Surviving the heat

Yes but the vet already warned me that it will be raining buckets all the time. Just to be on the outer ocean exposure is kind of nice. Looking forward to it. I can't send from Juneau because my PC card doesn't work here at all. Only the clinic computer so when I get home tomorrow I will post some stuff on the sights.

Hey Sof, I've got a 2nd cousin that is living in Juneau, last I heard. He sent a bunch of pics to the family, and that place looks really cool. Seemed a bit more rustic than Anchorage, for sure. I'm really jealous of all these Alaska trips yo are taking. Missing it big time, especially in the heat of summer, here!

We were hoping for rain - but as usual, just pretty clouds blooming in the afternoon. View from our post office.

That's beautiful country, kmom.

I was dubious about moving to the desert, but I have been seduced by her drama. No soft, green, rolling hills. No breezy summer days. But thunder and lightening - yes! Red and purple sunsets that others only see in paintings - yes! Rain that falls from the sky to evaporate before touching the Earth - yes! Winds to set the sage tops to rolling like waves - yes! Fires to respect and maybe fear a bit and prepare for - yes! Stary skies, unmolested by city lights - who knew there really WERE 500,000,000,000 stars visible with my own two eyes! And for those who are observant, there are many small miracles - lizards who frequent soaker hoses for their morning sip of water, ants that will attack a full grown scorpion and bring it down into their hole for dinner for the whole family, tiny blue flowers that bloom in the middle of summer with less than 10 inches of percipiation a year (and most of that as snow in the winter), families of birds who will fight like inlaws at the bird feeder but patiently wait their turn for a dip in the bird bath... Little tomatoes on the vine, each one wrested from the desert sand and sun... The fragrance of sweet basil by moonlight. I am truly blessed.

Indeed you are. Nothing beats the wide open spaces.

Good description on the desert. I was there with the details. I too like the colors that are available in the desert. Here is a shot of the Alaska scene in Juneau. Auk Bay north of Juneau about 10 miles.

And of course Mendenhall Glacier just outside of town 5 minutes.

Awsome photos, Soferdig!

Yes it rained every day, temps in the 40 and 50s F. We had some days over a half of inch of down pour. This was while we here in Montana were breaking records in the 100s. I need to invest in SE AK before the global warming gets worse. Small cabin low beach good fishing........ OH the sun does come out and sunsets in the clouds are spectacular.

This message was edited Jul 15, 2007 10:16 PM

Last waterfalls everywhere. Juneau is surrounded by cliffs and each one has its own waterfall. This is near mendenhall glacier.

No wonder you are in love with Alaska! I have never been there. Maybe I need to give it a try.

What beautiful poetry, Karla.

Yes, this kiln is outdoors. Function being: should it ever explode, the mess will be... smaller.
Actually, it's just too dang hot and unsafe to put in a building.

How cheery, a hot dangerous kiln! Thank goodness it is outdoors where you can run away more quickly if you need to. How did your projects turn out in the firing?

Perfect, thanks. Here it is, after I've removed the forward shelves, looming in the back. It barely fit in before it was fired. Seeing as how it survived OK, I am going to wait to glaze-fire it until I develop some nice green glazes.
I just had to get the urge (to make an enormous 150-some pound grotesquely lumpy garden sculpture) out of my system.
In future, I'm sticking to tiny teapots!

Kenton that is a self sculpture of you pridefully standing in front of your cooking compost pile. Nice. Hey I have a light house I am staying in in Sitka, AK in the month of October. Lots of rain but it should be pretty neat. Think about it.
Paj you would like to enjoy rain and clouds to like AK. It is beautiful very often but only for short blasts of beauty. Cruise ships kind of miss the culture of AK.

Steve, catch a picture of that Lighthouse if you haven't done already. I wish I could do some travel, but I'm locked into art like a beartrap until February.

I am beating the heat by going indoors in the afternoon and playing with clay:

Wow again! Your sculpture is fantastic! So is your teapot. I have done enough pottery to know how hard it is to get a large piece through a firing. And the teapot has a wonderful "presence" if you ask me. It looks like someone standing there with a hand on his hip. And a leaf pattern in the clay. Very nice.

Kenton you have done it again. Your art style continues from 'Kubla Kahn' to teapot. I see a style of "A surreal weaving of nature with ecclectic form to make you dance as you follow its form". There you have another critic to describe what you have worked on and meant another. Well done. (How much tea do you drink???? and is it all just tea?????)

All very beautiful! Alaska is fascinating.I like the big sculture. Not easy to fire something that size. The tea pot reminds me of "Alice in Wonderland". Kenton, have you ever done Raku? Talk about hot! I spent most of the day inside yesterday trying to do a watercolor painting of a Steller's jay...no live model present. Looked at some bird books, did a drawing. Finally did one that I like ( I'll have to get a digital camera ). It isn't sweet and looks sort of cranky. But, you know, blue jays aren't exactly known for being cutesy.

Kenton, love the sculptures. The textures on the large one makes me want to run my hands over it (what can I say - it's an afliction of mine - like having to put the hands in the dirt!).

I know a gardener like you, Karla: She runs her hands over the darndest plants.
Hey- clay is dirt, I like to touch both, I guess.
Roy, I'd look forward to a picture of your watercolour. I think it is a fine fine art, one stroke is king. I venerate anyone who has the peace of mind to do it.
Raku is a thrill, ya! Very organic, I love to be in on it, but it is one of those things that takes your hands very far from contolling the outcome, so I must be a mild control freak to stick to cone ten reduciton firings. Plus, I like things that someone can drink coffee or tea out of.

Thanks for the compliments. I am itching badly to get some of these things finished, but alas, I have much work to do in the slow world of glaze development before I put my favourite things through it.
(Steve: I average two to five cups of tea)

Oh so your favorite flavor is Cannibus Chai. I get to limit myself to 2 to 3 cups of coffee. Except when in Seattle the air is filled with coffee odor and I can't resist an afternoon blast.
I have been in Seattle all week and have enjoyed 65 to 75F with a few mornings of rain. I miss the Pacific NW. Too bad so many people live here. Well back to the Montana oven tomorrow. At least I get to see my girls free ranging.

Oh Sof,
Your garden with chickens is so beautiful! They look so happy together. I can't wait until I can get some. Hopefully, next year. I need to get a suitable home built for them. I am not much of a carpenter and my husband is even less so. I know a couple people I can hire, but first I have to figure out where to put it! It is inspiring to see yours.
There is a great photo collection of chickens into todays Washington Post which is called Cheep Thrills. It is Poultry shows. I loved it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/070725/GAL-07Jul25-82600/index.html

They are so cute!
Betty

Steve, I will ignore that comment in favour of remaining friends with you, you old hippie. No, I prefer a real tea over any expereince any day. Some good Earl Grey, Lapsang, Pu 'Erh, Yorkshire, or whatnot.
Hey- tell me, which girls are more fun- the fibreglass restaurant-vestibule resident or those of the avian persuasion?
Have a safe drive back home, our good fellow, and enjoy every minute of your stay.

Chickens would be a great thrill to own. I ohpe you have that pleasure, Paja. I wonder how the fresh eggs work out economically. Can one grow his own chicken feed? I think I would want to make a bigger dish out of one every now and again...

Profitability of raising chickens for eggs? Probably very little, if any, that is if you don't count the difference in taste between the best store-bought organic egg, and a free range egg. The difference is incomperable. It is like the difference between a home grown, tree ripened peach and one of those bought at a regular grocery organic or not. The eggs and chicken raised with access to plants and insects and in my case, snails, are better than anything that can be commercially produced in a large scale, even organic operation.
As for eating the chickens, I am afraid they would become family as soon as I got them. I don't plant to eat any. I can't imagine butchering them and I am not really a squeamish person. Also, my friend tried giving an hold hen to a neighbor who cooked it for 10 or so hours and it still was as tough as a rubber band. Those nice fryers that are so tasty are probably not even old enough to lay eggs.
I'll just eat the eggs and pet the hens. My dogs are getting so old now, I don't think they would bother them. And good news! I have some new neighbors with a healthy young cat that I saw curled up in my gopher infested garden. I think I had better buy it some catnip to remind it to return. I bet it had just feasted on gopher and was having a nice after-dinner nap.

My chickens as soon as they got into the garden have almost stopped eating any laying mash. Plenty of bugs, bird seed, and everything that is on the ground they eat. Nothing is left untasted. They have taken a fancy to me by following me around the yard and pecking and talking non-stop when I go out in the garden. Henny, Penny, Barrdy, and Pricilla are their names. They aren't too excited about being picked up but love to walk and follow. Eggs are due Aug 22nd (my estimate) and who cares how much it costs to have chickens walking and talking in my garden. They are so neat! Yes they are family and the one we lost is buried in the chicken burial area. Well at least the area that the chickens like.
Kenton all girls are fun. But the best is the one you get to come home to and share the dreams of the garden. I miss my Karen.
This is Barrdy

Sounds worth it to the max.
22nd? What did you do, use an ultrasound?
But really, why the 22nd? Are they young and just coming of laying age?
Kenton the chicken illiterate

This message was edited Jul 28, 2007 3:25 PM

I got chicks and they start laying around 6 to 7 months of age and my bet with Karen is Aug 22nd. We shall see. These were them just a couple of months ago.

Chickens eat snails! Who knew? Just what I need. I wonder how a chicken or two would get along with neighboring cats? I can keep dogs out but the cats are arboreal and come right over the wall. It feels funny to be called Roy. My name is actually Penny, like the chicken. Roybird was one of my parakeets. Sadly, deceased at the age of 12. I use his name, since I can remember it and I had to come up with one. I tried Penelope but that was taken. I think I should read up on chickens....snail eaters!

My cats follow around my chickens but the chickens are big enough they would whoop my cats if they tried to do anything. Anyway Araconas fly pretty easily. My rodent catcher cat does follow them around waiting for a chance but hasn't the courage to even try. We have small slugs and they feast on them. Now they aren't the big monsters like Seattle. Only geese and ducks will eat those monsters.

This is the birdiest thread yet.

Maybe this heat has us all with birds on the brain?

Kenton,
I just found this thread as I slowly emerge from July intensity. I love your teapot! I always liked high fired reduction firings too. Nice big things! Or else I was throwing minatures off the hump, extreme in the other direction.

Worth getting your glazes right, nothing worse than doing a fine piece and then having the glaze turn out like dog barf.

I recall seeing my mild mannered husband in an extreme rage smashing huge handbuilt pots against a concrete wall because that infernal pottery supply house in Denver was inconsistent in their clay mixing and one whole batch bubbled and crawled and other awful things, destroying the work.

Lexi

Good to read you, again, Lexi. How did the book go?

Mile Hi? I know it, one of their porcelains always has bits of a white-buff clay in it.
The clay crawled? Or the dry mineral in the glaze mix was inconsistent?
I know a fellow who was using some sort of white stoneware for large coiled bottles (a few feet tall) and the had bubble- like dunting happening due to clay impurities.
I tend to mix and fool with my clay bodies a lot, colouring or grogging or whatnot, and have been lucky so far. I particularly like to whiten white stoneware with porcelain.
I've just started trying to throw teacups off of the hump, I'm working on it.

Kenton (who has his fair share of dog barf peices.)

I haven't worked with clay in a long time. However, recently, the local printing company I use to commercially print my w.c. paintings as greeting cards, got new machines. With New Ink Colors that are not much like the old inks. They more or less ruined my best selling cards. I had them re-done twice and they never did get the color right. I had to accept the next best thing and I was not happy. Never thought something like that would happen. Lexi, I sympathize with your husband! The cards are actually o.k. if you never saw the earlier ones, so I'm told. (I'm new at the card biz.) Our weather has been coolish, 70's, and cloudy with a little rain and lots of thunder.

Kenton,
To be more accurate and specific, the dark clay body was mixed incorrectly so it bubbled up under the glaze, and was incompatible with the glaze, which ordinarily worked fine on it.

So the glaze crawled. Obviously, bad mixing of a glaze will not make a clay body bubble up in huge lumps, and I am sure Bern had the glaze mixed correctly anyway. He was not about to wreck his work at that point.

Never had those issues with Seattle Pottery Supply.

Not that you cannot create your own issues as you experiment... I just hate it when those problems get created for you by sloppy mixing by the supplier when you have rigorously adjusted the glaze for proper results and tested it extensively, as my husband had done.

Roybird, sounds like the same kind of problem in a different media. The card business can be tough. Have a friend who goes through various hairpulling events when certain papers go out of production, etc.

I once mixed up a glaze with lots of lithium, eh? It came out amazingly super-bright turqiuse. The second time I mixed it, the lithium was a sandy texture and the glaze came out looking remarkably the texture and colour of breadmold.
Now I stick to highfire.
I must admit being a tad tired of testing glazes. I have batches 90-120 to do soon. It is imperative, though, since all of my work is waiting for glaze... and people are waiting for my work. I will probably spend 9-5 wednesday on it. I promise some pictures, too.

What kind of clay, if you recall, Lexi, was it that had your husband in knots? Mountain stone, CN1, Bristlecone, other?

Penny, I absolutely (but politely!) demand to see a photo of your work!

Kenton,
It has been so long I do not recall. It was a darker clay body, if that is any help. He was doing large slab pots with animal designs or geometric designs on them. He used a darker body to show through where he used a wax resist to create the design prior to glazing.

I think all of those hassles had a great deal to do with him selling all the equipment when we returned to Lopez Island. I still miss that Brent wheel!

Kenton, I have to admit to being almost illiterate on the computer. My husband says it would be easy. But, I don't see him jumping up to do it right now. But I will get after him! Thanks for the interest.