Bewildering Balderdash

"When the needle points to the sky, you are pulling in the energy of Spirit. When it returns to the cloth, you are bringing that energy down into the project. When the needle points down to the earth, you are drawing in earth energy (extremely powerful when you wish to manifest things on this plane). When it comes back up through the cloth, you are bringing that energy into the project. Likewise, when knitting, your needles are working with sky energy, but your yarn is a representation of earth energy – together, just as in stitching cross-stitch or needlepoint, you are creating balance in the work.”

From HedgeWitch: Spells, Crafts, and Rituals for Natural Magick by Silver Ravenwolf

Woosh! Things are moving so fast I might need a seat-belt soon.

The glaze firing on the 24 went off without a hitch. One yarn bowl ran but came off the shelf with no breakage. Looks like smokey Merlot really needs to mixed thoroughly at least twice before dipping any pots in it; if not, it comes out looking like a translucent brick red-brown. The pieces are still going up for sale because they're pretty in their own way. There's a few really good looking mugs and it seems that textured interiors on yarn bowls and bread baskets are getting a lot of attention.

Speaking of yarn bowl with textured insides - there's currently an order in the works for one - a birthday present to be sent to Texas.

Friday found me in Culpeper for a few errands and a delightful lunch with njzoomom. It was nice to take some time and chat - a little vacation from the hectic.

The weather has been really wonderful here for the last few days. Pretty much everything has turned green. The daffodils had a shortened visit due to the last cold snap, but the lilacs are blooming and smell so wonderful. It looks like most of the trees and grasses we planted last year are still alive.

The cover for the tent has been completed (it looks even better than I hoped) and I made the tent leg covers today while daecabhir sorted out the best way to tie the tent down. Turns out that making 2" bias tape is pretty easier (especially when compared to making 1/2") and I'm glad that ended up going with the manual bias tape tips.

We have two stools that I found on Craigslist that we'll be using at faire; I just need to make covers for them and we will probably cut the legs down a little to make them more comfy.

Things are coming together - even if it's quite crazy.

After having to turn the AC earlier this week, daecabhir and I put the flannel sheets back on the bed since it will be dipping down into the 40's for the week. We opened up the house early on in the day but had to close it back up since we were getting chilly. The day was gorgeous though; the sky was brilliantly blue after last night's wicked storm. (We were under tornado watch for a bit yesterday evening.)

Today was bath day for the dogs and they got their Frontline treatment. Tucker has been on his maintenance dose of Adequan for a two months now and I have noticed that he starts to get gimpy around the three-week mark. We'll have to talk with Dr. Rushing to see if we can tweak his dose to keep him limber.

A friend of a friend pinged me about buying a few pieces of pottery which really made my day. Looks like I will be sending some spoon rests to North Carolina soon.

Apparently I have used up my sewing fu - for some reason the Kenmore started having fits and doesn't want to sew anything properly now. After fighting with it for two days, I gave up and popped njzoomom's old Singer in the table and while it sews the test fabric just fine, it doesn't want to sew fan pouches or the broadcloth for bias tape. While I will do the bulk of the 'big' sewing on tent cover with the serger, I need a regular machine to be working for fan pouches, Mike's wrap pants, and the tent dags - not to mention chair covers and what ever else pops up.

In knitting news ... Oh wait. There is no knitting news because I have been so busy with everything else that I haven't have time to knit at all this month.

The best husband in the world not only helped me lay out 14 yards of fabric to cut down to the panels that we will measure and cut tomorrow for the tent cover but also did all the math to help make sure the angles would work with the fabrics that I bought. And then he took me out to dinner. He rocks my world - time and time again.

I've got a few more greenware pots to clean up in preparation to run a bisque firing tomorrow. That will leave me with everything left in the studio ready to glaze - which means I will have at least more glaze firings to run (and all the glazing to do) in the coming week.

Our faire flatware has been purchased and should be here next week. My Panda looked over the mugs that I have done this evening and picked one that he likes so that he will have it for faire (he still has to choose his glaze for it though). I'll be using a mug that came out really very nice ... right up until the time where I tried to knock a glaze run-off with a hammer. It took out a small chunk of the bottom edge, but I sanded it down and the mug is still usable. Let that be a lesson to me!

Yesterday was a Culpeper day and after I stopped to count them up, I realized that I had made ten eleven (I just recounted) stops during the course of my day. Among the highlights...

• A nice lunch with njzoomom at the China Garden.


• Got myself a fancy-schmancy house key so that I find it easier on my key ring.


• Scoring some decent music CDs and a big bag of sewing notions at GoodWill.


• Getting rid of more stuff we don't need at GoodWill.


• Finding yummy manicotti at Aldi's.


• Settling on a case for my sunglasses because it's really pretty and after looking for weeks I gave up.

Today was another glazing day in the studio and the kiln is ready to fire tomorrow. There are still pots to be glazed but I want to see how the smokey merlot fires before I glaze more.

daecabhir's pinky is doing well. He's down-graded to a regular band-aid from the huge, winged finger tip affair. He heals quickly which is good thing[tm].

After my honey helped me noodle through the tent cover pattern last night,; he made the most excellent suggestion that I should try making one with scrap fabric before trying the real deal. I knocked a test cover out this afternoon and it came out as planned. Yay for a really helpful partner who is good at sorting this stuff out.

The first bisque firing in the Skutt went well with the exception that the cone (^04) never bent. The pottery looks, feels, and sounds bisque-fired so I'll just chalk this one up to a 'what-the-heck'. thing. I did have one firing in the Duncan that did the same thing and all that pottery turned out okay. The firing lasted 12.21 hours. Nothing blew up. The kiln vent system seemed to work well.

Speaking of "what-the-heck' moments, today's temperature hit the 92 degrees and I kicked on the AC after sweltering in the house yesterday with the kiln going. So much for spring.

Today's studio time was spent throwing a few items - some larger mugs (well, they don't have handles yet) and a vase; cleaning up some things from yesterday, and emptying the kiln. There was also some sewing time for fan pouches.

The flu dregs still have me me captive and while I am blowing my nose less, I am still coughing and was so sleepy by mid-morning that I crashed for a nap.

Terry Tessum surprised me with a call this afternoon. He said that he had been thinking about the mugs that I brought to show him and said that 'potters make the inside of pots' ... meaning that we can trim the outside to make it into what we want, but the inside has be there to start with. I asked him if he could hear the light bulb go off. Sadly, none of the bread baskets that daecabhir and I made while we were at his studio survived the bisque firing; Terry thinks that he may have forgotten to tell or show us something that he does in the process. I think that that we were more worried about getting the creation technique down-pat than making a final product. (All of the bread baskets that I fired in my bisque firing made it  through okay.)

Get it? Gag line instead of tag line? High-larious as my Panda would say.

The flu seems to like me and has completely over-stayed its welcome. I was supposed to visit with 1painter42 today and wasn't able to do so because of the silly sickness.

There has been some progress on fan pouches for both dreamtigress and P3, with two dozen pouches going out in today's mail to B'more. Aside from _all_ of the fan pouches, I still need to work on my tent cover, make a pair of wrap pants for my brother-in-law, Mike, and a chair cover for my camo chair for VARF. Hmm ... speaking of chairs, a certain husband of mine needs to think about what he would like to sit on during faire.

Tomorrow is mammogram day, oh joy. That was sarcasm, just in case you missed it in whatever font you're reading my blog in. I was hoping to move to the progress every-other-year deal but with last year's lump scare, there's no way they'd let me skip one this year.

Speaking of my blog, I am not in love with some of the changes that LJ has made but, much like Facebook, just how much can I complain for a service that I don't pay for? Not a whole lot. Well, actually I can complain the same amount as if I was paying for it, but it wouldn't do any good in either case.

With any luck, Wednesday will be a studio day. I want to make more baskets and yarn bowls. Plus I really need to throw more since I have been doing a lot of hand-building lately. Hopefully next weekend will find us hooking up the kiln vent system. There's a full load of pottery to glaze yet and about a half a kiln of greenware already.

Skipped the new medicine on Sunday and was nausea-free for the whole day - it felt great!! The doctor's office finally called back this morning and they said it would be weeks for the nausea to go away. I let her know that wasn't an option and I kind of doubt that it will go away because I am pretty sure that the side effects is due to another one of my medications. The nurse and doctor will re-group and call me back again. In the meantime, I am staying clear of the new med.

The shawl has been blocked and is now dry, I am pretty pleased with how it looks. It's a pretty simple design and stitch but I wanted something practical for faire use.

The next project is already on the loom - a magic scarf for dreamtigress from some eyelash yarn that she had bought to play with. It's easier to knit that I had anticipated but just as messy. Unexpected was the challenge of trying to join the two skeins together. Some needle and thread to the rescue!

The kiln is one shelf from being full and I will probably go ahead and fire it this week so that I can bring some examples of my current work to Terry as he requested. I asked him if he was needing a good laugh. <wry smile >

Measured the First Up tent (it's like an EZ-Up) so that I could start planning on making a cover for it for VARF. Now to find 12 yards of suitable fabric in colors that I like and that go well together. For the most part, the construction is straight lines which I cane usually sew fairly well. I do want to be a little tricky and put dags around the edges. I'm pondering getting a bias tape machine since I go through a lot of bias tape with fan pouches and skirts anyway and the tent will take 14-17 yards for the dagged edges.

So much time and so little do.

Oh wait!

Hard to believe that the week is almost over! There has been lots of laundry, a bit of pottery, sewing, more laundry, lawn mowing, and knitting. There are two more yarn bowls to go into the kiln with the next bisque firing and I have now created two pairs of fingerless gloves - including a pair with a thumb! daecabhir has a new pair of wrap pants (he'll debut them on Day of Wrong).

Time for bed!

This is the last 'free' weekend that daecabhir and I have until November and we are going to make the most of it. Later today, we'll be heading over to 1painter42's place for a visit with she and her hubby. Before we go, we've got a few things to get accomplished around the house - some progress on the electrical work downstairs, selling the mini fridge (finally, we hope), packing up stuff for eBay sales and a haircut for my honey. Tomorrow will be a studio day for both daecabhir and I - there will be mutual clay therapy and a lot of adorkableness.

This week gave me two days in the studio back to back. Some pieces were created and my studip is much cleaner now. We had another contractor in to give us estimates on some of bigger projects we want to accomplish and the suggestion has come up to install a French drain for the studio (so guess what I am researching).

Also this week there has been a lot of sewing. The most recent object of my attention have been fan pouches for dreamtigress. So far this year, I've made over 150 of them! Hopefully they sell well for her at the booth and other venues.

The ninja project of earlier in the week has been revealed. I bought some touch up paint and fixed all the paint dings in the Prius from the gravel road plus the key mark down the driver side from Baltimore. daecabhir was happy so that's one for the win column.

No sales this week at the farmers' market; better luck next week.

After a day and a half of feeling puny, I was pretty much back to normal today. In case I needed proof that I wasn't feeling up to snuff, I crashed for four hours yesterday after laying down thinking I would probably rest for a little bit. Knowing that I can go overboard quickly, I tried to take it easy today because I simply _must_ be 100% for tomorrow.

After battling two different sewing machines, I was able to sew most of a garb shirt for myself before running out of thread. There would have been plenty of thread had the Singer not decided to eat a bunch of it. There also would have been buttonholes in the garb shirt that I made for daecabhir except the buttonhole thingie was broken on his Kenmore. Ah well. At least progress was made.

Tomorrow I'll be starting an 8-week hand-building class at the Manassas Clay pottery studio. The instructor, Mikki Hudgins, was highly recommended by Wendy Z., my wheel class instructor. I'm looking forward to learning not only hand-building techniques that will put the slab roller to very good use but to also learn the mechanics of join clay for things like handles and embellishments on wheel-thrown pieces.

There is a good chance that I will be changing my cell phone number since it currently is a toll call to dial my cell from the country home. How dumb is that - thanks Verizon! It's not something I ever noticed when I was single but having to pay to call one of your phones from your home lime is just plain silly.