Toad abodes

My husband and a neighbor were chatting on our porch when I got a call from Jo, who ordered two toad homes. The story was that she couldn’t move her trash container without disturbing the toad that lives under it. Her neighbor had a similar problem, so they needed two toad homes. And the structures have to have big, wide “Denver doors” because these are big, wide toads. Did I get eye rolls from the guys when I reported my new project!

When I got ready to build toad homes, Jo’s neighbor, Janet, decided she would come and make her own. What fun we had! Janet used a pumpkin mold for hers. I made Jo’s with coils. Janet fashioned a pumpkin flower top and will add a copper tendril. I used a pumpkin leaf to roof the ventilation holes in Jo’s toad’s abode. We used a couple different clays to make them earthy. I doubt there are a lot of toads out there with elegant stoneware homes, but there are at least two. The data are not yet in on how much they improve the quality of life of big, wide toads, but they were fun to make!

Small things

I like to make large pots. I have been known to lop the top off pots to get them to fit in my kilns. On the other hand, I don’t like firing those kilns with gaps on the shelves—and big pots leave large unused spaces between them. 

Consequently, I began making small cookie-cutter shapes and inch-round beads to fill the spaces. Putting those glazed beads in one at a time is not my greatest joy, but living near the Chesapeake Bay for a long time, I had driftwood to play with. Who could resist the combination? 

Along came those Kahoka mobiles and windchimes because stoneware resonates so beautifully. I experimented on my neighbors and found that the wind often untied the knots, so drops of epoxy were introduced. I conferred with someone from the Division of Natural Resources about moving wood around, and we concluded that a few coats of polyurethane spray would do in any wood-borne critter that survived the brackish bay water. Now, hundreds of mobiles later, they still do not do well in gale force winds, but they are not merely an artifact of filling up the shelves. I have fun making 

them.

Lost River Artisans’ Co-op: Fundraiser for Potomac Highlands Animal Rescue.

Saturday, August 30^th from 10 AM until 2 PM

Lost River Artisans’ Co-op (7151 Route 259 in Lost City, West Virginia) will sponsor a fundraiser for Potomac Highlands Animal Rescue.

PHAR is an all-volunteer 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 1997. It serves Hardy and Grant Counties by providing temporary shelter and foster homes, food, medical attention, spay and neuter assistance, and comfort to neglected, homeless, and injured animals. It also works to reunite lost animals with their human partners. My wonderful dog, Xander, came from PHAR after being rescued from a house fire. Please come out and support the cause. There will be some great Kahoka dog and cat pots to win!

Greetings from Algonquin Provincial Park

There are touches of red in the maples up here in northern Ontario, and the goldenrod is starting to bloom; it all foretells things to come for which I am not ready. It is rainy but great to rendezvous with long-time Canadian friends. On the other hand, since we live at the back of beyond in the peace and quiet of wonderful woods, even the most rustic campground seems contrived and crowded. 

I miss my clay and pots and their regular multi-phased progression by which the former becomes the latter. I expect I will meet a potter or two before getting back to Lost Hollow; I will need to get my hands around a nice stoneware shape. On the other hand, there is a 50-pound box of clay with us in the trailer, along with a tray and a straw. Do you know how many Kahoka beads that combination can produce? But first I’m looking for moose and if I am very lucky, maybe a wolf. Bears we have at home, for which I am grateful. Along the way I notice leaves I am not familiar with and imagine how they would look on clay. H’mmm.

Class act

My kiln is full of pots I did not make. Last Saturday was the final session of my class through Lost River Artisans’ Cooperative. We hold it at my studio, since moving wet pots bodes doom. Six students met two weeks earlier to make their coil and slab works of art. After those were cleaned, dried, and bisque fired, the students returned to glaze them. Most find glazing a trickier task than the building, since it is hard to imagine what the opaque glaze will look like after it is fired. There will be some grand surprises when they pick up their pots!

Some students had previous experience throwing on potters’ wheels, but few studios offer handbuilding classes. Perhaps we are a society too dependent on complex machines to think of rolling out clay and pressing leaves into it as creative. To handbuild, you need only your hands, some clay, and a sense of what you and the clay might do together. It is quiet and peaceful. Even my slab roller is a simple mechanical contraption. No learning curve there: turn the wheel and the roller squeezes the clay flat between two pieces of canvas. The potential is endless! 

 

Compost Heaven

There is a lot of action in the compost pile these days! Ours is a generous size—a railroad tie in length on each side and a couple of ties high. All year, I make pots over pumpkins. I love their irregular curvy ridges and overall great forms. Eventually those pumpkins give way, however, so I make clay molds of the ones with the shapes and sizes I like best. Then I can still make pumpkin pots when pumpkins are not available. The succumbing real pumpkin disappears into the compost until late spring when its seeds germinate to remind me of its heroic past in my studio. By July I have the biggest tangle of vines you’ve ever seen, with magnificent leaves of myriad shapes and sizes not only from pumpkins but other seedy sources too. Then we dig all the new compost into one side of the pile and let the verdant vines cascade over the other sides of the compost square and into the yard. I cut the largest leaves off to use to shape platters and plates. Their veining is wonderful, their shape pure summer-- talk about organic! Who says pumpkins are only about autumn?