MIA – one mud bowl

Went to the kiln to be bisqued, even though it’s slightly tilted. The suspicion is that I pull on the left even though I’m on a right-handed wheel.

Or I’m very, very inexperienced. Both are true.

But it’s MIA since last week, and I’m eager to find it and put glaze on it. Maybe wenshu blue, or something else. More photos once I’ve found evidence of more mud pies that look like they’ll make it. Very little to read except mud pie, and a picture which looks quite drab. For real reading pleasure, may I suggest:

Cornflower Books has a lovely discussion of a Dorothy L. Sayers classic (yes, I’m re-reading as fast as I can so I can comment. It’s one of my favorite books).

Edited to add: found the bowl after the last firing. Now I have to wait until the Easter season is over to get a chance to work on it.

Brick reflections

Life continuously seems stuck between the old and the new. New glass in an old rehabbed building reflects the old weathered red brick of an even older building. We live, we learn, we constantly rebuild our lives. Even sinkholes let us rebuild. I could take a ring road around the city, but I’d only be stuck in traffic, missing the morning light as it warms the bricks and makes the windows dazzle. (This picture was taken last year on March 17th, on an earlier St. Patrick’s Day).

So, today I made… more mud pies

Today I managed to have 2 pots “blow out” on the wheel, and got a third gingerly off the wheel intact. We’ll see if it is too stressed from water to actually cohere. I am hoping to get some time during the week to go back to the studio and do some experimenting.
I guess the color in this day’s post is “mud”.
The Rainbow-shot (sort of like a moonshot over the week) was inspired by Lolly’s Project Spectrum. I’m not sure if she’s still doing the project on Ravelry, but there’s also a Flickr group that gets updated with peoples’ photos.  Thanks, Lolly, for inspiring me to find a corner of my porch that works almost like a lightbox in the early morning.
You might wonder why I didn’t do ROYGBIV. It’s all the fault of Captain Noah and his ark (thank you regional kid’s television).  Now I’m trying to figure out if I want to do another week long project.

Red

I’ve been thinking about “red” and looking at my bookcases, and in my dresser to see if I have anything (beyond lipstick) that would work for the red theme. I’ll be shooting most of my pictures (that aren’t outdoors) on a small side table that’s seen a lot of wear, because it’s a neutral surface that gets light.

In the meantime, here’s a link to my red collection on flickr. Enjoy!

Wishing you the bluest sky

I’ve been traveling lately. And sometimes, the clamber is worth the view. The picture on the right was taken (I think) at Burnt Head, on Monhegan Island, Maine. One can quite see why the artists clamber around on cliff sides with their easels strapped to their backs.

Lovely calls of gulls as they wheeled overhead, cedar waxwings back in the bits of forest, etc. The Gardener and I took it slowly, mercifully meeting only one or two people going down when we were climbing up the paths through the underbrush. No sprained ankles, luckily.

In keeping with the “blue” theme of Project Spectrum and July, we spent one evening relaxing while looking at the water on the left, sipping on Bombay Sapphire gin and tonics. It was a wonderful way to unwind.

I’ll probably limit most of the vacation photos to Flickr, since mostly they’re pictures of sky, water, surf, and oceangoing vessels. Possibly not all that interesting to my readers. However, I did visit Tess’s Designer Yarns in Portland and Halcyon Yarn in Bath, Maine, so there will be photos of yarn for the knitters in the future.

 

The princess, ready for her closeup

The princess, ready for her closeup, a photo by rjknits on Flickr.

My supervisor has settled in to her daily task of making sure I type in my office.

Taking over the view

OK, this is sort of a silly photo shot, but I was wondering if I would be able to catch my shadow on a the window during a sunset. Not only did I do so, but I also caught the reflection of my camera. I was 40+ feet up in a hotel, looking out a plate glass window over Dallas… and well, it’s sort of startling.

One shadow menaces the Comerica skyscraper across the way, while an even larger hand with a camera is reflected off to the right. It isn’t good photography, but it would make a marvellous scene from a sci-fi story. Debbie only Did Dallas… she didn’t menace it with gigantic shadows.

Latest news from people who don’t have to get up early in the A.M.: so far the Phillies are doing better this game (10:42 PM on a Monday evening). Go Phils!

 

Lobster spotting

Here’s a lobster in an unusual location — right outside Baltimore’s Penn station.

No, not the one in NYC. And sometimes people refer to all the stations on the Pennsylvania line as being Pennsylvania station, so I’m always in a perpetual state of confusion about which station is which. (NYC or Philadelphia or Baltimore or Wilmington, Delaware or even D.C.)

Seen during ArtScape. This was one of the art cars. Hopefully this red lobster (who was animated enough to drive over, even though it’s evidently been cooked) will head off to Massachusetts, where it will fit in better than in the blue crab state.

The fiberglass claw on the door was a great touch.

In memoriam

Happy Memorial Day. Say thanks to a Vet, find a ceremony to attend if you can, or spend 15 minutes thinking of those who went through unbelievable hardships and died to keep the USA free and honest.

Sheep and the Stalkarazzi

“Mom, what’s that woman doing in that car with a camera?”

“Duck down. Maybe she won’t know we’re here.” Sheep continue munching. A lamb pipes up, “I think she Kinneared us!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. we’re safe behind all this grass….”

(Yes, the Stalkarazzi did manage to get candids of the sheep that thought they could safely graze. It’s sad what a knitter with a zoom lens will attempt on a long trip home from work. And, of course, the sheep are there, just rather hard to see. Trust me — there are even little tiny lambs back there. Earlier in the year when both grass and sheep were younger and shorter, you could see the lambs nursing then running around like little woolen crazy things on springs.)

I’ve also done some drive-by kinnearing of Black Angus livestock in a field. My only excuse is the commute is deadly dull sometimes.