cook (not!): conserva

I’ve been doing my own private happy hour this holiday season of tinned fish. My first conserva snack was fishwife’s albacore tuna in spicy olive oil, and it was meh. But recently, I saw an Instagram post of a chef eating a tin of smoked oysters with chopped mix-ins of red onion, tomatoes, serranos, and cilantro and crackers. I aim to try that. Here’s what I ate a couple nights ago.                   

Like I said, the Fishwife tuna was just meh. Last night’s tin was Patagonia’s mussels. Wished I’d done the taco topping thing, but next time. Not my thing to eat cheese with conserva, but yes to drops of sherry vinegar to the oil in the fish, giardinera and artichokes and olives. Crackers, of course. Though I wouldn’t say no to a petite baguette.

clay: covet + celebrate

Zan made this candle dish, which I absolutely love for its surface:

She said she applied 3 layers of blue glaze and then on top layers of white gloss which she carved through to expose the blue. In the meantime, I made lots of Xmas ornaments to sell (none sold at last Saturday's pop-up) and gift. These came out of the high school kiln recently:

 

One of the gingerbread was already chosen by Nicole, and I'll string the other gingerbread man to add to the basket of ornaments for family members to choose and give the dreidel ornament to Helen. The winter solstice starts this Sunday, and as soon as outrigger canoe practice is over, I'll do more mad cleaning and decluttering and get started on my slow sewing self-gift from a Verb for Keeping Warm.

clay: xmas trees

I've heard two people now say that my modern Xmas trees look like wizard hats. Sigh. And so I saw these trees from a home furnishings retailer (West Elm? Pottery Barn? Crate & Barrel? Not sure) and decided I like it better than the stacked cones ceramic trees I've been seeing from other ceramicists, both handmade and mass manufactured.                                 

This morning after canoe paddling, I picked up a fallen branch long pine needles and tiny cones, which was my inspiration for the morning in the ceramics studio. I cut petals from the slab that somewhat resembled those of the photo reference, but I used the pine needles branch I found to impress the clay.           

And so sometime this week, I want to make my way into the studio and loop tool off crumbs and edges that could possibly be too sharp. Maybe I should have flared up the petals, but that's okay. I'll totally make these trees again, one at a time, because it was very tedious to cut, impress and score and slip the petals on to a narrow cone.

clay: teapot

I bought templates from Pottery to the People. The mugs are tiny! And so at my pottery party, we used a template of just an 8.5” x 11” paper cut in half, hotdog-style, and I made a bunch of handles with a Kemper tool. But this past weekend, I used the grounded teapot template.             

The spout seems so ginormous and the handle too delicate in comparison. And maybe my next knob on the lid will just be a circle with a depression for fingers. What's great about the template is thinking more about surface decoration though at some point, I will alter the dimensions and shape to make it my own. I can continue to use the template as is for now though I will alter the spout (a bit smaller) and handle (using my Diamond Core handle puller). Nevertheless, the teapot was a very fun Saturday of hand building.

celebrate: thanksgiving break

For the annual holiday of eating turkey, I made my way down to Temecula, which I had not realized was not in San Diego County, but is actually in Riverside County. Before making that 8-hour drive, I got a little of making done. I painted a pumpkin for a thanksgiving tablescape...       

...I glazed porcelain bisque.

 

And then a race from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 to get to my sister-in-law's father's house in the desert where we were celebrating Thanksgiving. I'm glad I made the trip. The next day's temperature made my bones less stiff and body more supple. I had the whole day to prep the food.

The pan was a bit too narrow for my liking, but crammed the spatchcocked bird atop the Stove Top stuffing. Note to self, no need to moisten the stuffing with chicken broth beforehand.

 

On Black Friday, my sister-in-law, brothers and I walked Old Town Temecula, I didn't buy much. Just this watercolor exercise book and a bunch of stickers and vintage-looking bluetooth speaker from an independent romance bookstore. The tote below made me think of my misspent 20s.

Another loooong drive to return to San Mateo and picked up my final fired ornaments and found these trees on the bisque shelves. I glazed 2 of the trees in my tried and true formulation that I use on my botanical leaves pressed mugs.

But for the other 4 trees, I decided to test other green formulas.

And my evenings have been spent before the Christmas holidays on sipping wine and brie and pate and crackers and stringing frost porcelain ornaments with jute and twine and hot gluing their knots.

 

It feels good to be back to brainstorming and making.