Politics that make me want to puke

I'm getting ready to glaze. Everything that has texture on it is stained. I usually use mainly RIO to stain, but this mix has some other stuff in it, and so will probably be a little more on the black side. Could be nice. I have lost three of my platters from cracking. Really frustrating because of the time involved in them. Fortunately two I discovered before bisque, and so can reuse the clay, this one cracked during bisque. I really like the platter, so I am going to glaze it anyway and use it for myself. I refuse to sell items with s-cracks, so it's really disappointing when this happens.

So I'm really pissed and disgusted with the McCain campaign. I try to keep my political opinions to myself to keep my blog pretty neutral, but things are just going too far. You know, I don't think the Republican party in itself is evil. I personally hold a lot of opinions that could be deemed Republican. I'm a huge believer in personal responsibility. This bailout makes me sick. It also really annoys me that homeowners who made very bad financial decisions and are now paying the price for their bad decisions with huge mortgages and foreclosures, might be bailed out by the government (although if you are waiting for that, I wouldn't hold my breath because if the government had any intention of doing so, I feel they would have included it in the bailout bill). We own a home, we are struggling, but because we stayed within our means and so are barely getting by, there will be no bailout for us. I am already considering suing someone if/when I find that the government begins forcing banks to refinance peoples loans at lower interest rates. I don't see why our being responsible and exercising common sense should not entitle us to the same treatment. I'm sick of listening to the irresponsible cry foul.

I usually vote Democratic, but am not opposed to voting Republican. I voted Republican for George Bush's first term. It didn't take long for me to realize I had made a huge mistake and was desperate to get him out before his second term. So, that's all sad, bloody water under the bridge now. I vote Democrat, even though I hate in many ways, the groups and entitlement mentality that this often aligns me with. But I can't stomach the idea of aligning myself with the narrow minded, religious fanatics, corrupt wealthy CEO's and racists.

If you've been paying attention at all to this campaign it should be clear that McCain is sort of disgusted by Obama. I don't know of any personal history that should justify his distaste. It is very clear to me however, by his language, demeanor and behavior toward Obama. One can only guess what that distaste might arrise from. Anyone who refers to someone, a human being, as "that one" has shown a disregard for that person as a human being. It is not very far off from refering to him as "you boy". That? Are you kidding? What does he think he's doing, shopping for a sofa? Yes, I'll take that one.

You all probably know this, but two days ago, at a rally where Palin was using her prowess and wit to excite her political base, someone shouted out, in reference to Obama: to kill him. Imagine that. Kill him! Kill him! Nice huh? At the same rally, one of the nice, God-loving, attendees told a black cameraman to "sit down boy" and called him a racial name. No one is saying the name out loud of course, and since I only know one I'll have to guess that it was nigger. So someone calls a black cameraman a nigger, and tells him to "sit down boy". Maybe he should have said, sit down "that one", and maybe it wouldn't have made such big news (although there is still that n-word hanging out there). You know, it could be argued that these comments were not heard by Palin at the rally, but unless they spent the next 24 hours with their heads crammed into eachothers asses, then they should know about them now, and should have made a public apology for them, making it very clear that they did and do not condone them. I hope we still might see that, my guess is that we will not.

Afternote: I heard the next day that McCain has condemned some negative comments that have been made, but I heard it as third hand news so know no specific details of what he said. Just thought I should update my post with that.

Production, pea and me

Judy Shreeve asked a question in her post about how we work, and I had said that I don't consider myself a production potter. I was thinking this morning though, how true or accurate that is. These photos are the last two days throwing. About two dozen mugs, eight pie plates and about ten dip dishes started. Don't forget the sixteen or so square casseroles and five bird feeders I just finished. I work like this all the time. You might notice that not only are there multiples of everything, but they are very similar to each other. So what does that mean? Am I a production potter?



I guess I don't think of myself that way because 1. I don't want to, and 2. My goal is not for the pieces to be identical. The only thing they have in common with eachother is a similar form and the weight of each piece, but the heights vary somewhat, as do the diameters of their openings. And I want them that way. I guess I think of production as precise and mechanical. Without a lot of flexibility. I'm not going to write too much more about this now, mostly because I have to get working, but it's something to think about. If anyone has any ideas on the subject it would be interesting to hear them.


So, on a more personal note, I found a great Pea jacket at the thrift store yesterday for 25$. It's in great shape and fits perfectomundo. It is navy blue. Not to be confused with my shorter, pleated in the back, girly-style, black Pea jacket you see below. I love these coats I think because they are as at home over something kind of dressed up as they are over jeans and a t-shirt. The funny thing about this though, and the reason I am posting about it, is that I found this jacket just a couple of days after I read this post from a blog (avert your eyes if you are easily offended) called "Stuff White People Like". An entire post could probably be written about the site and whether it is offensive or whatever, but I just think it's pretty funny, and strangely accurate about, well, white people. At least those living in New England.

I'm cold.

teeny-tiny jar

A mind numbing, finger cramp inducing, shiver producing cold that has sunk deep into my bones. I have been cold for days and my only respite is late at night, pressed against Adam under the covers. I jumped in the shower this morning; my sole intent being raising my body temperature. After a moment I remembered that I had hot tub in my back yard and so climbed out of the shower and into the 102 degree water which I raised to 103. It's a strange feeling, soaking in hot water, shivering inside. After 15 minutes I finally felt warm again.

It's five o'clock now. I'm sitting on a heating pad, eating a bowl of black bean soup, not because I'm hungry, but because it's hot (although I seldom need the excuse of hunger to eat) and drinking another cup of tea. I am determined not to turn the furnace on yet. We pre-bought 650 gallons of propane, although I told Adam I thought we should buy 750. If I turn the heat on now, we will never make it through the winter and will likely have to buy more when the price is at it's yearly peak.

Sadly, to try and cope with what has become a frightening heating bill in the winter, we have decided to shut down the master bedroom, which has it's own bath and move into the guest room. We plan to put a damper in the ductwork to stop the heat from heading to that part of the house. Our house is not large, and this will effectively remove about 1/3 of our living space. It is however, an enormous heat drain, being the coldest room in the house on any day. I am assuming they used paper towels-of the single ply variety-to insulate the walls.

And so it is time to get the crock pot out again. For anyone who missed this post the last time, Adam once had the brilliant idea of using a crockpot for my water bucket and it really helps. So will this heating pad under my butt which is coming downstairs with me now.

Peter and pans

Here is one of the bird feeders I am working on. I put some holes in the bottom as well for drainage just in case.

The top is made of three pieces, which I intend to glaze differently from each other.

Here's my mixer/pugger. It looked so nice like this I hated to get it dirty. I wish you could see this in person. I am so impressed with the quality of this thing. Every part on it is obviously chosen because it was the best they could find. There is absolutely nothing cheap or half-assed about it. Seriously, this great. I feel really lucky and grateful that it is mine.

I was able to take my scraps; some slop, leatherhard stuff and bone dry stuff, and turn it into this:


It took me just a couple of batches to get the hang of using it. I'm not sure how much I did yesterday. I'm guessing a few hundred pounds. I've been saving the plastic bags from purchased clay which worked well for storing the clay.

This last picture is for Tom Grey. He had put a post up about using cast iron pans and I told him I would put up a photo of a couple of my favorite cast iron pans. Cast iron is great. As good or better than non-stick once you get a good season on it. If you are into blackened food at all it's a must. The pan in the back on left is actually not cast iron, but it is also one of my favorite pans. It is a pressure cooker and I use it all the time for rice, soups, spaggetti sauce and most importantly dry beans. After soaking beans overnight, It takes 12 minutes to cook black beans for example and around the same time even for chickpeas. Anyone who has ever tried to cook chickpeas from scratch know that it is almost impossible to get them tender and takes HOURS.
It quite literally will cook a soup or pasta sauce in minutes, and cook it as though it has been cooking all day.

Peter's here!

It's here!!! I am so excited. My Peter Pugger has arrived! And look . . . it's all dressed up! I thought the folks at Peter Pugger were so sweet to put a bow on it for me, but then I talked to my father and found out he had asked them to. . . which is even sweeter.

So now this bad boy, dressed up in drag is out in my driveway. At 250 lbs. he's a little too hefty to drag in here myself. It's raining, and I hear thunder far away. Poor little guy, out there all alone.

My "new" wedging table

So I have this sorry looking little wedging table. It's not very big, but it's main problem is it's ugliness. I've been wanting to revamp it for a while and since while I had been feeling sick I was not feeling creative in the pot making area, I thought I would give it a go. It originally had a canvas covered, plywood top. This annoyed me because once the canvas stretched out over time, it would bunch up while I was wedging. I've taken the top off and restretched more than once. Enough is enough!


So I decided to turn it into a plaster topped table since I already had the plaster on hand. I took the top off, cut it to fit into the frame, lowered the legs and dropped the top in. I had intended on making the depth about 1 1/2" so the table wasn't too heavy to move around, but forgot to take into account the depth of the plywood, so it's really only about 1" deep. I figure as long as I don't clog dance on it, it should be fine.

I had some paint kicking around and so I didn't even need to spend any money there. The dark paint is left over from my son's room when he was still living at home. It was so bright and cheery in there. I couldn't resist the next little touch.

I hand lettered the logo, with paint leftover from the trim in our house, and I have to say it looks really awesome. I keep laughing when I look at it. We had a Brent slabroller in college, and it was a great piece of equipment. Now I have my own little piece of Brent!

Here's some mugs in the front and some bird feeders towards the back. Tomorrow my pugmill should arrive! I am so excited! I probably won't be able to get it into the house until Adam gets home, so I will spend the following day learning how to use it and recycling my clay! Peter and Brent will be so happy together.

Apple picking

I just thought I'd put up a quick little note. I'm not really sick anymore-still feeling a little light-headed though. We spent the day at the fair yesterday with my grandson eating french fries, gyros and ice cream. Petting the sheep and such. It was drizzling out most of the day but really didn't start raining until we were leaving. I was hoping to get into my studio today, but we won't be dropping the little guy off until 2:30, so probably not much will be done in there. We're going to stop on the way and do a little apple picking. Hopefully I will have some photos of a new batch of work soon. I'm still waiting to hear about approval of my second shipment of work to the league. Well, I'm just sitting here trying to think of things to say, so I guess there's not much worth writing about today so I will end for now.

Monkeys would use math if they could

Ben Stark asked me the other day about making the bat pin holes in the bats I made, so I thought I would show you super fast what I did. I think the entire process is easier if you start out with plywood that you have ripped into squares. Using a long straight edge, mark the center of the board.


Then, and this is important, measure out from the center the distance of your batpin holes. Measure the distance of your batpins on center. Not to point out the obvious to those who know what that means, but to those who don't, on center means from the center of the spot (in this case the bat pin) to the center of the other spot (the other bat pin). Now transfer that measurement to the wood. In my case, my bat pin holes are 10" apart on center, so I just lined the ruler up with the five inch point, and measured out five inches from there. You can see where I put my little x's.


I took a lot more photos, but then decided to skip the demos of obvious things. One photo I should have kept maybe was that I then took a compass and holding the pointy edge in the middle of my large center X, drew a nice circle inside of the square.One little tip. I found that occasionally the drill liked to drift a little when drilling the hole, so once I had one hole drilled I fitted it onto the bat head and with a hammer tapped down to mark where the other one would end up, just to make sure I hadn't drifted too much and so I could adjust the drill point if neccessary. You might ask: why not just take the circle and put it on bat head and mark the holes that way to begin with? I would answer because we are not monkeys, that's why. We can use tools and math and resort to monkey-like behavior as a last resort.

So, it's about 2:00 now. I now realize that I am not just over-tired from not sleeping, I am sick. So, I spent the morning cutting the bats and cleaning up a considerable mess (should have done it outside). My last goal of the day is to attach the bottoms to my new batch of square casseroles, put them under plastic and call it a day. I will attach the handles tomorrow. I am like a walking zombie right now. You might ask if it was safe for me to be using power tools given , my mental lethargy, and I would answer that if I can manage to seriously hurt myself with a jigsaw, then that is natural selection at it's finest.