I'll have a slow Christmas, plates by the dozen and finally finishing this post...

I'm not sure this guy has real vocal cords.  He may have had them removed in favor of a small speaker attached to a synthesizer in his brain.  That, however, is just a guess.  Check out some of his work (here) for a dose of aural delight.

Now there are other people out there who can do this, and maybe just as well, but I have never heard of them, so today you get Kenny Muhammad.

Editors Note:  This post was actually written last week (or two weeks ago maybe?), but I never got around to posting it.  Everything still applies...not that it makes it any more interesting or exciting.  Oh well.  Enjoy if you dare!

As far as studio news goes...not really a lot to report.  I have not been extremely busy lately.  Last week I was tied up with Thanksgiving related activities most of the week.  Now I have a freezer full of frozen pig!  Sorry to those folks who are not big on producing their own food or are put off by meat production.  I have nothing against you but, yeah for butchering!

This week I am working on getting stuff decorated for a final firing before Christmas.  I have a number of special orders that need to go out for the holiday.  That being said, I am not super busy like I am sure a lot of other people are.  I have not had a show in a little while so...out of sight out of mind which means fewer orders.  I wish it weren't so, but...oh well.

Actually I did have a show just this past weekend, but it was not a typical "set up your booth and hock your wares" kind of show.  It was a department store style show, so all I had to do was drop off my inventory and work a shift over the weekend.  Good in that I was not tied up all weekend.  Bad in that my work was intermingled with other work and I was not there to talk it up or anything.  Financially it was not a rousing success, but I may give it another shot next year to see how it shakes out.

It is terribly confusing and frustrating.  I usually get a very positive response to my work, whether it be at a show, online or wherever.  It seldom translates into much of anything in sales though.  I guess there cold be a few explanations for this.  A: My prices are just to high...but I have seen other folks' prices and I do not think that is the case.

This just in...I just, as I was typing, received notification that I got the bid on a large order I was shooting for.  Sweet!  This will hopefully go a long way to financing a new studio.

Random vase

Ok, everything up until this point was written a while back and I really don't remember what I was saying or where I was  going with it, so...new content!

I got a big order for plates that will be used as awards early next year.  This means that over the next couple months I will be makes hundred, no thousands, no dozens of plates!  Time to go into mass production mode.  Thankfully this will be made easier by the plaster bats that I made a while back.  And really it is not the throwing that will be a harrowing experience.  Rather it will be decorating dozens of plates with the same design.  That is not how I usually work, so it will be an interesting experience.

Air Whales!

I almost, almost got a new studio this past week.  A local company was having a sale on portable storage barns and I had my eye on a 12 x 24 foot one.  After checking it out a bit though, and not wanting to make a rushed decision (it was an auction type deal), I passed on it. Instead I will be working on plans for building a new studio next spring.  More on that as the story develops. 

And since this post is stretching over a couple weeks and getting kind of long, I will wrap things up.  So long for now.

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.