primalmommy on thu 4 dec 03
Floating blues refired to ^4 turn tan... that might be a hint. And in
unstirred glazes all the heavy stuff (iron, cobalt) can settle to the
bottom. Do you have a cone in your kiln to assure you reached the temp
your kiln sitter suggested?
Snow/cars: When I was a teen we were headed from ohio to my
grandparents' farm, outside Saginaw, Michigan. Station wagon full of
christmas presents, little brother and I in the back with two cats and a
beagle, and the horse trailer on the back loaded with my first love, a
big quarter horse named Comanche.
It started snowing two hours into the trip and before long we couldn't
see the hood of the car, much less the big ditches on either side of the
gravel country roads. We got stuck. Usually Clem Ostrander or one of the
farmers would come out with a tractor and pull us out, since it's plenty
flat in southern michigan and there's a farm every mile or two... but
this time it was snowing too hard for anyone to see us, and that low
station wagon -- a real beauty, with the fake wood sides and the
fold-down back seats -- was drifting over in a hurry.
So I got out of the car, opened the back of the horse trailer, backed
comanche out into the snow and rode -- bareback with just a halter rope,
warmed by horsepower -- the couple of miles to grandpa's farm. Grandma
says she'll never forget looking out the front and seeing me ride up the
long driveway on that horse... I am not sure how they got the car out,
since the horse was rubbed down and put in a stall and I was rubbed down
and put into the big old bathtub, but I think it involved the jeep and a
call to a nearby farm on the old party line... (community phone line,
different rings for different farms... in the days before soap operas,
my great grandma parker used to cover the mouthpiece with a dishrag and
listen in on other people's calls... )
White chickens: The reason those Asian folks preferred raising more
colorful hens might have had little to do with dirt. White/factory hens
have been inbred for generations for meat and egg production,
incubator-hatched for life in a cage, debeaked and deformed, and stupid
as a mud brick. Anything like instinct -- particularly maternal instinct
-- has been long bred out of them. So unless you want a hen who has no
idea what an egg is when it drops out of her butt-- much less how to
hatch and raise it -- you have to pick a breed that still has a clue,
and for which darwin has not been subverted. Colored chickens have dark
pin feathers that look less attractive on a roaster than the odd pink
albino ones. Bantams-- too small for factory meat/eggs - are good little
mommies and will hatch and raise anybody's babies, though they get
really distressed when pheasant chicks scatter to hide in the leaves
instead of under their wings... and when baby ducks head for the pond,
bantam foster moms pace along the shore yelling the hen version of
"YIKES!"
Check out cool heirloom chicken breeds- with descriptions of their
temperaments and "chickenalities" - at mcmurrayhatchery.com ... I have
cochins, australorps and barred rocks..
The Potter's Guild show is this weekend, along with the other artisan
cottages at the Toledo botanical gardens -- (stained glass, glass
blowers, photographers, painters).. "Heralding the Holidays". 26 potters
this year will be selling work! Rain/snow/sleet on the way.. the last of
the garden kale is either in my freezer or frozen on the stalk in the
garden, but mache is still growing under the cold frame in the
hoop-greenhouse...
my dad is home from heart surgery and doing well.. thanks to those who
wrote with inspiring case histories...
yours, getting in one last firing before the show, I'll be last minute
unloading hot pots with welders gloves...
Kelly in Ohio
http://www.primalpotter.com
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