clay and cook: succulent planters and what should I prepare for a holiday gathering?

I was always plucking and pocketing little succulent plants on my pandemic walks, which I haven’t done in a while with the return to in-person learning. And as wonderful as moving my body in exercise classes has been, I miss my walks and wandering explorations on foot. I’m resolving to slow down during the winter break while taking stock of where I’ve been and are and what I want in the future. In the meantime, I’ve been absorbed by ceramics. Cecilia has been shopping from my pots of succulents (which will hopefully all sell in next weekend’s popup) in the community garden and commissioned me to make a dark clay succulent planter for her nephew. I didn’t want to construct another larger and low cylinder because I didn't have the patience to smooth seams and decided to go simpler and roll out as big a slab I could and slump it over one of the plaster molds I had poured a couple months ago.

I wish I had cut a larger circle for a deeper bowl, but I do like it even more than the cylinders I’d been scoring and slipping.

The bowl measures 7” across, and I’m guessing it will shrink down to 5” which is a rather small pot, and so really it's a maquette and not the large succulent pot Cecilia was wanting. That's okay. I can go bigger later. I had compressed enough Obsidian clay to make two more even smaller pots. 

I hope they’re not too shallow for succulents. And while I was at clay club, I also glazed the tree ornaments. Gawd what a pain in the arse it is to glaze pots with text. I used Western Deep Red and Foliage low fire glazes on the stars and nautical blue underglaze in the dreidels.

That was a lot of labor filling in the recesses with glaze and then sponging off excess and then painting wax resist into the text in order to then dip them in Colonial White overglaze.                  

In looking at the picture of the underglazed text ornaments above I’m pleased. But later I dipped them in overglaze and just YUCK. I may have to re-do the final glazing. I put them away for next week and went home to slice into matchsticks a daikon and salt with carrots already julienned and then pickle them.

Finally a task whose end at which I was satisfied. Patrick ate more pork and made latkes with leftover mashed potatoes for his dinner. Now I wonder if there's any left for the bahn mi sandwiches I was planning to use these pickles in. When I told Patrick I wanted to roast another porchetta and make sliders for his family's Christmas Day noshing, he kind of balked. Okay then. Roast beef sliders or a Beef Wellington, which I've never made either. Or I just might cook reliably tasty hamburger sliders, making sure to buy brioche buns. Oh and I would serve too, Yotam Ottolenghi's Charred Brussels Sprouts with Lime Basil Dressing for a holiday meal.