Test Tile Madness!

First off, I don't feel like superwoman today.  Bummer, I know.  It's almost ten thirty in the morning and I am laying on an ice pack.  But hey, it gives me an excuse to update my blog.  No, I didn't get hurt, so to speak.  I keep forgetting that I have a tendency towards hyper mobile joints.  I have been doing a lot of stretching in the mornings to loosen up my back and my calfs. I also have been doing a lot of bike riding.  Well the stretching was working so well for a while that I think I have been over stretching without doing enough muscle strengthening exercises to compensate.  Combine that with my bicycle seat which I don't seem to be able to get the right shape, size, or comfort but I ride anyways and BAMB!  Yep, muscle spasms.

The upside?

Test Tiles!  Wait, did I say yesterday that I LOVE test tiles?  Oh yeah, but every time I make them I forget how LONG they take.  Of course, sometimes I do have a tendency to go overboard. Thank goodness I already had some color tests mixed up from about a year ago that I had never made tiles for.  So in between sessions of icing my back I kept myself pretty busy. This is Molly Hatch's vitreous engobe recipe that I got off Ceramic Arts Daily.  It is for use at cone 04-6 and I  have a bunch of different stains mixed in . I have used these to silkscreen directly onto leather hard clay and then fired to cone 04 and they looked great.  Now I will have test tiles of the engobe applied to leather hard and I will make some with the engobe applied as washes to bisque tiles.  I will fire them all in the cone 5-6 range.  

After finishing these tiles in the front I took some of the dry ones and applied terra sig which is normally used only in the low-fire range.  However, since I put it on my bowls and I decided I didn't want to sacrifice them as tests, tiles would be a good idea.  It will be interesting to see how they fire out at Cone 5-6.

And what post would be complete without out the kitty pics?  This girl is twelve years old and starting to slow down a little.  I've had her since she was three weeks old and I had to bottle feed her.  To say she is spoiled would be an understatement. She thinks the bed is hers and how can I blame her?  I spend maybe eight hours in it while she spends about twenty hours nested in blissful comfort, that is, when the light isn't too bright.  Yesterday, while I was laying on the ice, she kept kicking me with her back feet because there wasn't enough room for her to stretch out across the bed with me in her way.  Poor thing! Do you think I should upgrade to a queen or king size from the apparently tiny full size?

Having the bed right under the window does make for a perfect environment for a kitty.  All she needs to do is chill and watch the world go by.  Ah, sometimes that is a good philosophy to remind myself of from time to time.  So, peace be with you this weekend and remember to chill out. I know I certainly am, literally!

Farmer's Market with My Son!

I love this guy!  I got to spend the evening at the farmer's market tonight with my son.  It was absolutely delightful.  We headed down just about the time when the sun begins to set and the changing light  starts to make all the colors pop.  It was the perfect temperature, warm but not hot with a very light breeze.

We shared this marion berry pie with vanilla bean ice cream.  I can't remember pie ever tasting as good as this one did.  My son had a blueberry lemonade and I had a lavender lemonade. 

And somehow he talked me into giving him my favorite new tumbler (the one on the right and the only one like it that I brought home) that I made while I was at Penland.  It was when he told me how much he loved me and thanked me for being a wonderful artistic influence for him.  I just kind of melted and handed it over.  Tears in both of our eyes!

 It was a sensory kind of evening.  Ahhh....

Magic in the Park

I've been pretty busy lately.  I would like to say that I have been super, crazy busy but I don't think that I am being that efficient with my time.  Either that or I have unrealistic notions of just how much I can fit into each day.  Or it might be that I spend too much time surfing the internet.  Hmmm...   Anyway my grad school applications are coming along nicely and I have gotten the worst part of it out of the way.  I have been making work to add to my portfolio and I have been editing images so that I can update my website. Since I have been spending a lot of time in either a dark room in front of the computer or in my basement studio I decided that I absolutely HAD TO get out of the house and out from under the trees and get into some the wide open space with sunlight.  Of course I had to grab my camera just in case.

I headed up to Upper Bidwell Park which is one of my most favorite places to go.  It always holds some kind of magic for me no matter when I go.  But this time was a special treat.  I'm not sure that I have been there before when the leaves are changing.  It was absolutely gorgeous there this afternoon.  Everything had that special glow about it.  I really felt like I had entered into some kind of fantasy realm.  Everything was entrancing. I was only going for a short drive through the park but it ended being a three hour walking photo shoot.  It was very relaxing and inspiring and now I feel like I need to go back everyday, all day.  Sigh, too bad other things have to get done.  Maybe I'll bring some of these colors into my work?  I have to justify more research, you see.

Oh the enchantment of it all.  I'm kind of lazy when it comes to writing creatively although I do have my aspirations.  This makes me want to sit down and write poetry.  I love the images but they don't recreate the smells and sounds like the hawk talking or the owl hooting or the silent, delicate flight of the bats skimming over the lake.  I didn't want to leave but the sun was going down and it was getting dark and colder by the creek so I decided I would end my adventure and try to get back home and back to work.  But this is what I found when I got back to my car...  And that meant I had to stay for another hour.  Smile.

 

 Yes, a truly delightful day!