Because with the amount of giggling and talking I was doing last night at the Hobart tweetup there was a very real possibilty that my teeth could have shot right out of my mouth and flown across the room and that, just isnt a good look. It is one of the tricky little downsides to shiny false teeth, the other downside is not being able to eat really crunchy things but that is a story for another day.
Last night a group of tweeters? Twitterers? People who tweet, met up for drinks and nibbles at Remi de Provence in South Hobart and it was great fun. I wish that I had though to ask where the brie was from as it was divine, the blue was gorgeous and the pate was very good.
I had been a bit nervous beforehand, I hoped that I would like everyone and more importantly I hoped that they would like me as well. As Veronica and I walked across the road to the restaurant my nerves were forgotten as I recognized people by their photos. Once inside we were guided to our seats in the corner of a small room and immediately we all started talking and laughing and exchanging our proper names.
The group was @Samaramc , also found at Samara McIlroy @StephenEstcourt,also found at Reminiscence of a Food Tragic, @MaryEstcourt, also found at The constant gardener, @utsicafe,also found at ut si, @SleeplessNights also found at Sleepless Nights and the blogless ones, The Prof ,@quinnal, @JoHCook and of course there was me @frogpondsrock.
We did have a camera but as the light was very flattering the photos are very blurry, so you will just have to imagine us all in our sparkly glory, eyes glowing, hair shiny, free of children and stable of tooth.
I would like to organise another tweet up in Hobart very, very soon and everyone is invited. We need a venue that has a bit more space than Remi’s, though I am happy to go back there just for the cheese alone. So any suggestions from Hobart people on a venue is more than welcome. We need to consider the ease of parking as well as somewhere that we can talk and be heard easily but they wont mind if we are a bit noisy and the food needs to be decent.
In the spring time I would like to organise a tweetup at the gardens so that children can come as well. That will be fun.
In other blog meeting news I am meeting up with Watershedd tomorrow at Salamanca market and I am looking forward to that very much. I must remember to glue my teeth in for that one as well. hehe.
A few weeks ago I attended a weekend ceramic workshop with two ceramic artists from Finland, Nanna Bayer and Riitta Talonpoika. I had never heard of these artists before the workshop but once I had googled their work I knew that I would come away from the workshop with a lot to think about.
I have played about with Neriage or coloured clay before but I have never really thought about it seriously. I tend to work intuitively and let the clay or the idea lead me. Lately I have been spending an awful lot of time thinking about the dragon eggs and the different styles of eggs that I want to make. As I want some brightly coloured eggs as well as some fossilised rock like ones, I knew that neriage would be a technique that I would use.
Here is a step by step process showing how I made a swirly patterned porcelain egg.
Weigh out approximately 500 grams (1 lb) of clay and press a hole into the centre of the clay. Add 2 level teaspoons of coloured body stain. These weights and measures are only a rough guide as I wont know what worked and what didn’t until the piece is fired.
Then add a dribble of water to the powder to make a paste.
You will notice that I am wearing gloves, this is because a lot of the materials used in ceramics are toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. I have consumed enough toxins in the last twenty or so years to last me a lifetime and I don’t need any more.
You now need to wedge (knead) the clay until all the colour is mixed through thoroughly. I spent all morning making coloured blocks of clay yesterday. I used varying amounts of coloured stain for each different coloured block depending on its strength. I would highly recommend taking detailed notes so that you can alter the weights of the body stain if the coloured clay fires either too bright or not bright enough.
Also clean hands and cleaning your work space each time you finish making a coloured block of clay is really important. I have accidentally put a green thumbprint on the blue and red blocks, luckily it was easy to remove but this kind of carelessness can potentially ruin a mornings work.
I wanted a dark blue, sky blue and white egg to start with so I made a layered block of clay by putting slices together side by side. The pretty mauve colour will fire to an almost navy blue.
I banged the clay around a bit on the table to squish everything together. Then I sliced the block in half and started the process of carefully wedging the clay together.
I wanted a swirly pattern so I kept on wedging the clay until I was happy with the colour balance.
Once I was happy with the colour balance I put half the coloured block of clay aside for later and I cut the remaining block in half again.
I then put slices of plain porcelain with slices of the coloured porcelain together.
And started the process of mixing them together all over again.Once I was happy with the colour ratio of navy blue to sky blue to white I made two pinch pots.
Notice the scoring on the top of the pots, that is to help the pots join together. I slapped some slip onto the scored edges of the pinch pots and stuck them together and shaped them into an egg shape. I made a small hole with a needle on the base of the egg so that the air can escape when the egg is being fired. Otherwise the egg will explode.
Tadaa, the first experimental Neriage porcelain dragon egg. I say experimental because I don’t know if the porcelain will hold its shape when I fire it or not. These eggs are about the size of a goose egg at the moment and they will shrink down to smaller than that once they are glazed and fired. If the porcelain eggs dont work properly I will just use white stoneware clay.
I have made some similar sized eggs using CRT, a lovely robust stoneware clay that I use to make my platters. These eggs have a twofold purpose, first and foremost I will use them as test pieces to see how the porcelain fires, see what glazes work, that sort of thing. But their secondary purpose and the one that will give me the most pleasure, is that I want to be able to give these away to anyone who wants one as a memento of the open day next February 2011.
I also need to make a hammock to keep the eggs in so that they don’t get a flat spot as they are drying out. These are in a nest of old towels inside one of my slump moulds in the middle of the lounge room floor, which is okay as a temporary measure but it makes things a bit squishy inside the house. I want to have about fifty of these smaller eggs ready on the day so I best jump off the computer and get making.
It doesn’t take much to make me happy but some things make me happier than others.
They are building a bypass down the road from us and as I drive down the Midlands Highway every day, I have been amazed by the amount of fill they are trucking in. The fill has mostly been rock but in the past couple of weeks, sections of the new highway have been covered with this glorious red clay. It has taken all my self control to not pull over to the side of the road and start frantically filling the boot of the car up with clay. I am busily plotting ways to get my hands on a bucket load of the stuff.
Yesterday we stopped at the Midlands fruit market and whilst I was inside the shop buying potatoes, The Spouse walked across the busy highway and came back with two clods of this yummy clay. I will process this raw clay in the next few days and experiment with it as a clay body, as a slip and as a glaze ingredient.
I have been busily making work to be sent out hither and yon all over the blogosphere and had been eagerly waiting for the kiln to cool down enough to see the finished results. As so often happens in ceramics some pieces that came out of the kiln were fantastic and some were crap.
Here are some pieces that didn’t work. The first cup on the left has cracked because I accidentally knocked the cup as I was glazing it. The glaze has pinholed at the rim because the glaze was too thick there. The middle cup is a total disaster because the glaze has run and crazed. I first thought this was because I had applied the glaze too thickly but I knew that I hadn’t, so after some thought I realized that it was probably because I had been using a new clay body. The crazing of a normally very reliable and forgiving glaze gives me a clue that the clay and the glaze don’t fit. The third cup is poorly glazed with pinholing on the rim due to me being careless.
The crazing and running on this piece are most probably because the glaze and clay body aren’t compatable. Even though I am not unhappy with how the piece looks it certainly isn’t fit for sale in the shop. It does feel gorgeous in my hands and the inside is lovely but it is destined for the seconds box.
This next piece will be winging its way off to a secret location in America on Wednesday. I made this for the ART SWAP and I am really pleased with it.
This Southern Boobook Owl was in the yard on Friday night and I am really happy that I was able to get a half decent photo of it. Yay. I could have stayed out there snapping away for ages as she didn’t seem fussed that I was there. But I already felt guilty that I had buggered up her night vision with my flash So I left her alone.
I have been meaning to post a photo of myself here for a while and I keep on forgetting. So what better time than now when I have been inspired by my lovely British friend Barbara to bear all. I have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to visit anyone on line and when I did everyone was naked. YAY.
The idea originally came from Jodie Ansted at Mummy Mayhem.
My gorgeous American friend Kristin wrote that, if you believe that beauty comes from within and would like to support this movement, put up a post on Friday and show us your beautiful self, sans makeup.
It is Saturday here in Tasmania but better late than never.
I don’t wear makeup unless it is a special occasion and this photo is how I generally look every day. Except that in this photo I am remarkably clean. Normally I have clay on me somewhere.
Just a quick couple of photos that I took this afternoon. I have had to go to town every day this week for one reason or another and this afternoon I finally managed to have a bit of a play with my new camera. I still have no idea what on earth I am doing but half the fun is in the trying.
