clay: soap dishes + butter boxes

In my inbox was this announcement for a makerie retreat for making market baskets and bags. They are so dang lovely, and I particularly love the basket below with the leather handles. However, the market bag below is made in a course for intermediate willow weavers.

The beginning class starts with making a bread basket.

However, this basket weaving workshop happens in October, and I'll likely wait until I'm retired from being a school librarian before I explore this craft. In the meantime, I'm going through a phase of making lots of soap dishes and a couple of butter boxes.

The kiln gods rewarded me with this decorated pumpkin this week.     

I like it a lot! It's going to decorate the Friendsgiving table. And I'm firing up two more pumpkins that were destined for the reclaim bucket. Earlier this week, I glazed some soap dishes: gloss white on the red clay dishes and just underglaze and wax resist on the white clay dishes.               

I received thank you notes from the the grandnieces for their Halloween card and $5 gift cards from Target to buy as much candy as they want.

I was touched and reminded too that I need to get going on the homemade dolly quilts and pillows for the plush dolls I bought them for Christmas. I'm pondering getting crochet kits for the two other older grandnieces, but they're too young yet to make amigurumi as they're not at least 12 years old and probably won't have the dexterity to handle crochet hooks.

I'll be away from my beloved clay because I'm en route to Memphis. Too early for me for breakfast, which is too bad because there's in this airport terminal a Filipino eatery called Mama Go's, serving arroz caldo and a siopao. I have a stopover in O'Hare, one of my favorite airports because of Tortas Frontera. I'm already scanning the menu, and the Crispy Chicken Milanesa with napa cabbage, pickled jalapenos, cotija cheese, avocado-tomatillo salsa, and cilantro crema sounds like the way to go. Ceramics and cooking are my obsession at the present, and so if I can't eat that torta I want in Chicago, I'll re-create it for dinner in California.