clay: pottery sale

I thought I was really good at doing absolutely nothing, but I've packed this summer with activities like the pottery sale this past weekend. The day before, I affixed my ceramic pins to cards, and dinner was super casual of just hot dogs and beans.

 

And with four hot dogs left for other too-lazy-to-cook lunches or dinner. I've made dinner plates, but my hot dog meal impels me to want to make cereal bowls and salad plates.

On Sunday morning, I heated breakfast burritos from leftover refried beans, Mexican chorizo, scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and tortillas assembled the night before.

I decided to keep my pottery looking cohesive and set out just my speckled buff and red clay tableware as well as my ceramic pins. And I was stoked to sell 4 speckled buff dinner plates. The studio owner's partner bought my pitcher, and a couple of my hillbilly cups made for whiskey and shots also sold. 

Pottery sale on during a cold and windy July day.

Meral is a much more prolific potter because of her teaching, but she set out a limited color palette.

And I'm pleased that I got to sell a lot of Meral's pottery. Her best customer was her fellow instructor, Amy who bought a vase, a bowl, and a mug while I drank my coffee from my recently finished Sadie mug.

I admired Harper's (another instructor) jungle gem glazes on his pots. And yeah I'll be copying or making more of these irregular and sinuous shaped vases. I'm recalling the porcelain pot inspired by Aalvar Aalto's free form objects. I'm loving the pinks and salmons on the pots below and thinking they would be lovely with Patrick's dahlias of similar colors.

From another instructor-potter, I admired Ritz Green glaze on a Bmix with grog and Coleman porcelain mugs, respectively. What a difference how a cone 10 clay body can react to a glaze.

Lastly, I took home my finished air plant shelf home, installed my Tillandsia into it and plopped a succulent into the tiny pot.

 

I rather love it and want to make more air plant shelves. My succulent planter didn't sell, but I'm not mad about it as I aim to build a collection of white planters for some houseplants that were gifted to us along with an orchid. You betcha I'm going into the Clay Life studio this week for that very purpose.

cook: soup, salad and summer lasagna

My summer meal staples are heirloom tomatoes with just sprinklings of kosher and sea salts, marinated bocconcini mozzarella, and lots of chopped basil. My favorite lunch by far. And I had been gifted bags of dried cannellini beans, which I soaked and then boiled. The beans turned into a hearty soup or stew with Italian sausage rounded out by carrots, celery and onion, sage, thyme, rosemary sautéed in olive oil.

 

I've enough beans I think to last through the 2024-25 fall and winter. Patrick also harvested eggplant, and so of course, I had to make a vegetable lasagna. First I grate and then salt the zucchini to drain and squeeze of all its water. I then mix that zucchini with an 8-ounce container of cottage cheese (I like cottage cheese better than ricotta because it tastes and feels lighter).

 

While draining the zucchini, I started on the eggplant by slicing it and then dredging it in a beaten egg followed by panko breadcrumbs and then frying in canola oil until golden brown. You can see I had lots of pots going with water boiling for lasagna noodles and another simmering with marinara sauce.

After the lasagna noodles were boiled and drained and the eggplant was fried, I browned Italian sausage. My lasagna making station was then ready.

From bottom to top: sauce, noodles, vegetables, cheese, meat and repeat.

Don't forget to sprinkle more cheese and basil and sauce on top while sipping a glass of wine.

 

Into a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes or so or until the cheese is bubbling and brown.

With this dinner, thankfully...

leftovers to eat during the week.

cook: midsummer meals

I hadn't expected that my summer would be so event-filled, and because of yoga, swimming, canoe paddling practices, and a couple of slow sewing socials, I haven't been cooking a lot.                   

After soaking pinto beans overnight and thawing frozen chicken breasts, I spent one summer afternoon boiling the beans and marinating the chicken in orange juice, lime juice, lemon juice and all the zests with olive oil, hot smoked paprika, chipotle pepper, oregano, and cumin. The refried beans and pollo asado turned into...

 

that evening's DIY tacos.

 

On another night, I resorted to buying Trader Joe's Bool Kogi and then grilling with summer squashes to eat with leftover rice and banchan from our rooftop lunch party. We finished that tough meat(which I'll never buy again), but I love that I've Korean banchan in my meal rotation.

Our freezer is stocked because Patrick likes to buy rib eyes from Costco, and so a typical dinner will be steak and zucchini on the barbie along with a tomato salad. On that night I made my usual lemon horseradish cream (just lemon zest, lemon juice, chives, and lots of horseradish in sour cream) and also made a homemade steak sauce with Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, soy sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, and rice vinegar. Wished I had thought to add tabasco too.

On another day after a grueling canoe paddling practice, just the Friday grocery store $5 special of buffalo chicken wings with homemade buttermilk dressing and lots of raw carrots, celery, salted tomatoes and a refreshing glass of cola.

And after a warehouse run yesterday, I've got Salmon Milano and Korean short ribs for this weekend's meals for leftovers to eat for dinner on the weekdays. To quote Jacques Pepin in his inimitable French accent, "Happy Cooking" for next week.

canoe: outrigger canoe long distance races in santa cruz

It’s a quarter to 6 in the morning at the Santa Cruz harbor parked near the beach—it’s windy and cold though the onshore waves are small. It was dark when I arrived, but there's enough light from sunrise for me to see my outrigger canoe club setting up the canopy on the beach to watch the long distance races. As soon as I emerged from my car, it was a whirlwind of a morning getting the canoes off the trailer and then hauling them to the beach to rig the ama or outrigger float that stabilizes the canoe onto the iako or wooden arm.              

 

I watched Tasha do the rigging and then watched Daran the head coach undo it and re-do the ropes on the iako and ama.

 

I loved this mosaic of a humpback whale at Twin Lakes State Beach.

I think my muscles were as sore from traipsing back and forth on soft sand as much as paddling the outrigger canoe. The host for the race was the outrigger canoe club in Santa Cruz.

Overcast skies while I paddled the 8 mile race and still gray when I finally sat in my chair to watch the 10 mile race.

  

I heard on the radio during my race that there were 32 boats in the water and later counted the 19 flags representing the canoe clubs.

The sun shone finally during the 10 mile race, and then it was time to get the unlimited canoes into the harbor for the men to compete.

 

And the guys did really well, winning first and second places in their respective divisions.

This race was my first race ever as well as my first time racing on open water. I liked it! A lot. So much so that I also signed up for the Alcatraz long distance race and am seriously contemplating also participating in the Angel Island long distance race though I've yet to compete in a regatta, where I'm told by Bessie we would sweep on medals because of the many age divisions. 

clay: underglaze surface techniques on dark clay

I bought a bag of dark clay from the other studio and still had enough left to make even more tableware. I decided on tumblers. But what kind of surface technique? I knew I didn't want to just overglaze them with the studio glazes of Majolica or even my favorite Copper Red. And so I slathered on underglazes and then decided to scratch abstract designs. I ran my sewing tracing wheel to make the hatched lines and then roughly, very roughly scratched out irregular and imperfect concentric circles--3 of them. I then used wooden picks--because I can't find my stylus tools--to further mark up the surface.

 

I tried to be as random as possible on where to lay the marks and then STOPPED because I then to go overboard with mark making.

I decided to carve flash tattoos on the second mug that I'd seen at an artist's booth at the county fair.  

I like the look of underglaze with some raw clay kind of visible underneath and used up most of the pink underglaze in the studio to cover the mugs. I then colored the hearts with red and white underglaze, but then thought to add little washes of white too on the pink surface.

And maybe I will be unpleasantly surprised when it comes out of the bisque kiln, but right now in its state of leather hard, I like it.

In fact, I like it enough right now to perhaps only put a clear overglaze on the red hearts for some of that contrast of rough to smooth, and color to black when it comes out of the bisque kiln.