MONA JUMPS THE SHARK and Superpotter strikes again

I did not know until this week that I could make a nice shark, but here goes--Mona's special order, I am sending her the extra toothy one as soon as it finishes cooling here. I am feeling most saint-like, as I ship this out today....

whopping big teapot for BR

Busy morning here, now my fingers are little blue popscicles. OK, BR, I wanted to go 2 steps bigger, and you can see the monster teapot body on the upper right. Big enough to hold a sixpack? Good for all your neighbors at once???? I better make a few more cups.

babies and kitties

(2 niche cups by GR-kitty and baby)
Dreamt I was in college and had many girlfriends to sort out and woke up exhausted and glad I am married and life is calm and good.

Tunes o' the day: The Stones!

Sure, I love the Stones, their first 20 years anyway. 'Ruby Tuesday', this clip is so schmaltzy it is ridiculous, but OH this old clip from Ed Sullivan of 'Satisfaction'...fantastic.

Potters who blog, day 2 with Cinderelish

(sweet cups by Cindy)
Cinderelish of Missouri has opened the door a little bit, and whaddya know, she has a blog and her name is Cindy. I linked her etsy shop yesterday, here's the blog so have a look!

teaset for BR, day 2

So we have the before and after, and we can imagine this nice teaset fired red and with a bamboo handle. I must say, though, this teapot does not look big enough for four big mugs of tea, but OH WELL, tough bananas. Now the trick is to sell BR two MORE teasets, despite my abusive approach to customer satisfaction.

saving Mona's bacon, chapter TWO

OK, two little shark mugs glazed and loaded into a glaze firing this am, up to temperature, about 2200 degrees, by about 9:30 tonight, cooled and in the box on its way to Mona late tomorrow afternoon. So goes the plan, fingers crossed. Their teeth are green here, so that they will fire white of course, and that bunny better watch his back.

Feb 27: one year ago today

(our old house in NH and Petey)
People who know us well, like Denis and Alan, will remember that it was time for us to move from New Hampshire last year. Aside from the new NASTY neighbors up the street and their vicious and never tied up German Shepherd, in fall of '05 my wife was laid off and the property tax inspector showed up and quadrupuled our tax rate. Just before Christmas '05 we listed the house, had several interested parties, and got an offer 5 weeks later on January 31, '06, for closing February 28. Yes, we had been in the house 10 years, having purchased it at a very good price, we sold it at the top of the real estate bubble, which burst literally the day after we closed last year. And then, famously, we moved to New York state and bought a purple house in Ithaca last spring. Lucky lucky lucky us.
Anyway, Feb. 27 was one of the longest days of our lives: up packing at 6 am, spent the rest of the day until mid-night loading Uhaul's largest truck to the very rafters, not even room for one more cup and saucer. We then closed the next day and drove to NY and dumped our belongins in my parent's garage and lived in their barn for one month, cats and dogs included. (it is a nice barn) As you can see, we had a cute little cottage in the New Hampshire woods for 10 plus years, but despite 55 bags of trash and 5 trips to Salvation Army to donate, we had a lot of stuff, HEAVY stuff, like 3 kilns, several hundred pounds of clay, 15 glaze buckets, 1000 pounds of glaze ingredients, plus, of course couch, bed, chairs, 3 dogs and 2 cats. Our little dog Petey is shown here, his last job was helping us with this move, he was almost 19, and he passed away last May, 2 months after we moved into the new house. He was my best friend.

Parallel Universe: the other Gary who is a potter and BLOGS

(fantastic dog jug by guest potter Gary Dexter)
Gary Dexter runs Old Canal Pottery in Georgia and blogs it. His style is generally quite different from mine, and he works and fires using the best technology available 200 years ago. It appears that most of his work is traditional wood fired jugs, but he messes around with face jugs and figures a bit, like the example above, and he tells about funny face jugs and their history. A pretty cool historical lesson, checking this out. He is doing this the hard way.

IGGY POP Tuesday

Tuesdays can be kinda blah, so here's a live 'Passenger' from Iggy Pop and a studio recording of 'The Passenger' that some guy added to a video clip of a bunch hollywood movies.

GUEST POTTER: CINDERELISH

(cute orange pot with bird, by Cinderelish)
So every day sitemeter tells me I have a visitor from Missouri. Who is that, my mother-in-law in Kansas City???? No. Well, through a bit of clever sleuthing on my part, I found out the visitor is Cinderelish, my aesthetic cousin in ceramic cuteness. Go to her shop and have a look at all the fine work!

that's more like it!

Thanks gord!!!!

BR gets smart

Our man br thought maybe a mug or two would be nice, then there were 3, then he made the leap to 4 mugs PLUS enormous teapot. Then you add a couple more things, and you have a big teaset for br and all his cousins and various other friends and relatives. YES, on the shelf is an awesome red teaset ready to go, BUT it is not big enough for our friend br and all his cousins. Just gives an idea where this is all headed. I think br should consider, before it is too late, a little elephant at the top of his teapot. (br, million dollar question, can you identify what is in the top picture???)

BOOT MUGS: the final chapter

OK, I proved I could make them, they are cute, so is my wife's striped boot. See if they sell, what real humans think of them, then maybe, or maybe not, make more.

SAVING MONA'S BACON

So, the secret message arrives at the Bat Cave last night, Mona is in dire straits! An emergency!!!! A shark mug is needed, by next weekend, in a town a THOUSAND MILES AWAY from the Bat Cave, could Super Potter (me) help her out?????? Well, of course. So, up before dawn, the sharks are made, MY FIRST EVER SHARKS, and into the kiln they go, wet, to be slow roasted today and glazed Tuesday, out and shipped Wednesday, arriving a 1000 miles west by Saturday. That is the plan.

people and their strange orders

People want all kinds of strange and kinky things. First its boot mugs, then its unicorns (oops, my idea) and ES out in the Rockies had a special request, which is not strange at all. I think she actually has a pet brown dog, and a pet black pig. Every time they wash their hands they can think about how wonderful those pets are.

Blondie

Was this the favorite song of my youth??? What drums! What singing! Blondie, 'Dreaming' for tunes o' the day. Don't miss it.

little bunny fufu

...I don't wanna see you, scoopin' up all the field mice and boppin' them on the head.
So goes the famous pre-school song. HEY, this yellow mug with BUNNY could be yours! Tres cute! Go to the online gallery and have a look!!!!

think Easter

The yellow bunny bowl sold Friday, but this spiffy purple one can be yours to love and fill with potato chips. So go shopping at my gallery!

Blondie

'Heart of Glass' for tunes o' the day. And yes, that is the former World Trade Center.

over the river and through the woods...

My parents live on a snowy hillside farm here in snowy upstate NY. This blog has come with me to visit them before, and I was there this morning. We have had much snowier winters, but things have been snowy enough of late. Here is your blog host GR with Abby, the parent's dog, me on the KUBOTA with monster SNOW BLOWER and scoop attachments (yeehah!) and my pops with Abby. They have the most gorgeous farm on earth, their own clean swimming and fishing pond, a river, a creek, meadow, hillsides, house, barn, woodshed and not one but TWO old outhouses.

Getting a jump on SATURDAY

Move ahead with me 20 hours please. OK, let's call it Saturday, yes? My old pal Greg needs to see this unicorn cookie jar, and he asked for a sense of scale. About 13 inches tall, to the top of the horn. My thumb perhaps tells us nothing, but the little brown moose is glad I mixed up the brown glaze, he looks most charming.
OK, also looking this afternoon I hope, my old pal BR--why say, red mugs.

gift to SELF

My espresso needed a new home, so I made myself a cup and saucer, wanting to know how well purple and red work together: nicely.

Saturday's tunes o' the day

Abney Park: Steam punk. Three GEMS, first 'The Wrong Side' then a live performance of 'The wrong side' and finally a terrific clip from 'Mirrormask'.

six-sided vase

I said to myself, 'I wonder if I could make a six sided vase?' and so this guy up top was whacked, sliced, prodded and such in an experimental manner, and by gawd, I did make a six-sided vase, but the top fell off! Well. That's experimentation, I shall have to be more gentle with the next one.

B52s Friday

They are not young anymore, but who is? "Whammy kiss" live and the fantastic 'Debbie' and the cherry atop the sundae, a rather fine "Mesopotamia" live.

I have really started to love zebras

brown glazes

I rarely use my brown glaze. As a matter of fact, it has been at least 2 years since I have glazed anything brown. I like a bright and colorful glaze, and I have a lot of them. My brown is from I recipe I saw somewhere and changed a bit here and there to make it more interesting, and I named it pecan pie. There is a brown mug from 3 years ago in the top pic. The glaze is full of speckly textures: sort of a dark tan with reddish brown speckles. The miracle was, despite sitting in a bucket all this time, I added a little water, mixed it well and zoom, ready to test. It is a disgusting mess to use--deep blood/brick red that stains everything. Whreas all the all other glazes can be applied at the same moment, you need a seperate session to use this brown, then scrub up the mess, change the rinse water and towels. I think my moose will benefit from this treatment.