clay + cook: atmospheric river weekend

I'd spent Friday painting underglaze on more greenware, and I think they'll be going into the kiln on Monday. And so I anticipate filling in the text areas with black underglaze and then applying clear glaze on the bisque for another firing on Wednesday. And we got the kids started on making their pins too.

While picking up a bottle of wine and rose hand lotion and rose misting spray at Trader Joe's for Valentine's Day self-gifting, I picked up 4 bouquets of flowers which were all $4.99 except for the roses which were $9.99 and attempted to make my own floral arrangement. I've been impressed by the bouquets of a Trader Joe's flower shopper and wanted to copy her. I wanted to go for a monochromatic palette, but just couldn't. Hence the dark pink tipped white carnations and the pale pink stock. 

The vase of flowers is less monotonous than I feared, and I'm appreciating the textures and different heights. 

I did have to switch to a narrower and taller vase, but I'm liking it. Next time, I'll remember greenery like eucalyptus or belles of Ireland. And to open up the roses to look like fully lush blooms. 

After painting and trying to make a name stamp at the community studio, I brought home my creations to paint even more underglaze. I started a pin for Michaela to resemble her dog Ziggy and ended up making another, specifically for her for Valentine's Day.

Maybe it's easier to paint underglaze on bisque ware. Next time.

And no cooking this weekend, just leftovers, like these green noodles with Chinese sausage and my Sichuan Dan Dan Mian sauce, which is perfect for my lazy ass.

I still have probably 4 more days of leftovers, but have ground beef in the fridge for patty melts and then??? I guess calamari amandine. Or somewhere in my freezer is also smoked turkey legs for red beans and rice. And so today I'll be assessing what's in the freezer to figure out something new to cook in the next couple weeks.

I never did assess my freezer and fridge Sunday morning as I was in bed until noon with my dog. No bueno as she is not sleeping through the night and we were confined to home because of stormy and windy weather. At least we didn't lose power. I cooked falafel for one for brunch and to eat with the eggplant I roasted and the garbanzo beans I boiled and the cucumber I grated on Friday night.                  

 

While waiting for the falafel mix to set after adding chopped dill, cilantro, mint, and parsley to it, I made a Greek salad with the rest of the cucumber and what was left of a jar of roasted red bell peppers. And assessed the Valentine gifts I gave to myself. Both will go into my backpack.

 

Finally after 30 minutes, my falafel patties were ready to fry. I poured grapeseed oil into my smallest pot to heat. I suppose my tiny cast iron pan would have worked too. The patties did not crumble, and I was pleased how crispy they turned out.

 

What a lunch! I've enough falafel mix to eat this same meal for dinner again this week.

 

And then I spent the rest of the afternoon filling up a tray with more ceramics to add to the kiln. There's still more slab to carve out more pins. And so the plan at work is to find more cute animals or figure out Valentine's Day pins.

I also looked more closely at the glaze combos I tried out on soap dishes. I didn't note in the bisque this Warm Green and Celadon, but I like it. Interestingly, the Celadon made both glazes run off or craze on the rim, but it pooled in a lovely way on the sawtooth interiors.        

I wish I had done a better glaze job on the  rim with the Binger. At least, I didn't get any dunting or cracks in the glaze, nor any shivering or flakes of glaze coming off. However, nothing like the test piece I was hoping for as I couldn't exactly dip the whole dish into the small bucket of Binger because there wasn't enough glaze for dipping.

I do like what the Strontium did for Bloopsie. I did a little reading, and Strontium is a flux which is added to glaze "to lower the melting temperature of glass formers" or to make for a smoother glaze to improve the color. I normally don't care for Bloopsie by itself, but the Strontium toned down what I didn't like about the glaze. 

Below are the fired Bmix earrings I admired, which inspired me to also make some too. Donna thought my greenware disks would be too heavy for earrings, and so I hope I can loop a leather string to make my ocean waves disks into necklace pendants instead. I know that a colleague, Julie admired them and is hoping for one.

I like the half rounds with the khaki finish and black wavy lines painted on. Maybe I'll try to make multi-pendants for a statement necklace.