Yogi, doodles and the nefarious air whales...

No, this is not me.  Although I am diggin'  the beard and the orange diaper.

 I have been dabbling with yoga as a means to adding some stretching to my less than regular workouts.  Nothing like this pretzel looking fellow, just simple stuff to loosen up.  I used to be pretty flexible when I was stretching for sports everyday.  Now though...well, I am not.  Perhaps it will help relieve the tension that builds up after sitting at the wheel or scratching pots for hours on end.

The garden got some much needed tending over the weekend.  Not as much as it really should have had, but perhaps enough to keep it going for a little while yet.  Noah helped out, of course.  He was quite proud of the red tomatoes he was picking. most of which he promptly ate.

See this tomato?  This tomato is going in my belly!

Between the meager harvest from my garden and the bumper crop my father-in-law has been pulling in I was able to make up ten or so pints of pasta sauce.

It is just a package of spice mix that you add to the tomatoes, but it comes out pretty good.  And at $1.50 per package I think it is a bit cheaper than store bought stuff.  And then there is always the satisfaction in knowing that (most of) it came out of your own land.

As far as the studio goes, the glaze firing last week turned out pretty good with a couple minor-ish guffaws.  I was especially happy with how the underglaze pencil experiments turned out.

They fired slightly lighter than when they were first drawn on, but not too much.  The drawings retained the vast majority of their detail, which I was not sure they would do.  I'm not super keen on the drawings on the plain white clay, but they look pretty tasty over the colored slips that I normally use.

The layering thing is pretty cool, and I can get more information on each piece to tell more of a story and such.  I plan on utilizing this a lot more in the next few loads.  Eventually I would like to add even more layers of information with decals and perhaps lusters.

The only real let down in the kiln also happened to be a special order that is over due.

This is not the piece in question, however it was decorated with the same slip.  What was supposed to be a deep red/maroon turned out as a very pale pink.  Not exactly what I had in mind.

The new blue slip I used this time around turned out much better than the red.  It is a bit brighter than the old one, but it works well.

This is a skunk...because I like skunks.

A cartoon owl on a starry night...

Here is another piece that I have been working on for a while now that will hopefully work out better.

Air whales...

...the scourge of the seven skies.

I started with the carvings of the clouds and zeppelins, but then got stuck.  I knew it needed something else and I wanted to use whales, but I wasn't real sure how to get them on there.  When I got the underglaze pencil I took another crack at it.  I like the direction it is going, but I am not sure it is completely there yet.

I guess that is all for now.  Up next...how not to burn yourself while putting a pizza in the oven.  Wait, scratch that.  I was unsuccessful in that endeavor.

Up next...the planet Clarion.