and a really great venue for advertising my mugs...a banjo player.

And he caught my eye after market from across the grass and smiled as I packed up the remaining pots. 

Another dear patron came by and gave me a hug as well as a purchase of another mug.  Her smiles mean a lot to me too.


 And this other mug sat on the table of the vendor right next to our booth, where she sells organic cleaning products.  (Hers was another credit card sale!)


I may have hated those plastic cards at times in my life.  But they are just another way of being in the marketplace, and today I'm so happy to have them to share my mugs with friendly folks. Connections.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Pottery goddess




from Homer exulting Athena in her role as goddess of pottery ......



Homer's Epigrams Fragment 14 (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :

"Potters, if you give me a reward, I will sing for you. Come, then, Athena [goddess of pottery], with hand upraised over the kiln. Let the pots and all the dishes turn out well and be well fired: let them fetch good prices and be sold in plenty in the market. Grant that the potters may get great gain and grant me so to sing to them.
 But if you turn shameless and make false promises, then I call together the destroyers of kilns, Suntribos (Shatter) and Smaragon (Smash) and Asbetos (Charr) and Sabaktes (Crash) and Omodamos (Crudebake) who can work this craft much mischief. 

 Replica of Pallas Athena, in Tennessee.

Sharing this around the world with other potters through Mud Colony here.  

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Damaged in transit

I enjoyed throwing 6 mugs, trying some stamping on them, and had pulled the handles too.  But when I tried to take them home in the car, they all (the mugs being very soft still) all fell over and got bent out of shape.  I might have made square mugs out of them, but who wants to try to figure out how to get the corners right when you're on your first cuppa?

So...
time to recycle. I always cut thrown things in half to see how my walls are progressing.  These were pretty sad.  Still too thick at the bottom sides.

A bucket of worms?  No, the handles which are too dry to try to use on the next batch.

And so the worms and the half mugs go here...

Tomorrow I'll pile the clay on a plaster bat to firm up, though it may take a day or so.  Things are drying really slowly these days.'

 Quote for the Day:

Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. Elizabeth Harrison 
'

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Organic vase



A rather large vase with glazes dripping over combined pieces of clay to support a large bouquet.

I think of this as organic looking, perhaps.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Waiting for flowers


Tall thin and heavy, so you can load it up with lots of flowers!
Glaze outside is the snowflake crackle, inside is shiney green.  Black accents done with Mayco Stroke N Coat.

Friday, August 2, 2013

To market to market...

No, I shall not be buying a fat hen...as I think the saying goes.

I shall be selling lots of these however.'  MudBuddies at the Tailgate=  9-12 Behind First Baptist Church, Montreat Rd, Black Mountain, NC.  See you tomorrow!

A bit of advice here...Smile!

My personal fav...Ahhhh!


Thursday, August 1, 2013

Trays of crazy glaze

My crazy side is demonstrated in these trays.  What was I thinking?

There is something  strange happening with our Floating blue.  In one dip, this background color shows (from left to right below) the brown whenever the glaze is thin, and a nice deep blue in the center as it is supposed to look throughout.  All the blue chemicals dripped to the bottom, or the right edge, as it was dipped into the glaze bucket.

And the other thing that happened, is a strange pulling away of both the blue and the red glazes on several spots.  I've never seen that happen, showing bare white clay next to thick glaze.