clay: commercial glaze + red clay body, part 1

Clay Body: Laguna Red Velvet

Glazes: Coyote Seafoam Satin, Coyote Gun Metal Green (Archie Glaze)

Method/Firing: Wheel thrown/Cone 6

I had forgotten all about this red clay bowl I threw in the high school's ceramic classroom after school a month ago. And knew when I saw that it was bisque that I was going to apply a blue or green glaze. I first painted the pot with 3 very thin coats of the Seafoam Satin, and then 3 very thin coats of a runny glaze called Gun Metal Green. I like it. A lot. 

Honestly, the glaze is more beautiful when held in real life than as pictured.

I am finally enjoying throwing and liking the end results of my throwing even if they are beginner-looking or a bit wonky. This little bowl will be for banchan.

Last night I threw 2 bowls, one of which got misshapen, and so I deliberately pinched and pressed and put finger marks all over it--and will do more of that when I trim it. I also tried to make a vase and made this short, squat ikebana pot instead.                      

3 seems to be the magic number for throwing in a clay session. And that'll be the number of pots to look for on bisque and glaze shelves.

Before all that throwing, I checked in on this hand- and slab-built candelabra, which I built on the Memorial Day holiday. It was still a bit soft, but decided to put it on the greenware shelf a day later.

On Memorial Day, I had also found this bowl and decided to get outside of the gloss-white-glaze-on-speckled-buff-clay zone a teeny bit.

Another pot I'll need to look for on the glaze shelves. Must remember to peruse. Hoping it'll be aqua-ish and light blue on the outside of the pot.

And on the bisque shelves, I'll need to look for these three pots.

I like how I pinched and put finger marks on that bowl....it'll coordinate with my hand built plates. Throwing is so much faster when it comes to bowls! The bowl below was a bit too dry to add pinch and finger pressings.

The bowl below was a bit too deformed after removing from the wheel, and so I embraced it and slumped it more after trimming and added handles for a mini-casserole dish.

Can I go into the studio tonight to look for these 3 (hopefully already bisque) pots? I'm going to CSU Monterey Bay tomorrow night for a librarians workshop and conference on a Friday, technically my last day of school. And yeah I can't wait to come back on a Friday night to discover my output from the kiln.

clay: metallic sharpie as glaze resist on bisque ware

Clay Body: Laguna Speckled Buff

Glaze: Clay Life's Majolica (White Gloss)

Method/Firing: Hand built slab/Cone 6; Sharpie gold metallic and ruler for resist

I'd had 3 bags of Speckled Buff, which I'm either hand building or throwing little bowls (as I can't yet lift the clay to go taller), and frustrated one day with throwing, I slab built these mugs.

I couldn't find any washi tape for resist, but I'd been watching Facebook reels of potters using the Sharpie gold metallic as a resist. 

  

I found using the Sharpie kind of difficult with the clean-up of excess glaze and too lazy to use the cotton swab tips. I decided to go with it.

Where did this aqua tint come from? Was it the outgassing of the ink from the Sharpies doing some weird chemical reaction? Or proximity to a pot glazed with Teal Appeal?

 

Hot from the kiln yesterday, I decided that I like it. I Google researched this technique, and the green marks are from the copper in the gold metallic Sharpie. So interesting. I found the washi tape I'd bought at the Japanese dollar store, and so that's the method I'll use next time for these kinds of slab mugs. However, I also just bought a forestland tree stencil, wanting to use it in some way on a mug for a mountain cabin, so that's maybe next for clay resist technique unless I return it and try something else.

cloth: advent calendars on the brain

A lot of weekends ago, I visited my brother and his wife, who just underwent her 9th chemotherapy. Oi vey! I think of what I can make for her, usually pottery-wise. I just made her a big pot and dish for her snake plant, but on another visit, she asked if I'm able to sew an advent calendar.

 

Um, totally not digging the gnomes, but do like perpendicularity of the project and do-ableness of an advent calendar. She then messaged me possible sizes. Teeny tiny pockets would be too impractical--just candy or I suppose cash bills every day before Christmas, and so bigger pockets to fit gifts a bit bigger.

I impulsively went all in and just bought cotton fabrics: osnaburg off-white which seems a bit thin, tree-textured patterned white lines on off-white fabric, white fabric, and black fabric. Below is the advent calendar I love and want inspiration from.

I love the Scandinavian aesthetic and the limited color palette of white, black and gold. Because I haven't the time or the brain, I'm going with this design. I'll copy pockets just like in the grid above, some with just numbers. I'll also integrate a woodland theme, but with California wildlife and maybe a motif of a state outline, a redwood tree, poppy, quail, brown bear, but some holiday symbols too like a dove, deer, a present or two, conifer and decorated trees. Let me sew a mock-up first and worry about images and fabric painting later. 

That Sunday, I also stopped at Tacos Jalisco in my hometown to pick up lunch for all of us. I'd been buying tacos, burritos, nachos, quesadillas with lots of their delicious avocado and tomatillo salsa for at least 40 years from this family business. I think their building was originally an IHOP, and it's next door to an old Taco Bell which is now an automotive parts business. What I love about this family restaurant is the art they commission to decorate their restaurant.

I was so happy to support a business that fed 8 people for only a hundred bucks.

I spent that morning too, finishing a chili for their dinner later. I had packed accompanying fixings of sour cream, chopped scallions, cilantro, and more avocado-tomatillo-jalapeno-cilantro salsa.

 

My brother decided to eat a bowl a few hours later, which got the kids enthused about a snack too. They all said that chili is their favorite. That pleased me so much to see them enjoy food I had made. 

Cooking is really my love language.

camp: forest bathing continued and korean bbq

Last Saturday, I mentioned that I got to spend an early afternoon forest bathing among the big trees in Calaveras. We spent a couple hours at the state park some miles down from Dawn's cabin on just a 1.5 mile trail to preview the largest trees in the North Grove.        

 

There's a bench that leans back and supports your head, so you can just look up and marvel at their height from thousands of years of rainfall, sunlight, photosynthesizing and growing.

 

Lightning strikes have burned some trees and turned them into hollows (I bet mushroom foraging is phenomenal after a rain), but some trees were skeletal from having being exploited and sent on global tours to be viewed and fascinated at over their giant sizes.

  

There are 26 markers on this North Grove main trail which you can follow along with a paper brochure to read some history of the trees.

 

One tree that was carved out in the bottom to be viewed and photographed extensively because a car could fit inside its hollow was struck by lightning, and you could now walk inside the length of the fallen log. 

I mourned its former majesty. I then marveled at the beauty of the Pacific dogwoods.

Even though we spent most of the afternoon at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, I asked Dawn and Cecilia if we could go to Quyle Kilns. Oh my. We were there for a good 2 hours because I got into conversation with the 70-year-old owner, Pam, who was inebriated and so very charming on a deep dive tour and history of her clay business.                      

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the studio or its gallery clay works. I guess I didn't want to be appropriating other artists' ideas. I did think the sea glass Christmas tree was rather cool, and here's a book Pam said I should study and keep learning from.

 

I admired these busts of former pets.

I felt awful that I kept Cecilia and Olivia and Dawn at Quyle Kilns for so long. I started grilling right away when we returned to cabin because we had skipped lunch. I found the cast iron grill pan in the kitchen and this time had the bottom vent open so the coals could get hotter. 

While I was grilling and sipping wine, Cecilia was decanting all the jars of banchan into bowls and setting the table. Dawn had said her grandmother bought these plates at a garage sale, saying their decoration looked to her just like their family cabin.

Bean sprouts--Cecilia's favorite--and homemade spicy kimchi, which surprised me with its fermented taste. Can't believe I made kimchi.

Cecilia said the white kimchi from Jagalchi paled in comparison to my spicy homemade red kimchi. I also cooked her least favorite vegetable, bok choi as a banchan, but at least Dawn liked it.

The Japanese eggplant banchan needed to have been steamed longer and could be more sauced, but I was in a hurry. And thankfully, Dawn took on japchae duty, which was my favorite.

And once again, Costco's bulgogi knocks it out of the park.

Why marinade rib eye beef on your own when the prepared versions at Costco are so delicious?

The next morning we cleaned and closed the cabin and loaded the dogs into the car. Olivia looked cozy.

I managed to coax Effie out from under the bed and out the door with homemade turkey treats while Licorice looked happy as can be in the front seat.

I hope I wasn't too annoying and that Dawn invites us again because I'd really like to enter the state park at its opposite entrance, which is only a mile away from Dawn's cabin and has a 2.5 loop to view even taller sequoia trees in the less visited South Grove.

camp: mountain cabin getaway

Past the age of 55, I no longer wish to back country or even car camp. A tent is just too darn untenable when you're a senior citizen even if I don't need a hair dryer or cosmetics at my age. I now need appliances like CPAP, and sunblock is the only thing I apply on my face. Whereas on a honeymoon car camping trip in the Pacific Northwest at the age of 20, I brought tent and stove and a cooler full of hamburger patties and hot dogs and ate godawful unhealthy meals, I'm driving only a few hours or less from home here in God's country of California and shopping my membership warehouse and local markets for foodie fixes of gourmet goodies and farm-to-table produce. 

No car camping or pitching a tent, but driving to the deep East Bay of tech towns like Livermore, San Ramon and Tracy and then a stretch of Highway 5 through Stockton and east on Highway 4 through Copperopolis, the entry point into Calaveras County and then Angels Camp and Murphys and upward. On this past weekend, I went away with a couple neighbors and their dogs, one of whom has a family cabin in Arnold, a town in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, where Dawn assured us there's a grill on the deck.

The ladies were amenable to weekend meals of Korean bbq, Vietnamese street food, and an American diner lunch. As ever, I made lists...and brought bulgogi and japchae from Costco, homemade kimchi, white kimchi, and many types of banchan: cucumber, bean sprouts, Japanese eggplant that I made the morning before the trip.        

I also remembered to pack the gochuchang for said Korean feast as well as hoisin sauce, Kewpie mayo, French pate in a can, my new copper grilling grate, a Ziploc bag of marinated lemongrass pork shoulder, a jar of do chua or pickled daikon and carrots, a cucumber, jalapenos, green onions because I was also making banh mi sandwiches for supper on our first night. For the road, I used the rest of the Pickle butter, ham, and Trader Joe's baguette to make sandwiches. And I also packed ground beef, cheddar cheese, a pack of brioche buns, a jar of my Pickled Jalapenos, red onion, and spring greens for a lunch before we left.

Here was the view from the cabin's deck.

Our first meal was to utilize the French baguettes that Cecilia had baked into Vietnamese sandwiches, and I was excited to use my brand new copper grill grate that I had bought from Jagalchi. I sipped a beer as I readied the charcoal grill and watched the sunset through the trees.                               

My new grill worked great. No turning over little pieces of meat and making my hands sore from squeezing tongs. I gifted a large vase, a bud vase, and cocktail/coffee cups to Dawn and Cecilia, which she filled with flowering deer brush.

The next morning, Cecilia and Dawn got up early and walked the dogs up the mountain. I tried to sleep in but instead read before a breakfast of hash browns, English muffins, country sausage, bacon and eggs before heading into town for Dawn to buy handmade soap from a local at the post office while Cecilia and I were excited to window shop at the Ace Hardware--that store is the best for buying souvenirs. I found cool t-shirts for me and Patrick, admired the Lodge cast iron cookware and this cute mug.                      

It's made in China, but still cute enough that I wanna copy it. 

I was excited that the cabin is so close to giant sequoias. Dawn drove us to do some forest bathing in the North Grove of the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Cecilia had brought her dog, Olivia, who unfortunately couldn't go on to the main trail and so she took in the forest from the fire lane and walked the campgrounds.            

 

For scale, I took a long shot of a fallen tree and stump.

And took the stairs myself to stand atop the tree stump and just look up.

 

Others obviously did the same.

And this fallen tree while stunningly pretty was so sad to me.

I told Dawn that I like to imagine much of this old growth forest just covering the state of California, pumping all of its oxygen into the world.