How Many Potters Does It Take To Make A Mug?

When Nancy and I began making pots together as Cold Springs Studio Pottery, the first order of business was to make mugs for our upcoming wedding. The plan was that we would make the mugs for the reception. We had washing stations so that as folks finished at the reception, they could wash their mugs, and take them with them as wedding gifts fro us.

We had a few glazes that we hoped would work at cone 6 and a kiln that wasn't happy getting that hot. While I could throw the mugs, it wasn't really a group effort... so we decided to handbuild the mugs for the wedding. Aurora was five years old and was trying to figure out her role in the studio. We decided on making soft-slab mugs with impressed/stamped decoration. Each of us designed stamps to decorate with, and chops to indicate who had made what pots. After a couple evenings of making mugs, Aurora went wild on this one, and used everyone's chops AS the decoration. From this angle you can see my AS chop, Nancy's bunny chop, and Aurora's killer whale chop. 

In addition to these handbuilt mugs, we made soupmugs and a few short thrown diner mugs. I think, for our 65 guests, we made a few more than 100 mugs. There were maybe 6 pots left after our wedding.Ten years later, there are only a few of these pots left in our collection. I think two soupmugs have survived the "pre-dishwasher" stage in our house. One of the last diner mugs from this time has a good sized chip in the lip. But this mug soldiers on.

The Birthday That Almost Wasn't

Nancy shot under strobe, 1/200, f/6.3
Details about this image will be the subject of a blog posting later in the week.

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have the most awesome partner in the world. Nancy has done the impossible this year. She stood by my bed in the ICU, knowing the pain my body was in, not knowing whether I would ever regain consciousness, not knowing if I was really even in there. And she sang to me.

So I came back from that strange place. Bringing with me all the problems of one whose body's warranty has expired. Heck, at this point, I am shocked I haven't been issued a recall on most of my organs. Still Nancy has remained steadfast and determined to keep me on this side of the universe. As she wrote about it in her blog yesterday: I wasn't supposed to see this birthday. No hoopla, no party, but boy oh boy were there a TON of facebook birthday wishes.






She asked me a few days before my birthday what I wanted for my birthday. What could I say? What I wanted at the time she asked would strike most as funny, pedantic, pedestrian even. I wanted sleep. I hadn't slept since before surgery back in September. Not more than two hours of continuous uninterrupted sleep... at all... for over six months.

That's what I wanted.

What I got was my lovely cpap machine and its concomitant hoses and headgear. For my birthday, I slept nearly six hours at a stretch. I didn't toss and turn. I didn't change position in bed at all. When I woke up I felt like no time had passed. Apparently, the exhaustion is so severe that once I zonk, I ZONK very hard.

Tonight Nancy joined me out in the studio to try out some new flash project ideas I had. Now that I can see where the light is heading I am so excited to play!

Staring Down Sunday Night

Nancy has been working on repurposing/reconstructing/recycling sweaters by felting them and turning them into other garments. This week it was berets. The knitted scarf and hat was last hockey season's efforts... which were accompanied by legwarmers too!






Aurora was kind enough to hold still a while to let me play around a little with flash last night and tonight. I need more time with my flashes to really gain more confidence. Time time time.

By The Light of The Night

Night falls and with it, energy sags. In this waning miasma Nancy and I find ourselves most every night. I have always wanted to capture the sensation of that glow coming off the computer and how it feels like your energy is being drawn from you bodily. Nancy was a willing accomplice tonight,... for her it was window shopping for shoes. For me, it was getting a chance to play with gelling lights. Too much fun for us both.

Certainly better than what we were doing an hour earlier.... wound care.

Yesterday I went back into the hospital to have those wonderful sutures (otherwise known as shark trolling line) removed from my abdominal wall. Mind you, these were buried about two inches INSIDE me. So yeah, they dug down, through blistered, abscessing wounds, found the blue plastic suture material, and pulled three feet of continuous line out of my body.

That was the good news. Tonight we found out that our local hospital can't bandage worth a damn. They used dry gauze which in a deep wound acts like velcro to fresh tissue. Hurts like a sum-bitch when time comes to yank it out. Seeing as how we have to do this daily, it is infinitely easier and healthier to have moistened gauze. Saline is your friend. These idiots basically made me blow through four massive clots tonight. NOT fun.

Now, an hour later, I can finally relax a bit. Nancy has cleaned me up, repacked my wounds, and bandaged me back up in such a way so that tomorrow night we wont be pulling out chunks of my furriness as we change dressings again. I like my fuzziness best when it stays on the skin-side of the bandage and tape!

Family Visiting for the Afternoon

Today around 2pm, we had Nancy's folks show up with her Aunts Roberta and Charmaine and her cousin Judy joining them. Fantastic fun way to spend the afternoon of a gloriously beautiful day.

We didn't get a ton of time to socialize this visit but we did get a brief walk around the garden and a short demonstration in the studio. I hope the next time we do this, we can time it with a nice long meal at Hazelnut.

Loving my wife means

loving her love of shoes.

Of all the pictures I have taken of Nancy, this is my all-time favorite. She looks like she is just gonna POP! And why? Because she is looking at the latest ad from Keen. She loves her many pairs of Keens.

Our apprentice Hannah asked a few weeks back if someone in our family worked for Crocs, New Balance or Keen. She was walking through our kitchen and saw the mountain of shoes that inhabit our kitchen floor, and those brands made up the bulk of our shoe pile. We have a lot of shoes in this household... and they are mostly Crocs, New Balance or Keen. That's not a bad thing, right?