groovy purple teaset

(teaset by Gary Rith)
My pal Fortune Cookie is interested in a teapot with spirals, and this is a big set which can serve as a model.

further glaze tests

I have decided that of these four, I will go with the glaze recipe for the tile second from the left, and hopefully it will look good on an actual pot.

little elephant sugar bowl...

(pot by Gary Rith)
Busy day today!
This is, perhaps, the personification of neo-rococo.

Day 2: tearing up the garage roof etc.

So, Steve hacked away at rotten boards and patched and replaced a bunch and covered them with fresh plywood then finally, just as raindrops began, got the 'ice shield' down, which is a rubberized material that is useful under shingles. Shingles you say? There are none to be had in the county this week, and hopefully supplies will arrive soon....I guess people in the Ithaca area are having a lot of houses and roofs built, despite national trends....at least the work is sealed against rains. Next he has to build new columns under the north side of the garage, as it is slipping downhill towards Canada....

Pottery in action: Gary's triple chocolate cookies

(plate by Gary Rith and cookies too)
The wife is working extra hard this week and needs a reason to live....

Tainted Love

Original by Soft Cell, hoo hoo! What a video!

And, oh my, the Pussycat Dolls.

I was thinking the Pussycat Dolls look like a bunch of strippers lip synching and such, and if you read the wiki piece on them, you realize that is basically what they are.

Squared Bowl: a video starring ME

My wife saw this and said that women everywhere will fall in love with me(really! she said it!) (she saw me making pots back in '89 and that's what happened to her....)but that's impossible because all you see here is my hands, my fuzzy knee and my squeaky little voice.

(bowls by Gary Rith)

in which we tear off a roof

(Steve doing the hot and sweaty work)
We bought a house that was built in 1865 and then gutted and rehabbed in 2001. Then painted purple just before we bought it.
The whole house, although old, is new. Except the garage, which is a little old shack attached to the north end of the house. We have seen a picture at the post office from 1895 showing a little wooden shack behind our house, then I think they moved it up and called it a garage.
Anyway, it is good enough for the lawnmower and bikes, but is slowly sliding to the north plus the roof isn't holding out the water. Steve here is a carpenter and his wife an architect and they are the ones who gutted then sold us the house 2 1/2 years ago. He is replacing the roof and will add columns under the garage to arrest the slide. I am so excited!!!!

Full fronta! Nud!ty!

Penny did her business at the base of this statue.
(YES, I had a baggie...)
Cornell, for some reason, has at least 3 public statues of naked dudes letting it all hang out.

Penny visits Cornell pottery shop

I had to leave the house to Cornell's potshop yesterday and Penny insisted on joining me. She cried a little at unfamiliar surroundings, but was mostly good in there. My wife's boss brings her labradoodle to work, and Penny (ahem) snapped at her, which is what she did the last time they met. Penny doesn't really like other dogs, but she loves people and charmed some of the people she met.

Penny visits Cornell pottery shop, cont.

Christie

Christie was at the CU potshop yesterday making this wicked cool striped, or marbled pot. She mentioned she likes watching pottery videos, and I promised to make a petite throwing video this afternoon and post it tomorrow.

Desmond!

(little dog named Desmond by Gary Rith, pic by Fondofsnape)
My photographer friend Fondofsnape took my little dog and matched it with her little guys and took some brilliant pictures....

wee little teapot for Fortune Cookie

(teapot by Gary Rith)
My pal Fortune Cookie wanted something spirally in a teapot, and I thought about it and this is my perhaps brilliant solution.

a petite story or two

Notice I am in a wild mood lately???? Is the moon full, Mercury twisting into retrograde????
My pal fondofsnape had a piece about meeting up with old lovers (and she met hers in a dream in a classroom and gave them FAILING grades mostly) but it is an intriguing idea: what is it like to meet your exes? To which I say:

I don’t want to bump into any old girlfriends. The only exceptions being, and this of course was entirely innocent, my girlpals when I was a pre-schooler and a kindergartner. When I was 3 and Eva was 4 we were neighbors and palled around until she moved from Iowa to Maryland and I moved from Iowa to New York, but then 17 years later, if you can believe it, we ended up at the same tiny Vermont college together (our names are both unique, so it was easy to reunite). But then she got married to a dipsh!t and had a baby and then divorced and….lost track of her.
Sally was my pal when we were each 5. Her parents and mine are still friends, but we havn’t seen each other since we were 18, and then she married a dipsh!t and had 2 kids, made a million bucks then got divorced…..
ANYWAY, wonder what’s in the fridge for lunch…..

le pigs

(pigs by Gary Rith)

scenes from a weekend

(missus potsblog going nowhere, and grilled veggies!)
This blog has actually very little that is personal, but then again, very little happens in my life. Plus I do very little.
But there in the pottery studio is a set of weights and a rowing machine, and me and the missus use them and we aim to be quite buff and strong for the old people that we are. My wife hates being photographed and blogged, but she doesn't know my passwords...(I wonder if blogging is considered as boorish as burping without warning? maybe it is worse)
and few things are better than grilled potatoes, peppers and onions, OH MY!

Nights in White Satin

The wife was talking about seeing a white satin suit for sale, and I naturally had to sing this song by the Moody Blues. This video is such a time piece: the serious (they look constipated) band members looking profound and knowledgeable in their PIRATE shirts, the psychedelic camera angles, sudden scene shifts, the dude with the flute and the huge mustache.....easy to imagine college students in the late 60s lighting up a big one in their dorm room, trying to sound wise and poetic and get into a young woman's pants....
despite what I say, and despite the pirate shirts, I really like this song, but the video may make you laugh.

F@rt jokes????

On the down side, there have been accusations lately that my behavior can be "boorish". On the up side, I have been also been told that I make the missus laugh.
As you may recall, we saw a Jane Austen English manor type movie last week, with gentlemen riding horses and being gentlemanly. HOWEVER, I belong to the category of least gentlemanly men on earth: the husband of many years. The man who has been married for many years is not a tidy dresser, and may not give warning before he belches. Ah ha! There it is: she wants warning before I belch, but really, is such a thing always possible?
Perhaps a single guy trying to impress a hot woman like my wife would be more polite around the house, or, and this is my theory, a gay man would dress in something other than flannel shirts and jeans, plus have superior manners. Probably a gay man would be a better house keeper than me, too.

I explain my theories to my wife, that since I am not a gay man, she can expect slovenly, messy, yet cheerful behavior from me. Because if I was gay, she would not be so fortunate as to be married to me.

Tiger!

It is quite fortunate that I did not have to get a kitten, because the neighbors got one. Tiger is a fuzzy little orange thing with a great personality. Kittens, however, are a little rough with the needle teeth and claws.

I was trying to get an artful picture of a little beagle wall sculpture that just came out of the kiln, and a little beagle, but Penny was uncooperative.
It was difficult, but we tried to get a pic of our 3 dogs with their friend the neighbor's dog Chloe. Chloe moved in a few months ago and she was super fat, but now she walks with our neighbor a few miles a day and she is getting glossy and sleek, and our dog Buster thinks she is his girlfriend. She thinks he is fresh.

le beastie

Buster and Penny. Penny is one of those small dogs who piles onto any pile of animals or people and falls asleep.
SO, we have Saturday here. I spend the day at the Spirit and Kitsch arts coop which is now in its final week of existance! It will become a gallery of some type, now run by Liz, who, well anyway, we will see what happens, but it will not be a cooperative venture anymore.
Spent yesterday reading my book and blowing my nose. Frequent readers will have noticed that I catch a cold every month, and this one is August's, a little early. It was compounded a bit by the aftermath of Thursday night's party, where I tried to avoid anything buttery or dairy items, as I have an allergy, but managed to get some into my system, the result was a fevery and nauseous day.
I am a new man now, however. Off I go....

speaking of beasties

(mug by Gary Rith)
So, as I say, I am using this mug to test a handle shape, try out a lizard/chameleon shape, and also this blue green glaze which looks promising!

Born of Frustration

By James. I love James, a nine (I think) piece band from Manchester, 1992.

Lauren makes a wee little pot!

Last night was the final Cornell University Pot Shop class for the summer. Most of the students I had were already experienced, but Lauren was brand new to clay. She has advanced quickly, and made a wonderful little pot last night. Yippee!
Last time Lauren was on this blog, it seemed like there was a sudden uptick in visitors from Ohio, which is coincidentally where Lauren is from.
Have I mentioned yet that she has a dog named 'Poopie'?

Lauren makes a wee little pot, cont.

Th sequence is a little off, but anyway, you can figure it out.

par-tay!

There was a little boating party last night with the wife's boss and people she works with. It is useful when the boss lives in the woods and has her own lake, and a rowboat and such. Although rowing is fun, it is much MORE fun when you pull into shore, find the beer cooler, then switch seats so that your wife can row and you can sip.

Spike say: No worries Mate

Love in a Trashcan

By the Danish band The Raveonettes.

Pizza=pottery?

(Mister Pottersblog bakes something else)
So I have this new little pizza stone and maybe last night's pizza was the best tasting I have made? Pizza is easy to make, really, even if you substitute fake sausage and fake cheese for the real thing.
I like a super thin crust, baked crisp!
And yes, pizza dough is very similar to working clay.