Happy New Year!

From all of us:  Have a very Happy New Year!

 

 

Peep, Peep, Peep

These little birds were made with a different type of clay and have a different type of surface design and a different type of glaze on them.

Susan really liked them. So naturally I sold them at the Student Art Sale. I may not be getting lucky for another decade.

Or at least until I make some more for her.

We had a quiet Christmas and contributed to Amazon's profit for the year. How could you ever go wrong with books? The latest Netflix have been The Way Way Back - an A for the movie but an A+ for Toni Collette's acting, and Looper - an A+ for an incredibly imaginative movie that still has us confused.

Happy Whatever-You-Want-It-To-Be Holiday

Have a happy holiday season. After all, as doofus as I look, I'm happy.

It would be nice to think that this is the last Christmas any troops have to be at the Kabul, Afghanistan, airport for their dinner. It would be nice to think that these troops will be eating next year's Christmas dinner at home, with real silverware and dishes.

Yes, I'm Still Here

Here's the deal: We went to New York City and Washington DC for Thanksgiving (actually, we came home on Thanksgiving Day). It was a short 3 days in NYC (including travel), one day on Amtrak to DC (with a long nap when we arrived) and 4 days in DC. When we got home we took a lot more naps. The good news is we got to see a lot of good museum shows, the bad news is that we moved so fast we didn't take any time to visit with our good friends (you know who you are!) in NYC or DC.

But, as you can see from the picture above, I did visit with one of my favorites. Susan likes to catch photos of me pondering art (below is by Al Held, above by Modigliani).

So where has the blog been in the meantime? We came home to Susan having a sudden, earlier than planned, deadline of December 18 to have eight (8!) previously promised Toddler quilts made - all pieced, quilted, edges bound and finally photo-ed.  A Toddler quilt is one that is about 36-40 wide and about 45-50 inches long -- big enough to be a cover but not so big they trip on it when they drag it around. Sewing and nothing else, definitely not the blog, consumed her days while I did dishes and kept thread and pins picked up off the floor.

Below are the fronts and then the backs (you can  match them up because she scrambled the order!).  Sometimes when she is finished she likes the back better than the front. 

Street Art and Yarn Bombing

This wall is near Whole foods and is topped off by railroad tracks. It has been a canvas for graffiti artists many times, giving it a nice varied background. These stay in place about a week or two before the city paints them over.

 

Susan told me (and I believe her because her authority comes from her grandmother who taught her how to knit, crochet, quilt, sew and play canasta) that these were crocheted into place. Way cool. The barrier (ha!) is supposed to keep people away from the graffiti wall.  As if. I missed seeing the previous display but from the amount of paint below the wall it must have had a lot of pink in it.

Sad Guys, Happy Guys

Two new happy Mousies, right? Wrong -- look harder.

When little Mousies are being raku fired in a hot kiln and fall onto each other they will pull the glaze off each other where they touched. Sad mousies. I'd be a lot sadder if I was trying to make a living doing this stuff. As it is, the only damage, other than the mousies, is to my ego.  I was quite sure I had the Kiln Goddess on my side. How could I have forgotten how fickle some women (No, not you, Susan) are?

 

My little hedgehogs are actually whistles, a feat I have been working on for weeks. I read several articles about how to make ceramic whistles and watched some YouTube videos on it and finally can get it right. These guys still need to be fired.