Christmas Past. . .

The Dogwood Wreath, closeup

 A friend of mine had said that this Christmas would be memorable. It was. We felt fortunate that everyone was healthy, and calm and bright; even if distant. We have spend Christmas's without any of our kids home before, but this one did feel distinctly different. Neither John or I were inclined to travel, or go skiing, as we have in the past. We did have a lovely day, brioche for breakfast, and a long hike with Jasper. Ha. As usual. And now I can post what I was working on for so long. . . porcelain candle wreaths for the Daughters: A four-candle advent wreath for Beth, and a 5-candle not-advent wreath for Sarah. I was so pleased with the outcomes. 

 

The Dogwood wreath

Two things to note, though. One is that I completely underestimated what it would take to pack and ship these puppies. I am still astonished that they made it to their cross country destinations in one piece. Kudos to Federal Express.The second is that their success may have made me a little overconfident with porcelain; possibly explaining the disaster in the previous post.

The Dogwood Wreath  with candles

Christmas has always been important to me, in spite of my devout agnosticism. I was raised Christian, of course, but even after my spiritual awakening, I have continued to appreciate the themes that Christmas celebrates. Generosity and a coming together being topmost.  The notion of lighting the dark is so strong for me that we never eat dinner during the dark months without candlelight. Nothing celebrates this quite as brightly as Christmas. Unless it's Hanukkah. 

The Poppy wreath with candles

This year, though, a new word kept coming into my mind and my annual End-of-year card writings. It was "hope". I realized the degree to which hope figured into a this now-famous baby being born into and embraced by a fraught world, representing hope for something kinder, gentler, more humane, and enlightened.

 

The Poppy Wreath

Honestly, it feels naively optimistic to hope these days. But there you find yourself on Christmas day, talking to friends and loved ones, and feeling hope in spite of yourself. You do so knowing that you're setting yourself up for disappointment, but you do it anyway.

The Poppy Wreath, closeup

Next?  The porcelain experiments (using white stoneware in tandem) will begin next week. . .when I get a little of the studio Christmas chaos under control. 

Wishing everyone in the world a promising and hopeful 2021.

Looks like monthly reports now. . .

So this seems a little bit sad. A month goes by and I don't seem to register it, let alone post. What's going on with that? And yet. Here we are. We have a neighbor who is a physician's assistant who works with Covid patients, and she told us yesterday (driveway conversations! so wonderful!) that she got her vaccine. One of the first in line. Hallelujah. One less essential soul to worry about. Sort of. 

Pottery has continued, but stutteringly. These bisque pieces were so wonderful, but collapsed during the glaze firing. I can't bring myself to photograph them in their misery. Porcelain is a harsh mistress. So the next project (after holiday baking indulgence, and Christmas cards) is to make the same square piece (roughly) from both porcelain and a cone 5 stoneware, and run them through the same paces. I suspect that the porcelain is to blame, but I must have had something to do with it. . .

The days have been full of the making of other things too. I am no medium snob. Knitted socks, crocheted collars on tiny velveteen dresses, procuring (wrapping and mailing) gifts. All good work, but not work I am good at. It all takes me so long. 

Jasper continues to be my partner-in-crime. We had a long walk today in misty murky weather with M and B. Perfect for my mood. These Rocky Mountain foothills have their charms, though more and more I miss the wet eastern green.

And we sequester. Wine, dog, consort, not in that order. We wait, too. Patience is the hardest thing. For me. For most of us, I expect. Christmas is a thing to try to cherish, but mostly to survive. We're planning on a NY Christmas. We have to find some Chinese take-out. Smile. And hope that Christ can actually intervene, and make compassionate souls out of all of us.

Making stuff. . .and not

 

I am amazed at how long it's been since I posted anything. Over a month! It's hard to tell where the ebb and flow of time wanders off to these days. The pandemic is worsening, which keeps us closer to home. You would think that time would drag, and for certain hours it does. But mostly we've adapted to this new normal. I do worry that the coming winter will hurt our health care and other essential workers. The vaccine news seems good, but getting everyone vaccinated is still many months off. Maybe more.

My ceramic work has been mostly super secret until after Christmas. But I did make a few bisque stamps with dried vegetation I found on our visit to Hailey, and our Sweet Gum Tree leaves here, that are rapidly dropping. They will be very fun to use.

 Winter is coming.

Cluny the Border Collie

I also knit my lovely Grand Daughter a couple of friends. I used to whip these little stuffed animals up pretty quickly, but everything seems to take me a while now. Back and eyes can't do this fine stuff for more than an hour or so.

Jasper the Border Collie

Both of our families have Border Collies now, and I was going to buy and ship some little toys that she likes in the Border Collie group. It turned out that those were special editions, and while one can order them from Japan, shipment was going to be well after her birthday. So I said "Well, I guess I'll have to make a couple". This is an ongoing theme for me. I can't find what I want (am I really that picky?), so I have to make it. The results are Jasper and Cluny, knit with size one needles and a lot of love. They look big in the images, but in fact are only 4" tall.

Snow in early November

We are trying to continue to have friends over on our patio. That's entailed purchasing a new fire table, which doesn't seems as warming as it's 60,000 BTU's might suggest. We're tweaking the system. And we have a couple of warm days today and tomorrow. The weather has been a roller coaster all year with temperatures up and down even more than usual. I'll close with this image from last week. . . we had a lovely snow that lasted for a few days. It's all melted now, but more will come, I expect. And we finally are getting moisture dropping from the sky, which is always a huge relieve for me.

A Yarn

We visited New Zealand for a couple of months in 2018, and were able to connect with the owner of the factory that made my spinning wheel, purchased unfinished, in a kit, in the mid '80's.  I recently reconnected with the owner who had welcomed us in our visit, and I told her the story (in way too many words) of getting Jasper and making yarn out of the fleece and the dog that we so generously received from Jasper's former owner. She asked me if I'd be interested in writing an article about that incident for their newsletter. I was thrilled to do so. There has been so much generosity from so many folks in our lives. So I thought I'd share the article I wrote for her here.  It is necessarily many fewer words.

My Ashford Traveler Wheel and Jasper

 

A Yarn about a Dog and a Fleece

“If you take the dog, you can have the fleece”, the rancher said when I offered to buy the fleece. We had driven out of Boise to look at a working Border Collie, Jasper, who needed a new home because at age 9, he could no longer keep up with the younger dogs. I know the feeling. The fleece in question came to light when I mentioned that I was a hand-spinner. Of course, I would mention this to a guy who runs 1200 sheep. I hadn’t spun in years, but this fleece made my eyes light up. It was very deep brown, a merino cross (fine), long stapled, very greasy and full of vegetable matter. What potential.

Jasper, it turns out, has a very lush, fine undercoat. The sheep rancher, who also breeds his own Border Collies and Great Pyrenees dogs, said that one of the Great Pyrenees dogs may have slipped in unnoticed to visit Jasper’s Mom, and hence the undercoat. The rancher wouldn’t take our money for either treasure, so we sent him a complete set of the Walt Longmire books as a thank you. If you don't know Walt Longmire, he's a Western US icon.

The batt for spinning

After we gave Jasper the first bath of his life, I started brushing out his undercoat. It took a couple of weeks to get all of his undercoat released. It was a wonderful way to connect with a dog who had worked so hard all of his life. I have spun dog fur from previous dogs, so I knew his would be lovely. It’s very like spinning French Angora Rabbit fur. It adds softness, and eventually a halo to the items knitted from it.

 

2 and 3 ply yarn

 

 

 

 

 

There was an “Oh Dear” (maybe something stronger) when I realized what I had taken on. After skirting and sorting the wool, I washed it, and couldn’t help noticing how much vegetable matter (VM) it had in it. Oh. Dear. First the teasing, and removal of VM, mostly grass seeds. Then it was 4 times through the drum carder, removing VM during and between each run through. With each run through I also spread out the resulting batt and you guessed it; removed VM. On the last run through, I mixed in about ¼ Jasper fur by volume, by making 4 strips from the batt, spreading them out, spreading Jasper fur on top, and then folding the whole thing like an envelope. This is to avoid losing all the fur on the waste wheel of the carder. Each strip was treated the same way, building onto the first ones until I ended up with a mouthwatering thick batt. 

Jasper. The way home.

 

It’s not a perfect system, and I’m still picking out the occasional grass head while spinning. Still. There is pleasure in doing it, and the yarn is lovely; slightly unrefined, but well-structured with a lot of potential. Like Jasper.

Patio spinning and other stuff

Patio spinning with Jasper

It's been way too long since a post. I've been busy doing things I love, so it's not such a bad thing. Jasper and I have been engaging in that most sublime activity, patio spinning, every day since the last post. The weather today was 77F and clear. It's been mostly clear since the last post. However, the high pressure system that's been holding the smoke in place (unfortunately over the west coast) is shifting, and we'll see smoke again tonight or tomorrow. I've become very attached to my Air Quality app.

I love sitting outside to spin. Jasper is excellent company. It is meditative, and sweet to listen to the sounds. . .some natural, some normal human activity.  The fleece still has some vegetable matter that needs to be shaken or picked out as I spin, but it's also softer than soft.

We went out for a meal on a patio (at a Restaurant) this past week. We haven't done so since the first week in March, and it felt other worldly, though of course it's not exactly normal. Still. It does feel safe. We had two drinks to drive up our bill, and triple tipped. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown, masks on, and it really felt odd and normal at the same time. Something we used to do all the time, but newly unfamiliar.

Freak Alley

Freak Alley used to be a rebellious bit of illegal artwork on the buildings in an alley, but it's been codified by the city now. This painting is an inside joke. . .Aaron Paul (left on the painting) is a local boy made good in the series Breaking Bad. 

I want to go downtown and patronize some of the businesses someday soon, but it is amazing how quickly our habits change. I don't wander around shops or drop by a coffee shop at all any more. I only go to them for groceries and home repair stuff.

View from the top, Shaffer Butte

We also took a wonderful hike at Shaffer Butte over the weekend. This is how clear it was. . .the clouds looked like they had been hung. The American West is wonderful in it's clarity of color when it isn't burning.

Clay. Right. I should talk a little bit about clay. I have several pieces in the kiln ready to bisque, but have been busy with other stuff, so I've been woefully unproductive in that arena.

Harvest continues here for likely another month, and I have run out of canning lids. Who knew we could run out of those? It is odd to see which shelves are empty at various times. It makes me realize how completely we have taken the supply chain for granted. For everything. The good news is that I need canning lids because a friend gave me 20 pounds of beautiful plums. Now, if I can just get them preserved. . . .

Blue skies. . .nothin' but. . .

The sky at Saturday Dinner

Well. Ok. That's a bit of a lie. There are lots of skies that aren't blue, but we got a break today in the air quality. As we had dinner on the patio, this is what I saw. And just this evening, the Air Quality Index went into the "good" range. . .42. This is very good. It's not likely to last, but still. Now is now.

A haunted hike: yesterday

I 

 

 

 

I was walking Jasper on Friday, and the only word I could think of for the atmosphere was "haunted". Jasper doesn't seem to mind beyond my distress (which I try to hide), but eventually the sore throat and accompanying raspy voice and the watering eyes are hard to ignore. The other "haunted" aspect is that the trails are uncharacteristic unpopulated. I would normally be pretty pleased with this, but it's only because most folks have better sense then to hike outdoors when there is a health risk involved with breathing.

The garden is noticeably slowing down. I think the plants key onto the shortening days. . .especially the tomatoes, who like heat and light so much. I picked a couple that had barely broken from green to red just because I felt like I should have something to show. I also picked the eggplant that has just been sitting there waiting for something to happen. Kentucky wonder green beans continue to give me 8-12 a harvest, which showed up on the dinner table tonight, along with a Heritage Tomato pie. A quiche, if you're French, but of course these are good old Early Girls, not heritage tomatoes, which have too long of a growing season to work for us. I stand by my Early Girls, though. They are super delicious, always. Smallish, but that's ok. Size matters not. 

Wool processing continues; pottery making continues. . .a new dress may be in the offing.

The monster we invited

 Who wants to talk about this, really? But here we are, socially distanced, and now the outdoors has become another potent enemy. Our Air Quality Index (according to my new app, which I felt the need to acquire) is 132. Unhealthy for sensitive people. It was worse yesterday, and is Far Worse in Oregon and parts of Washington. But still. Going outside was our primary mode of stress reduction. Exercise. Breathing. Wait. No breathing for YOU. 

All of that green outside my studio door is so generous. Filtering smokey air through their leaves (the stuff of all life) just as we're filtering it through our lungs. Our bodies. I'm watching a squirrel optimisticly burying a nut. His eyes and throat can't be feeling great, either. A former student of mine lives in Tigard, Oregon, south of Corvalis. His aqi number at this very minute is 365. Purple. "Hazardous". We have so fouled this nest. Where we will go from here is a mystery, but let's hope someone has Climate Change on their radar. Someone other than our little group. Someone with a modicum of power to execute change. What an undeserving species we are.

Enough of that. Let's talk about the sample I knit from my intimidating fleece, and the small porcelain pieces made in this very studio while avoiding assault by smoke.

Good news bad news on the sample. It is so lovely and soft. Once the grass was cleaned out of the fleece, it spun up well, though I still had the occasional piece of organic matter to pick out while spinning. It was enough to make me pay attention, but not enough to be annoying. This fleece is definitely worth the effort, so I have a whole lot of work ahead of me.

The most recent hand-built pieces of porcelain are similarly encouraging. Why do I resist hand-building? I have this subconscious notion, I think, that throwing is just cooler than hand-building. Maybe not so subconscious. I should probably sell my wheel, but then those over reactions are typical of a smoke-drunk human. Anyway! A spoon rest and mug, in the raw. I like both forms, and hand-building allows for so much lovely texture. 

They will shrink a lot, but I know from experience (and the pattern that I made) that the mug will be just right. . .very Goldilocks. The spoon rest needs more refining.I'll try using a form (a bowl?) next time to get the curve a little more refined.

Still. It will work, and function does matter to me. They need to dry a little more, and I'll try to get into the studio more seriously tomorrow. Then on to the kiln for the bisque firing.

Moving forward on fiber

 

The yarn after washing and winding. 2 ply left; 3 ply right

Well. After wringing my hands about cleaning this fleece, I've gotten a sample spun, plied and washed. The spinning makes a single, the plying is spinning 2 or 3 singles together to make what looks like a pretty familiar yarn to anyone. Unless you're a spinner, the single will not impress. 

Typically, one spins extra twist into the single, and then plies in the opposite direction, resulting in a yarn that doesn't try to twist in any direction. It's neutral. It just sits there. So there are a lot of good reasons for plying, in spite of the fact that it's 2-3 times as much spinning!

My Ashford Traveler wheel

The yarn above is pretty typical of the yarn I like to spin. I can make it more even, but I like the handmade something-something of the slightly uneven yarn. The larger ball on the left is 2 ply (a little heavier than sport weight), the one on the left is 3 ply (made via a technique called Navajo plying), and it's thicker. . .worsted weight. I'll need to knit both of them into swatches, then put them against my skin. The yarn does feel remarkably soft to my hand.

 

Singles being plied

 

I have to say that I am very impressed with the softness of this yarn. Jasper's fur contributed to it's softness, I think, but the wool itself is also quite fine. This presents a problem, since it will be harder to say "no" to cleaning ALL OF IT. Oh dear.

 

2 ply yarn on the spindle

Firing and misfires

Birdhouse after bisque firing

 Well, back to the clay for a bit. I need to spin that batt, and then decide how much, if any, of the wool is worth saving. Mine is not a long attention span. I am a serial process junkie. First there is inspiration, then the learning (often years long), then the practicing, then on to the next thing. It's not something I'm proud of, but a hard thing to fight. Some things are just written into our DNA. I'm feeling like I need to get out the clay biz just now. I've had a good five years of working on this. I even joined a community studio while we were in Australia. But still, it's more disappointment than progress.

First the good news. I'm liking the birdhouse. I really like the form, the design is clever (the base fits inside the house so I can remove it easily for cleaning), and it came out of the bisque firing in good shape. Of course I agonized over how to glaze it, but I'm even pretty ok with that. Well. Not completely, but it's not an embarrassment.

Birdhouse front on base

The flowers on the front are more purple than dark red (mixing underglazes is a crap shoot if you don't test first!), but that's ok. I used a diluted underglaze over the non-roof portions of it to accentuate the texture, then sponged it off, let it dry, and put on a single coat of Klaus Hard White. The base and roof are glazed with a new glaze from Amaco called Muddy Waters. Bmix cone 5-6, all fired to cone 5. 

I won't be able to mount it until after the birds all leave the current house, but that's ok. I need to get a wood base and paint it. 

 

 

Amazingly I remembered to put holes in the base of the house for screws. I am really pleased with the texture on all sides of the house.

Birdhouse side

Birdhouse Back

The bad news is that my two thrown pieces are so disappointing. They are English Grolig Porcelain. Shrinkage was more than I expected, though I guess that isn't too surprising with porcelain. The real disappointment is that I just don't like them. I love the way the porcelain fires for wall pieces. Very white and stark. But in these pieces, it's too white. Too stark. It needs the complexity of form that I had in the wall pieces. Or it needs to be thrown much thinner, which is currently beyond my capacity. They will eventually end up in the landfill, but I can't bring myself to do that just yet.

Porcelain Cup

After 66 years of life, I have learned to try for perfection, knowing full well that it is neither attainable, or worth going too far for. Perfection truly is the enemy of good, as one of the academic advisors warned me. It was good advice, but right now, these pieces are just too far from "good". So I'll continue to aim for perfection, know that if I end up with good, I'll content myself with that.

 

       

 

Plate with accidental moodiness

Plate with more light control in the photo

Probably insane. . .

Fleece cleaned with grass seeds

Well. I have somehow woven my way back into my maker past. When we picked Jasper up from the ranch in Emmett, I told his owner that I was a hand spinner. Remember I was at a sheep farm, so my earlier life as an ardent fiber person seemed to bubble up unbidden. He showed me this lovely colored fleece, and joked that if I took Jasper, I could have the fleece. 

I still have one of my spinning wheels, and my carding machine, so I was really pretty thrilled. 

I hope I can be forgiven, but I forgot how much work this is. And though I saw some grass seeds in the raw fleece, I really didn't appreciate the magnitude of the issue. I didn't take a picture of the raw fleece, but the one above shows what it looks like after washing, which is called scouring. 

Fiber, teased not carded

The next step is picking, or teasing. You pull the fibers apart, and all of the dirt particles and vegetable matter falls out of it, in preparation for carding. Right? Wrong. I lost a lot of dirt in the process, but the grass seeds need to be picked out one at a time. And the fiber has wrapped it's little scales around them. 

I reasoned that the carding process not only straightens the fibers, but it also lets some of the vegetable matter (called VM by the pros) drop through. So I fed the teased locks into the carder. Oh boy.

I got out my tweezers to pick out the grass. There was So Much of it. Once the carder revealed the fiber more fully, I realized the trouble I was in. 

After 3 times through the carder, teasing apart, tweezering (is that a word?), examining every inch of the batt, I ran it through one more time, but this time with about 1/3 (by volume) of Jasper's undercoat. He has some Great Pyrenees in his blood, so the undercoat is soft. It will halo a bit when I spin and knit it. It will be wonderful. But! I spend hours on this one batt, and there are probably, oh, a hundred batts worth of wool!

Finished batt and setup on my clay table

 

 

On one hand, what wealth! On the other, at my age, do I really want to spend hundreds of hours Getting Ready to Spin? So I can have a ton of yarn with which to knit?

Oy.

I love these processes that make us realize what civilization simply gives us, and we have NO IDEA what it takes. We even grumble about the price. Growing food does that, too. My garden takes hours from planting the seeds in March to canning stuff in the fall. And it doesn't begin to feed us. It's a life embellishment. Hand spun yarn is also an embellishment. 

How to be begin to value it? 

For me, since it's about the process, spending years learning and making it was the pleasure. An interesting challenge. A skill to be gained. Having the handmade item is lovely, even better to give to someone who can appreciate it, but I'd never do it for the product. . the hand-knit sweater, mittens, whatever. It would be foolish, since I can't possibly afford to pay for it in dollars. I pay for it in time. And sometimes frustration.

Batt closeup

 So, after making this batt, and preparing to spin it into yarn, I also contacted several small batch wool processors. It turns out there are a lot of them. I'll, perhaps, end up paying in $'s and time for this yarn, but as I age, I'm trying to consciously chose how to spend my time.

You'd think I'd be smarter by now. . .

But then, I did get Jasper in the bargain.

Who's up for a belly rub?