Diabolical Clay

Or in my case to get two uses out of one batch of chicken drumsticks.

Yesterday morning I was trying to work out what I could do with a kilo or so of chicken drumsticks. As I was thinking through my cooking options I also followed a train of thought to do with healthy cooking when you are living below the poverty line. There is so much negative publicity out there relating to low incomes being synonomous with poor eating habits. On and on whirred my brain, busily formatting blog posts until I slammed back into a wall of negativity relating to that blasted review.

I stood in the kitchen chopping vegetables and stewing on the fact that the reviewer had spat out the word recipes like it was a curse. And that moment was when I finally let go of the review. Of course I occasionally share recipes I am passionate about good food as well as playing in the mud. Tosser.

So I need to say a big thankyou to everyone that has humoured me whilst I have been sulking over that stupid arsed review. I am finally over it now and that really is all down to you, my dear internetz. Whilst I was analyzing my responses to the review and giggling at some of your responses to my post about the review, I also had a bit of a think about my blog and why I am blogging. The main reason that I am still blogging is because I really enjoy the ongoing conversation that I am having with you my readers. Thanks to blogging I now have a large circle of online friends and I am not lonely anymore.

Your ideas for the dragon eggs have made the air around me crackle with creative energy. Your feedback, friendship and support gives me respite from the sadness that threatens to overwhelm me. You have all given me a great gift and I am thankful.

So back to the chicken,I threw them into a large pot with a chopped onion, three or four cloves of garlic, some carrots and potatoes. I tied together some sage leaves and fresh thyme from the garden I also threw in a good shake of mixed herbs and a pinch of salt. I simmered the pot on top of the woodheater until the drumsticks were cooked through and then I fished them out and put them aside for later.

Somehow I managed to get sidetracked by twitter and the telephone and before I knew it it was tea time and the spouse was looking a tad gaunt. I kept the peace by giving him a drumstick and shooing him back into his cave shed. I browned off the drumsticks in some olive oil and more garlic and dished them up with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy. Simple comfort food for a Sunday night.

Today I will tart up the soup base that I made yesterday, by throwing in some greenery from the garden, kale and silverbeet. I have a heap of zucchinis that I was given so I will probably throw some zuke in to the pot as well. I normally have frozen celery tops in the freezer that I keep specifically for soups and stock but I have just run out and the celery in the garden is looking very sad.

This pot of vegetable soup will be our main meal tonight and probably lunch tomorrow.I will also freeze three portions for my lunch this week whilst I am at the studio. So I think that I got my moneys worth out of that batch of drumsticks.

And just because I can here is a photo of the moon I took last night. I couldn’t be bothered setting up the tripod so I just went outside and pointed at the moon and hoped the shots wouldn’t be too blurry. They weren’t. Yay.

This year is the final year of my advanced ceramics diploma. The pace has been stepped up a notch and I make the trek in to the polytechnic three days a week instead of two.Two days are studio access days where I am busily refining my throwing skills and getting ready for a serious block of glaze testing. Fridays are spent in a classroom with a group of artists from all the other studio areas. It is a good mix of jewellers, printmakers,woodworkers and ceramicists.

Going into the studio for an extra day has thrown my schedule at home out of kilter and I know it will take me a few weeks to get used to it. I am surprised by the fact that it is nearly March, as time seems to be just racing away. I looked at my blog and thought, I need to let my internet friends know what I am up to and pfft another three days just vanished into thin air.

So here I am sitting here by myself in the quiet of the morning with the thoughts and words swirling away in my head. I keep on coming back to that blasted review and the phrase this is boring slides into my head. Once I start to second guess myself and lose the flow of the story the words start misbehaving and I struggle to string them together. Sorry.

Yesterday our theory group had a full day in the city visiting the museum, the art school, art forum and two exhibitions. It was a harrowing day emotionally as one of the exhibitions, Never Again, a photographic essay of the survivors of the Rwandan massacre was very confronting. As was the subsequent presentation about it and photojournalism. I haven’t fully processed the information and sorted it into its respective boxes in my brain yet. But I will do that here in the next few days, as I think my response to the photos of the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda needs to be shared.

So still reeling from the photo presentation we went up to Cast gallery in North Hobart to see an exhibiton by Vernon Ah Kee. This exhibiton was also very thought provoking and deserves a post of its own as well.

I am working through some ceramic ideas using the plaster slabs and I think I will spend tomorrow making and photographing a series of ceramic ideas. I should be doing the housework and laundry but instead I will be making a bigger mess of my already chaotic home. Oh dear.

My friend Robin Roberts, a talented photographer is going to send me some lovely landscape photos of Tasmania, especially for your viewing pleasure. Yay. These next photos are indicative of the type of work that he does. Robin is a recent arrival to Tasmania and as most people do he has fallen head over heels in love with Tassie and travels all over the place snapping away merrily.

There are more photos over here.

Hello, Veronica here – frogpondsrock will be in a state of flux for a little bit while I try and work out an internal issue that won’t let me change themes without serious issues.

Forgive me!

I have been dreaming about the Dragon eggs. I keep on going back to the dragon post and re-reading all your comments and spinning off into wonderful daydreams. I have a couple of glaze combinations that I want to experiment with that should give me a lovely sparkly green. I am hoping to get the depth and surprise of an Australian opal. But the glaze might be too runny for an oval surface like an egg and might be better suited to the edges of a dead albatross bowl instead.

I start back at the studio this Thursday and I will be doing an awful lot of glaze testing to get the colours and textures of the eggs just so. I will keep you posted with photos of the tests.

I have been thinking a lot about the eggs and I don’t want to say that they are dragon eggs, that will be just between you and me. I want the people that see them and especially the children to make up their own minds.

Last Thursday “The Spouse” and I went down to the river. I had packed half a bag of clay in the car along with my rolling pin and a large board, just in case the fish weren’t biting.It is hard to concentrate on fishing when the ceramic juices are flowing so I rolled out a heap of clay slabs and pressed them into the rocks.

Here they are drying out a bit, so that I could safely transport them home.

Later on that evening I used the slabs of clay to make plaster press moulds.

Here  are the finished press moulds. I have no idea what I am going to do with them yet other than some vague ideas of rolling the dragon eggs over them for some texture.I might press slabs of clay into them and use them as sections of the dead albatross bowls or for texture in a sculptural piece. The possibilities are endless.

I do know one thing for sure though, just looking at them makes me extraordinarily happy.

If there is one thing that really gets up my nose it is a job poorly done. Why on earth you would even decide to do something if you were going to be half arsed about it is beyond me. Either do the bloody thing properly or just don’t bother.

I submitted my blog  to Ask And Ye Shall Receive for a review, their blog has the url of  iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com so you would reasonably expect that you weren’t going to get bouquets when you deserve brickbats.I have been a regular reader of ‘Ask’ for a couple of years now, so I am also well acquainted with how they operate.

What I didn’t expect, was that I would get a reviewer who was unprofessional enough to let his distaste of the bloggies awards colour his review, to the point that he only read the first few pages of my blog.

In the comments he is very quick to point out that there are much better Aussie blogs out there that could have been nominated.Whilst I agree with that sentiment, this review wasn’t supposed to be about my unworthiness as a bloggies finalist. It was supposed to be about my words,which he didn’t actually bother reading.

He is a gushing fan of my daughter, which is as it should be because quite frankly, Veronica is brilliant. The disappointment that my blog wasn’t the same as Veronica’s was almost palpable.

On the strength of a couple page views and roughly half an hour on my blog, I have been dismissed out of hand as nice but boring.

I think it was the accusation of dullness that stung more than anything because it is the first time in my life I have ever been accused of being boring.

So how do I deal with a label of dullness. Well apart from stirring the guts out of my daughter about her ardent admirer from Adelaide. I am going to ignore it.

As I wrote in my about me page I am comfortable in my skin and I don’t feel the need to portray myself as anything other than what I am.

I know who I am and where I am going.

I have shed my skin numerous times. I left all the edgy, angst-filled, woe and the desire to change the world behind me when I was a teen. The dark experimentations and addictions were sloughed off in my twenties. My thirties were a decade of coming to terms with myself, coupled with some very serious drinking. Now in my forties all my various addictions are distant memories and I know that I am on the cusp of a great adventure.

Do I need to tell the stories of out drinking a twenty stone tin miner with more hair on his back than King Kong or doing drugs as a teenager in a public toilet. Will these stories, dredged from my past make my blog edgy and hip? Or do I put those recollections behind me and be thankful that I am alive,that I have made it to 44 with only the loss of my teeth to mark my journey and just write about who I am now?

I think the here and now suits me.

Professor Booty says that I am not his “demitasse of espresso”. Simply by uttering that slice of oh so superior superciliousness, he shows that he isn’t my fucking cup of tea either.

My daughter Veronica, from Sleepless Nights and I were talking this morning about a joint advertising, sponsorship programme for our blogs.

Veronica was over at Problogger the other day, reading a post from Josh at Worlds Strongest Librarian – both good blogs to read through if you’ve got some time – and he was talking about how he got sponsors for WSL.

He ran a competition, asked people to submit an application to him and at the end of a month, he had sponsors.

The deal:

I ask for an application – you provide it, along with a 125×125 px image to use as your ad.

You get a month’s FREE advertising on Frog Ponds Rock in the right hand sidebar over there, just below the No Clean Feed logo. I will remove the recent posts, recent comments feature and replace it with your ads.

At the end of a month, you can either choose to pay for another month’s advertising, or walk away from this whole deal with nothing lost, hopefully still sticking around to read me.

If everybody walks at the end of a month, I will run the same competition again, with new applicants and new ads, for another month long free advertising stint.

The Application:

Here is what I want from you.

I want you to email me with:

A 125×125 px graphic that will be used to link your blog.

Answers to these questions:

Who are you?

What makes you happy?

Why do you want to advertise on Frog Ponds Rock (correct answers include – because I like Frog Ponds Rock – incorrect answers include – because it’s free stupid.)

Why is your blog/business special?

***

We will be accepting applications up until the 1st of March and We will announce the winners on the 14th of March.

When I say ‘month long’ I meant from the 10th to the 10th or the 20th to the 20th, regardless of how many days in the month. February is out of the running, so you’re not getting short changed.

Fine Print, that isn’t actually fine at all, because it’s the same size as everything else.

There will be 6 ad spots available.

I will be judging the applications myself, with some help from Sleepless Nights– who will also be running the same competition on her blog. I will be as impartial as I can. My decision will be based on your application – it will not be based on the size of your blog or business.

You don’t have to be selling something; you can advertise your blog.

I will not advertise for drugs, illegal activities or propaganda. I reserve the right to make that decision.

Everyone will be charged the same amount at the end of the month, no special deals, or more expensive ads for big businesses. I reserve the right to not tell you how much I’m charging in this blog post, but I will disclose it within emails.

And yes I have copied this nearly word for word from Veronica’s post so for those of you who read us both you aren’t seeing double.

My email address is frogpondsrock@gmail.com and please include the words ‘Advertising Competition’ in the subject line.

What colour do you think the dragon eggs should be? I was leaning towards bright colours. Not highly decorated like easter eggs which was my first thought but single colours,ranging from light blues and greens to reds and purples. Now I am not so sure, Veronica suggested light swirly pastels hmmm. I think I will nip over to Robin Hobb’s blog and ask her what colour she imagined her dragon eggs to be.

To answer Achelois there isn’t a shop at the sanctuary though I will be able to have a stall and sell my work there on the day. There will be stalls from groups like the Understorey Network and Weedbusters etc. I was a sensitive child as well  Achelois, now that you have reminded me of that, I am thinking about the dead albatross bowls from the perspective of a child and maybe they might be a bit too much. I will see.

The annual fundraising open day for the Chauncy Vale Wildlife Sanctuary is this Sunday the 14th of February. I will go down there and hand over my proposal. I will check out the age range of the visitors, see where they set up the stalls,just basically do a bit of light reconnaissance. I will come home and in order to get the ideas straight in my head I will write about it here and then I will start making. Yay.

Another point I need to keep in mind as I am working towards this event is the very real possibility that I could design a wonderful one off series of work especially to be viewed in situ and the whole day could be cancelled due to it being a day of total fire ban. Australian summers certainly keep you on your toes.

River and Mrs C also wondered whether my work would be safe  there.That is a risk I will have to take and one that I am comfortable with.The whole process of making ceramics is fraught from start to finish, there are so many things that can go wrong as you are making that I dont even worry about it any more. I just offer it all up to the universe and what will be will be.

I want people to be able to pick up my work and look at it closely so I will make the dragon eggs sturdy enough to be handled.I might even throw a couple of cracked ones into the nests as well.

Robin Hobb answered my question about her dragon’s eggs, I suspect that they’d be rather like turtle eggs, with shells more leathery than brittle. And camouflaged to blend in with the sand and protect them from predators.

Now I am thinking of leathery bands of texture on the eggs as well. Oh I am getting more excited about the dragon eggs than anything else. This year is going to be a good year but I will need to remember my key words, Focus and Resolution in order to take advantage of all the possibilites this year has to offer.

So tell me what you think about the colour and size of the dragon eggs, send me off on a zillion tangents with your suggestions.How would seeing a giant nest full of eggs make you feel? I have been hopeless answering my emails lately as well, sorry about that. I love reading them and I really mean to reply but I  am off with the faeries at the moment with my head full of dragons and dinosaurs and beautiful blue bowls and oh look at that cloud where’s my camera…

There is a wildlife sanctuary just down the road from here and I have been mulling over an idea to have an exhibition down there  for a while now.

My friend Dawn Oakford initially suggested the concept. Over the past four months I have gotten the idea out and poked at it, then I have put it away in the bottom drawer of my mind.

Next Sunday it is the annual open day at the sanctuary and I need to have a bit of a proposal drawn up for the committee. Typically I have left it to the last minute to put anything down on paper as I only have a vague idea of what I want to do.

I know that I want to make a series of bowls with questions written on them. I want to make people think about extinction. I want to appeal to the children that are there.I want my work to inspire the people that view it to start asking their own questions as they think about the  the questions on the bowls.

So in order to get the ideas flowing  I took three sample pieces of my work down to Chauncy Vale and photographed them in situ.

The dead albatross bowl looked really out of place on a nest of sticks. I need to make some dragon eggs for this spot. Some brightly decorated dragon eggs. Dragon eggs that have been inspired by Robin Hobb’s novels that I will enjoy making and that will be a bit of whimsy. I am sure that the children will think that they are dinosaur eggs and I am fine with that. Seeing a nest of giant eggs on the side of a bush track should inspire some questions.

There are plenty of places to stash some ceramic sculptures along the trail. Obvious spots like in a crack in this stone wall.

Or at the base of a tree.

There are also plenty of places to put my work that isn’t as obvious.

I have been making ceramic shells for a while now and I keep on covering these beautiful shells with graffiti. I decorate them with jarring colours and great black runny drops of glaze. As a species we seem to be hell bent on  destroying beauty.Graffiti covered shells in a dry creek bed seems pretty apt to me.

The dead albatross bowls will feature prominently along with bowls like requiem for a tree and the useless residue bowls. So that is my idea in its rough draft format. What do you reckon?