Scale!

Have been looking online for weeks for a kitchen scale.  Just happened to find one at target today while in Raleigh.  Am so excited about this!  Here's hoping it's a good match for a clay studio.  And, it was only $20!  

Slowly, and ever so slowly, my studio is being created.  

Good things take time, I tell myself. 

Peace-filled

I love peaceful weekends!  Especially those filled with pottery.  While it continues to be a long road back to the wheel, it's encouraging.  (it's been 6 mos. away)  I've found that things take longer- throwing-- trimming, etc. yet I know that in time, I'll get back in the rhythm.  It helped to spend time with two new pottery friends this afternoon and just be in that world.  :)  Talking pottery, sharing about things we've discovered, etc...  Am ending the day with a meal of grilled salmon, rice, and corn from my parents' garden.  See the steam in the pic?  It was simply delicious.  Oh, and this plate is one of the first I made.  Shino glaze on craggy crunch clay with alfred blue accents, fired at cone 10, reduction.  I love eating off of pottery.  Doesn't get much better than this!

Bought a few pottery tool things at Lowe's.  Still need a kitchen scale.  Got a triple beam one that arrived this week- only $110.  :)

Here are my first trimmed yunomi of 2012.  It helped to have a Jennifer Mecca mug and a Kyle Carpenter mug in the background, both cheering me on.  And now one of my alma maters- Kentucky is playing.  I'm wearing KY blue now, of course.  Gosh, how I miss being at those games in person.  Those were the days.
Still, I love this!   I so needed this weekend to be peaceful.
Thankful for the gift it is to make pottery.  May the peaceful days continue...

Shelves

Okay, so I'm trying to decide about shelving.  This particular kind has been suggested.  Potter friends, which of these Alera shelves from Sam's Club with wheels at the bottom do you recommend?  The first one with the wheels is on sale.

Dreams

It's been a long week and well, it's been a long month.  And I haven't been at the wheel.  Spent a week in Costa Rica and have been working more than ever as long as I can remember.  This priest work is so exhausting sometimes.
Life is too short for such.  Yet I'm thankful for work.
One of the losses is not taking the time to be at the wheel.  It's good that I'm still dreaming about a lot of things.
Too many to write here.
I can say that I will be at the wheel tomorrow.  :)
And these pieces and reading your blog posts invite me to keep at this pottery thing (which I love), and find a way somehow to make time for it.
And, as I said, life is too short not to.
Lately, I've been thinking about dreams.  On the jar above (cone 10, phoenix clay, reduction) is the quote by Langston Hughes:  "Hold fast to dreams for life without dreams is like a bird with a broken wing that cannot fly."  It's one of my favorite pieces.  It's never going anywhere and neither are the other two pictured in this post.

 Here's another dream piece.  It has words from a song written and recorded by Peter Mayer (lead guitarist for Jimmy Buffett).  It's cone 6, and some Highwater earthen red clay.  I love its words.  His music is the best.

I plan to spend a good amount of time this weekend reading "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes" by Hesselberth and Roy (in dark in the back of the pic).  It is awaiting attention from me.  Just finished a delicious mushroom tofu soup--- with some noodles, soy sauce, and onions in of course, a Ron Philbeck bowl.  How I love eating out of handmade pottery!  I can't ever go back.
Hopeful about so much!  Still dreaming....
And thanks for reading, by the way...