Playing Possum

We had a momma opossum coming through the yard every night for some time. She liked the cat food that got left out. I saw her one night climbing up the other side of a chain link fence. I had a flashlight and as I got close to her I could see ears and eyes peering out from inside her pouch. Then I hadn't seen momma for a couple of weeks. Two nights ago I walked out into my carport where the cat's bed is and found this little baby comfy and cozy. It was sooo cute I wanted to keep it around but we decided to relocate it out by the Sacramento river and away from our cats. I didn't want it to become the cats' new plaything.

Wildflowers and Clouds

Okay, this time I've gone way overboard with my blog posting. Well, you'll see why. It was definitely worth it. I've been incredibly busy going to school, making sculptures, playing in my garden and firing my kiln. Firing my kiln is what started all this. Or maybe it was the wind and rain that came first. I needed to fire the kiln but we had had two days of wind and rain and the kiln is outside so I need calm weather. Then Becky and I had decided we were going to go to Table Mountain on Saturday. By Friday I knew that Saturday was going to be the perfect day to fire the kiln. What's a friend supposed to do?


This is the view I came home to after being stuck inside all day at school. I knew this must be serendipitous and I knew what I had to do. Call Beck and go a day early. Of course! Besides, who could pass up these gorgeous clouds for photo opportunities. Thankfully, the spontaneous person that she is made my plans perfect. I picked her up in the late afternoon and we headed out.



This is the view that opened up before us as we headed out towards Butte College.


Oops, I missed the turn off because we were talking so much and I continued up highway 70 and we pulled into the Vista Point parking area where we were presented with this gorgeous panorama.


We headed back down the highway and finally made it to Table Mountain, hopped out of the car and Becky pointed out this rainbow behind us.


The late afternoon light was warm and perfect for showing off the gorgeous wildflowers still springing up everywhere.



Becky looked so cute sitting in the middle of this patch of flowers (trying to avoid sitting on the cow patties!)


I think maybe we took as many pictures of each other as we did of the landscape.


The shadows were lengthening...


and the cows were pretty used to people running all over the place.



The clouds started to turn pink as the sun was setting and we were racing back up the hill to the parking lot so we would have a better view of the sunset.


Out of breath, but delighted with our adventure, we snapped our last pictures.

Spring Wild Flowers

I went up to Table Mountain with my friend Jennifer yesterday. It was a beautiful day and the flowers are just gorgeous. I was impressed that Jennifer knew the names of almost all the flowers. I'm going to have to do my homework though. We walked all over the place and we hiked down a cliff to see a waterfall. We haven't had much rain so it was not very big. It was really nice at the bottom by the waterfall. There is a really nice wide grassy area with trees and shade. A perfect place for a picnic. I'd love to write more but I've got to go get ready for school.

Photoshop Fun

I spent the morning playing around with my mushroom photos in photoshop and this interesting image is what I came up with. I'm trying to come up with images for laser transfers to put on some of my sculptures. I've never done this before. I think this image might be too dark for the transfer process. I haven't played with photoshop for so long that I'm having to remember some stuff. It's coming back pretty quick so I am happy. I'll probably do some line drawings or use some images out of my sketchbooks for the transfers since I think I need something that is not so busy. I think less detail in the image is supposed to transfer better. We'll see. Wish me luck. I'm usually at church at this time but the hubby and I decided to go at 1:00 instead of 9:00am. I better go get ready.

Sculpture

Last Monday we were supposed to be done with one of our projects and were supposed to have "crits" which is basically a critique of everyone's projects by everyone else in the class and the instructor. We ended up having a last minute guest artist which was great for me because I was not ready. I wasn't really thinking about when the make-up crit would be. Towards the end of the week I decided to glaze up these pieces that were sitting in my locker. The tech loaded the kiln the very next day, lucky me. Even luckier, I found out we are having the crit in two days. I stopped by the university to see if the kiln was cool and pulled these out. I'm definately feeling good.



I love this piece! I loved it when I was making it but then I was having technical problems with the test piece. I was firing the test piece at a lower temperature and the glaze and the red cracked and popped right off the pot. My instructor suggested I put another test piece in with a high fire clear glaze and fire it at cone 10, almost 2400 degrees. This is the range that I am used to but I wasn't sure what the red underglaze would do as it is meant to be fired at about 1850 degrees. I thought I would completely lose the color. Impulsive as I am, I couldn't wait for the test and glazed it up anyways. Goody for me!

Tapioca Pudding

I made this super yummy tapioca pudding at the end of January. I'm thinking of when I'll have time to make some more. It was the first time I had ever used a fresh vanilla bean for anything. There are a lot of teeny tiny seeds in those pods. But it was delicious and worth the extra work.

Fresh From the Oven

Or rather, hot out of the kiln. I opened up the kiln this morning and this is what I found. I couldn't even remember what I had glazed up two months plus ago. It was a pretty good load and a pretty good firing. The only thing I lost were four porcelain pieces that I glazed too heavily and they ran and adhered themselves to the kiln shelf. Yeah, I might actually get excited about getting back into this. But I really need to rebuild the kiln. It's made of fiber and starting to fall apart. That is going to be a huge job. I'm not sure I want to tackle it. But at least now I have a few pots to sell at the farmer's market.