Mothra vs. George

Mothra

Me n' George out on the lake again

Today was pretty sweet. Started the morning off finding this wild white moth hiding on the doorframe into the house. Didn't move an inch all day, despite all three of us banging through the storm door over and over.

After taking care of morning chores, handling the morning's footed mugs, and decorating yesterday's batch of footed mugs, Aurora and I went out for a little kayaking adventure on the lake. Wonderfully glassy smooth water. Just amazing this year. We made it out about 40 minutes or so, not terribly far, then this wild chilly wind came off the hills. The water started to hump up and get little goosebumps on the waves. Pretty wild! So, we took the hint and started heading back. Made it to shore, loaded up and even made it home with time to get the boats off before the rain hit. What a deluge! Rained for about an hour, with 10 min of that time being such a hard rain we couldnt see across the driveway! Hopefully tomorrow will be a little sunnier and we'll be able to get the boats into the water again. It is such a great excuse to get out of the studio and out onto the water!

Getting Wet

At last, GEORGE and I got wet! After all the waiting, today was the perfect day to hit the lake. Suffice to say, the pictures cant convey the awesome-ness of the day. Just amazing. The water was so glassy smooth near shore that you could see down about 20 ft or so. After venturing farther afield I found that the north end of the park's jetty was harbouring the bigger waves. As good a time as any to see how the boat would behave... and so I went. It was very interesting. More on that another time. For now, let's just say, it was an excellent day. Sun and fun.

Oh, and we unloaded a fantastic firing this morning. Great pots. Most are getting packed up and shipped out tomorrow. Guess that means I need to make more for US.

Downtime is such a downer

Been off my feet now for over a week. Just after my last posting I had my third bout with diverticulitis. It was the worst attack I have ever had. Well... after a week and a half of major antibiotics, I am on the road to recovery. I have to give credit where credit is due though. Without Nancy and Aurora I wouldn't have been able to cope. Our neighbors and friends all came to our aid. Many thanks to Mary Ellen Salmon and her hubby Joe, Ken Bedell, and Robert Lodinsky. Makes me mighty proud to have such good friends!

It is always staggering to me how burdensome being sick seems to be. I was behind in production BEFORE I got sick, but now I feel like there is a mountain of work waiting to be dealt with.

Ahh, but at least there is work, right?

Ran some tests on our Sunset glaze this week. We have been having the most unusual problem with our most stable glaze. Sunset has been our ROCK for the past 8 years. All of sudden it has FREAKED out. Looks like a bad sunburn complete with blisters and crawling and other nastiness. Mind you, this isnt happening in a 5 gal bucket or a 1000g test batch....nope, this is going on in our production volume 20gal bucket. And of course we have 4 orders waiting for sunset. A Perfect Storm eh?

So, after ruminating on this for over 3 months now, and trying to wrap my brain around the causes, everything keeps coming back to the stain which seems so improbable. We went through and remade the glaze, 2x now, with new stain, new raw materials for the rest of the glaze ... and each test was the same result. BAD Sunset. Yesterday's test was interesting though.... I figured that Mason may have changed the chemistry of the stain, increasing the zirconia in the mix, then it would reason they have decreased the cadmium/selenium encapsulated by the Zr. How to test this idea.... I figured the first need was to get the glaze back to being smooth and silky, so thickness in application was my first goal. Nailed that. Then started adding MORE stain to see if I could recapture the depth of color and hopefully overcome the apparent lack of Cd/Se. The tests came out this morning early... and lo and behold... by increasing the stain from 9% to 14% we can get pretty close to our original color and the smooth satin quality seems to be back. At this point, my standing questions to Mason are yet unanswered. Hopefully I will finally hear back from them this week! Next step; a 5gal test batch and application on REAL pots!!

Here's hoping for salvation of Sunset.

Saturday and here come the crowds

Starting at about 10am, we started seeing the beginnings of our Spring tourists coming to the shop. I think there is a collective sigh of relief to know that we are still drawing customers in light of the economic dire straights the media hypes so heavily. Mind you, I dont disagree about the economic straights that we are in... but I think the media has definitely created a level of panic that wasnt there and maybe shouldnt be there. From our end, I have seen, both at Wine Trail events and Chamber of Commerce events, this general sense of malaise and resignation. I think this is a self fulfilling promise. Nancy and I used to say, when we first began, Business Is Always Good. Say it often enough, and it starts to seem that is the reality.

In effort to play into the media hype about these wonderful rebate checks coming from King George, we have christened our new Kayak, George. Here's a quick pick.

Taking Carrie's Platter to Cornell's Johnson Museum

Carrie's Purple Platter

Detail of 122198J-Carrie's Purple Platter

Nancy and I have been invited to show some of the platters I made when I was in grad school at Utah State. It has been nearly 9 years since these were last shown publicly. My hope is that they will find a good reception in this community.

To that end, today I took Carrie Crane's Purple Twister Platter to be photographed by Cornell's Johnson Museum staff. I am excited to see how their image differs from the one I made here. This is actually a composite image. It was shot outdoors, on a telephone pole, at 11am, bright sun, and then superimposed onto the background of a platter which had been shot indoors last year. God Bless Photoshop.

Fun things!

Ending April with a Chill

After the past few weeks being unseasonably warm, even HOT... these past two days have been downright chilly. Nice to be back to what the weather SHOULD be for April. It finally rained and then it all cooled off.

Today was one of those days where my morning was supposed to be filled with glazing. But when I got outside, felt the sharp snap in the air, I just couldnt do it. The very idea of being in the studio, no view of the outside, no windows open, just didnt sit well. So I decided to spend my morning shooting flowers and stuff around the yard. Just playing with the camera. Trying to get more familiar with it. I think today I had some minor breakthroughs. Your thoughts?





I dont know if anyone else feels as strongly and as personally as I do about their cherry trees, but this cherry tree (1 of 3) means the world to me. We have nursed it along for 4 years now. Transplanted it from a wet area in the yard to this sunny drier area. Last year it finally produced fruit only to have them all eaten by the birds. This year we have a PLAN. Right now I am just enjoying the show of the whole tree being covered in blossoms.

Aurora and I found a black cherry tree last summer at Lowes. As much as I hate buying things like trees from big box stores, the price was within her allowance. She has had her heart set on growing our own BLACK cherries. I tried explaining that they arent really grown here for a reason. Needless to say, that sort of reasoning just didnt make one bit of difference in her opinion. So we planted this black cherry and so far it is really doing well. It was damaged by serious deer nibbling... but I think this summer if it can put on enough new growth, we will probably see flowering and fruit next summer. That's the hope at least.

Learning, Leaning and Laughing

Aurora has finally learned to ride her bike. She wanted to make sure that the record was set straight on this matter. She has announced that she is determined to learn to ride well enough to be able to bike the 3.4 miles each way to school..... soon....... soon. There you have it.
Pictures were taken at Taughannock State Park. Talk about a perfect day; cool breeze, bright sunshine, waves crashing on the shore....nice.

Warmest Days of April

Usually, April is full of rain, quiet days, soft ground and chilly nights. Yesterday was nearly 84F... within 1 degree of the historical record for this time of year. When folks argue about Global Warming on days when we get snow I just want to SMACK them. It is going to just get hotter and hotter and more and more unpredictable.

While I could rant all day about stupid people's opinions on global warming, instead I want to rave about how the heat has made all of our daffodils just POP. In two days we went from nothing to POW! Really made our whole yard just light up. (and yes, these pictures were shot right in our front yard!)

Spring Days

Spring is Spring-ing. Today the weather was well over 70F which was a shocker. This time last week was cold and damp. Not today! Nancy was able to take half a day off work to come home and help RE-paint the booth. Seems that after three months of painting our booth before Craft Boston had all been for naught. It was scratched everywhere. Just trashed. The new enamel paint is just crap. So, we bought quarts of all sorts of finishes, hoping we could find the perfect paint/finish for our display. After trying every clearcoat, polyurethane, spar, varnish, lacquer and stain combination... none of them were worth the effort. We ended up with wicked cheap paint from Home Depot. Nothing fancy. CHEAP matte flat paint. It isnt at all scratch resistant, but it repaints and retouches EASILY and dries almost instantly. Best of all, it doesn't stick to our pots and supports the way this previous enamel paint sure did.

So, now we are almost done repainting the ENTIRE booth...again. Two times in one year is nuts. We're also still planning to repaint everything in the gallery in the studio too. BUT we may just keep one booth white/cream for doing outdoor shows. This chocolate color REALLY gets hot. Hot enough to warp a hollowcore door in an hour apparently.

Fun stuff. In between painting the booth, trimming ice cream bowls and working on these brochures, I have been planting trees. Pictures to come!

Making Maps for Brochures

After finally getting (sort of) caught up after our Craft Boston debacle, I finally had some time to work on the brochures for some of our friends. We offered to help Cayuga Creamery and Salmon Pottery with their new brochures... but until now, that just hadnt happened. So, from Thur through today, we plugged away, edited images, designed layouts, found great fonts... and pulled it all together. Here is a look at one of the maps we designed for the back of the brochure.

Reflections on Spring

This has been a very strange week. We finally had REAL springtime weather. Some warm sunny days, some rain here and there. Not a bad week. Today was sort of bittersweet. The first of many orders came out of the kiln. Nearly all diner mugs. Two hours later, they were all packed up, boxed and ready for pick up. Couple hours later, they were off to become wedding favors for a wedding two weeks from now. Hopefully we can post some images of these mugs in action after the wedding.

We spent the earlier (sunnier) part of last week walking a lot. Finally warm enough to get out and enjoy the longer days. The image above was shot while we were hiking the lower trail at Taughannock Falls. I love this time of year when the creek runs high and the high cliff trees are starting to think about bursting out. A month from now, we'll have trees fully leafed out, dense canopy of shade below.... Spring is so different. We are still finding ice-falls and rockslides that are active on the sides of the gorge. While we were hiking we watched a few good sized slabs come tumbling down in the afternoon sun. Imagine a case of beer-sized chunk of ice shooting down the side of a cliff... that was us..... watching the ice coming right toward us!

Next week: Daffodils, and more.

The Road Home

We haven't had much cause to drive the Mass Pike in the past couple years. No vacations to Maine, no road trips to the Berkshires....not much really. Most of our time has been spent with our heads to the grindstone in the studio. Our drive home from Boston on Monday was definitely a wake up call. Winter isn't over. FOR SURE. We had been having signs of Spring earlier in the week. As soon as we reached the higher elevations on the Pike we started getting slush instead of rain. Within a few miles we came upon our first crash, accompanied by a pile of flashing blue lights. Few yards further on, MORE blue lights and another car payment tossed in the round file. Within about 2-3 miles we came across some DOT workers putting up one of those flashing signs indicating we should all slow down and get ready to stop for an accident. Hmm, I figured they meant the accidents we JUST passed. Nope. 5 miles down the road, everything was at a standstill. It would remain that way for nearly 2 hours. Every 20 min or so, some state vehicle, DOT, or Mass police vehicle would come racing up the breakdown lane to the site of the accident.

We checked the radio (AM & FM) trying to find info about how big the accident was and how long it would be delaying things. Nothing. For over an hour. Finally we heard that the Pike was closed Westbound. Closed. Hmmm. We were stuck. So we made do the best we could. Cracked out Nancy's camera and started playing with ideas and images. Mostly we tried not to dwell on how roundly we'd been whooped at Craft Boston. It was time to start looking ahead to our next shows. So, here are some images from the time spent on the MassPike.

Craft Boston

We made it home yesterday after driving through slush and rain all the way through the Berkshires and the hilly country between Albany and Binghamton. Suffice to say, I am glad to be home. The van has been unloaded, the boxes are empty and the gallery is starting to look normal again. I guess that is part of the problem. Not much work sold during the show. If we had another day of sales we would have broken even. As it is, it was a good show, a wonderful experiment and an expensive weekend in Boston.

Here's what our booth looked like. I think Nancy did a great job pulling it all together. Made us look like a million bucks.

My hope now is that the economy turns around after the elections and we're able to visit Boston again next year with different results.

Almost ready for Craft Boston

Here we are, not quite two days away from hitting the road on our way to Boston. Everything is packed up into boxes and ready to load into the van. We've never had this many pots on hand EVER. Probably 2x more pots than we have ever had... even for our holiday sales. Just TONS of pots.

Tonight we spent the bulk of the evening playing around with the layout of the new booth display. Trying all sorts of angles, rearranging this and that over and over... always in search of the perfect layout. The best part was laying the new Wondermat flooring. Foam squares that interlink. Very comfortable. I dont think I could ever do a show on carpet again! Best part: they are grey, so even dirty, they look just fine. Talk about low-maintenance.

Here are a few of the pots we're taking with us this coming week. I decided that from now on, we need to pull a few pots from each firing to save for exhibitions. From this last firing, I am pulling aside the sunset teabowl in the image from the last blog entry.

New pots pre-Craft Boston

Tangerine carved vase $100

Sunset facetted teabowl $Not For Sale

Blue carved vase $120

Here we are, a week before heading to Boston. The studio is a disaster zone and should qualify for federal relief. The booth has been completely repainted. Parts to everything are EVERYWHERE.

The good news is that we have TONS of pots ready for the show. Finally. The last two firings produced some absolutely stunning pots.

I spent the better part of last night and so far, much of today, taking new pictures of these pots. As always, comments are welcome.

More playing

The original image

Yep, when I should have been dealing with taxes today, I was instead up to my _________ in fun, playing with some new photo software. Oh what FUN!

What I am finding is that while composition, good glass, excellent lighting, etc are all crucial to getting amazing photos, the thing that has been missing from my work has been the "post-processing".... meaning the Photoshop time or any one of a hundred programs out there. The ability to adjust contrast, saturation, color correction, focus, etc....is so important to the final image.

Excursion Around the Bay

Or what do you do when the lights go out? Today was one of those days, where the ice storm that should have been keeping us home and safe and dry... instead had us out on the road, looking for someplace warm and lit. We lost power for the better part of six hours. To top it off, we lost MORE branches on our white pines due to ice build up. The yard is covered with enough branches to make 2-3 full sized trees!

For most of the evening Nancy made new earrings and I goofed around the the camera. Once the power came back on I planned on getting back to work on taxes and data-input... but I REALLY wanted to play some more with the images we shot last weekend at the Junkyard. So, here they are!! Comments encouraged.

Junkyard Excursion

We finally had some snow this year. Everyone else in the Northeast has been complaining of too much snow, but here in our little corner, we've had precious little. With the nice white stuff all around, the family was compelled yesterday to head out on a photo excursion. Everyone had their camera in tow. The first pictures I am posting today are from my camera. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some images from Aurora's camera. Nancy will probably post her images on HER blog.