Diabolical Clay

I fired a small kiln load of work recently and for the most part I was pretty happy with the results. I have been experimenting with my own homemade porcelain slip, mainly because the commercial porcelain slip is hideously expensive.

I decorated some tall cups with a black iron oxide slip mixture, which unfortunately turned poo-brown once they were fired instead of the charcoal black that I wanted. Also the porcelain warped heaps in the firing, turning perfectly round tops into eggy oval shapes.

My first thoughts when I saw them was, “I should send these to Kelley” then I wondered if Kelley really needed a couple of cups that looked  like they were decorated a la Boo…

The reason that the porcelain warped was that the kiln shelf expanded differently than the cups in the firing. So to make sure the porcelain doesn’t warp next time I will need to fire each cup on its own little square slab of porcelain so that the movement in the kiln is the same.

These next two beakers are from the sky dancer series that I am working on. This is my photograph of the Tasmanian summer sky that has inspired this lot of work.

The decisions that I need to make about my slipcast work are all related to my personal aesthetic as well as my belief that, in each piece of work that I make, I have left a piece of my very essence,my soul or spirit within the work. In these two cups above, there is a nice free decorative line contained within the boundaries of a rigid form. But also there is the makers mark, my marks that also contribute to the overall freedom of the work.

I think with these two cups I made for Jientje that I am beginning to get my artistic balance together.When you hold the cups you can tell that they were handmade by a real person and not mass produced in a factory somewhere. I hope that when Jientje holds them she feels a small touch of the Tasmanian sky.

I believe that my work should look like it is handmade and by handmade I don’t mean poorly made. There are a zillion perfectly glazed, perfectly shaped, totally soulless plates, bowls and cups out there on the supermarket shelves. I deliberately leave fingermarks on my plates when I am glazing them and I have slowly started to accept that my work doesn’t need to be perfect.It needs to be technically sound but I will leave perfect to the factories.

This small, side plate is an example of the marks I leave on my work. You can see my fingerprint where I held the plate when I glazed it. The black decorations were done with a paintbrush I made using my own hair, so that I had very little control over the line. I really like this plate. It looks handmade. It has soul.

Each year as the Blogher conference gets closer, I wish that there was something similar here in Australia. Given the low profile of blogging in Australia and the even lower financial returns, I doubt that a conference on the scale of  Blogher would be financially viable.

But, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about the possibility of an annual or even biennial bloggers conference in Australia. mmm… A bit of organising here,a bit of corporate sponsorship there, the hiring of a venue and “Robert’s your Mother’s Brother.”

In other news, I have been walking around the house quietly going, “Squeeee” with excitement. Mum and I are going to visit my brother who lives on the New South Wales, central coast. Aaaaand my little brother actually lives quite close to Tiff from My Three Ring Circus. Soooo Tiff and I have organised to meet up for lunch. At Tiff’s house. WOOT!!!! I don’t mind missing the blogher conference at all now. Not one bit.

So at the moment all is well in the Frogpondsrock household. YAY

I was reading Mrs C’s blog the other day and her youngest son is allergic to eggs and milk. So I had a bit of a look through my favourite cook book and I found a recipe for an eggless fruit cake.  I can’t remember if I have made this cake but all the cake recipes in this cookbook that I have made have all been yummy, so I dont see why this one should be any different.

250g (8oz) butter

250g(8oz) brown sugar

250(8oz) currants

250g(8oz) sultanas

3 tablespoons of raisins

2 tablespoons of flaked almonds

2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts

450ml (1 and 3/4 cups) ofwarm water

450g( 15oz ) of self raising flour

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of mixed spice

a pinch of nutmeg.

Put the butter, sugar, fruit,nuts and water in a saucepan and gradually bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Boil gently for 5 minutes. remove from heat and allow to become cold. Sift the flour with salt,spice and nutmeg and stir into the cold fruit mixture. Turn into a greased cake tin and bake in a moderate oven for 2-2 1/2 hours.

I cook a lot and over the years I have learned that recipes dont have to be followed rigidly. If I didn’t have almonds in the pantry, I wouldn’t stress about it I would just chuck in more walnuts or vice versa. Also with the dried fruit I will just use whatever is in the pantry. Whether it is chopped dates instead of currants and red glace cherries thrown in for colour. As long as the dry weight of the fruit is roughly the same it doesn’t really matter what you use.

enjoy…

I mean it. I really, really hate the rotten bloody things and to quote Ted Bullpit I think that someone “should blow all kookaburras up!”

Now before the hating kookaburras is un-Australian brigade get here and try to re-educate me,I should let you know that in Tasmania, kookaburras are an introduced species. Rotten feathery,flying, ferals that they are, were  introduced into Tasmania in 1956 much to the dismay of the local bird population. They prey upon my little native birds, the honeyeaters, fairy wrens and robins. Their young are all fair game for these horrid creatures.

Why am I having a rant about bloody kookaburras today? It was lovely and foggy this morning and I was actually inspired to pick up the camera and go outside and take a couple of happy snaps. I was happily wandering around in the bush listening to the native birds calling when it went very quiet.  Into the sudden stillness a pair of the rotten things  let rip with their bloody racket and I wished that I had a gun.

I have noticed a decline in the number of native birds around the place lately and I am reminded of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring.

I don’t know where I am going with this post today except that the state of Tasmania’s environment is depressing me.

So here are some photos I took this morning…

Or for those of you who use the Imperial system of weights and measures that is about 200 pounds of hard fighting fish.

David went Tuna fishing on Saturday with a close family friend and his sons and they caught a 98 kilo Tuna. Here is a photo taken with Dave’s phone. My son is 6 foot 4 so that gives you an idea of how big the fish is. See those chomp marks near the Tuna’s tail? A Mako shark came up and had a bit of a nibble. Luckily the boys managed to land the Tuna before the shark came back for more. Well done lads!!!

Generally the title of a post will pop into my head and the words will just flow. Some days the words take on a life all of their own and seem to spill onto the paper of their own volition. Other days are like this one where the words don’t want to come out to play at all. I am trying to coax them out letter by letter but the bloody things are being coy this week and in their shyness they become all jumbled.

I have been flatstick busy and I am missing my blog but by the same token I haven’t really had anything to say.

As we head closer to winter I can feel a darkness of spirit settling about myself. I wouldn’t describe myself as being depressed, not by a long shot but my mood of late has been bleak.

I am worried that Veronica will end up in a wheelchair by the time that she is thirty. The birth of Isaac has seemed to really accellerate her Ehlers Danlos syndrome. She is dislocating  left, right and centre. It is like her EDS has decided to leap out of hiding and announce to the world, “Hi I am here and I am going to really fuck you over.”

My son David has started to smoke the occassional cigarette because he is stressed. David is a well educated boy who knows the dangers assosciated with smoking and he has decided to smoke anyway. I am heartsick.

# David has now decided to stop smoking. Hmmm, amazing what getting sprung will do.

Mum isn’t allowed to drive anymore so I am officially Mum’s chauffeur. I wish that I had a chauffeurie type hat though.

The accelerated destruction of the magnificent old growth forests in the Upper Florentine breaks my heart. Despite a global fall in demand for woodchips these forests are being destroyed and chipped. Total Fucking insanity.

And just in case Tasmanians were in any doubt about the direction our government is taking us the Premier has just recently announced that State Cabinet voted to abolish the Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts as part of a cost-cutting drive. More Fucking insanity.

In other equally depressing news I received a reply from Woolworths assuring me that things on that horrific factory farm are being fixed as we speak. Right and all the pigs  are growing wings as well are they?

So these are a few of the things that are whizzling around in my head at the moment. But it is not all bad.

Mum is booked in for a quick zap of radiation treatment next week. Well five quick zaps to be precise. The radiation will shrink some tricky little bone mets in the back of Mum’s skull as well as one in her jaw. Unfortunately this means that Mum is going to lose her hair. So we went up to a zombie free section of the hospital and had fun trying on the wigs.

I have managed to squeeze some work in, I packed and fired the small kiln on Thursday. I am really excited to see how this lot of work turns out. Jientje’s tumblers are in this firing, as well as some side plates that I have been mucking about with.

Hi all. It’s Veronica here, guest posting for Mum. Or more correctly, copy/pasting my  recent post into her blog so that this info is over here too.

*****

It’s EDS awareness month, which I am doubting is taken seriously enough in Australia. Goodness knows that doctors everywhere seem to be hideously undereducated about EDS.

We are not freaks. Not all of us can contort ourselves into a tiny little package, nor does ‘skin involvement’ necessarily mean that we can stretch our skin great amounts. My skin involvement is simply a bunch of stretchmarks showing up for no reason at all and getting worse, despite me not gaining any weight, the worst of them are at the back of my knees. I injure easily, take forever to heal and my scars stay purple for ages, before turning silver and widening/raising (there is a medical word here that I have forgotten). Also, you can generally find bruises all over me, even if I haven’t done anything to myself. My most recent ones were on the back of my hand (seriously, wtf?) and an orange sized one on the back of my calf. I’m also stretchy in my skin, but with everything else, it seems like nothing much. Sigh

Most of us don’t even realise we are different when our fingers bend back further and our elbows hyper-extend. I showed my brother a photo album of EDS photos the other day, only to have him reply ‘What’s so special about that? And that? And that one?’ Well nothing, IF YOU HAVE EDS. If you don’t, you’re left looking at the flexi people and thinking, ‘that looks like it hurts.’

I think one of the most common misconceptions about EDS is that our dislocations don’t hurt. Unfortunately, our dislocations DO hurt just as much as a sport/injury induced dislocation that you might have suffered. Even more unfortunately, our dislocations happen more easily and more often that normal people. It’s just the way it goes.

There is a huge range of abilities within the same EDS spectrum. Some people are only very mildly affected, while others may experience worse symptoms and be unable to do everyday things.

I suppose that it makes sense that I am having a crash* in the middle of EDS awareness month. What better way to make everyone aware than feeling like shit for a while? Not a very pleasant way, unfortunately.

Oh well. I do know that a bunch of Tasmanian doctors are getting a crash course in EDS management simply because of my diagnosis. Like BendyGirl said, if me getting a diagnosis helps just one other person going through what I’m going through, then it’s worth it. It sucks, but it sucks more to be told it’s all in your head.

Video via BendyGirl.

To find out more about EDS and HMS (Hypermobility Syndrome), you can visit here or here.

*A crash generally happens when I’ve been pushing myself too hard. Getting over one pre children used to leave me in bed for a week, just sleeping and resting. Post children is a slightly different matter, as bed rest is something hard to come by. I reckon this crash is just caused by 4+ months of sleepless nights catching up with me (late pregnancy is not conducive to sleeping through the night any more than having a newborn baby) and keeping the household running/fed/clean(ish).

I arrived home one afternoon to find Jeffrey quite excited and a bit puffed out as well. Apparently a piglet had wandered into our yard and Jeffrey was so overcome by visions of roast suckling pig that he had spent quite a bit of energy trying unsuccessfully to catch the piglet.I started to have a bit of a look as well but there wasn’t any sign of a piglet at all. So we just threw extra chook food about the place hoping the piglet would return.

At first light the next morning I looked out the bathroom window and there was the pig eating the chook pellets. My first thought was, mmm tasty. My second thought was, she is far too small to eat, there is only enough meat on her for a good sized roast. I crept out onto the balcony gently calling,  “here pig pig pig, here piggy pig pig.” She took one look at me and scooted back into the bush. So I threw half a loaf of bread out to where she had been eating and went back inside to wait.

It didn’t take long for the chooks to discover the bread and once the pig saw the chooks eating away merrily, she came out of hiding. I told Jeffrey that the pig was back and that there was no way he was allowed to kill her as she was far too small to eat yet. She was about the size of a fat corgi and probably about 3 months old.

The chooks were a bit nervy around the piglet but she seemed relieved to finally have some company and started to follow them around. My chooks were totally free range at this stage because I generally forgot to lock them up of a night, so the piglet moved into the hen-house as well.

After about two weeks the pig was totally at home here and would come when I called because she  knew that I meant food. She was still very wary of Jeff and Dave and quite frightened of Harry the dog. She had totally bonded with the chooks, though they weren’t quite sure what to make of her.

I named her Sweety because she was such a little sweety and because it is also an easy name to call out Sweeeeeteeeee.

Six months later  it was time to eat Sweety. I hadn’t fed her that morning and everytime she saw me come outside she would run up to me and snicker at me for her breakfast.When it was time for the men to kill her I took out a bucket of food for her and she followed me to the killing tree. Sweety was grunting happily into her breakfast with no thoughts in her sweet piggy brain other than “mmm breakfast yummo” when she was quickly killed.

A friend later commented that Sweety must have been the unluckiest pig on earth to wander into our yard.

I disagree.

Sweety lived a happy free range life. She was never locked up once and grew big enough so that Harry the dog was frightened of her. She had a lovely big wallow, a mixture of pasture and bush to free range in and she slept in the chook pen in an old water tank filled with hay. She truly thought she was a chook and spent most of her time laying in the sun with two old hens. She would get very excited and squeal with glee when I watered the fruit trees because she absolutely loved to be squirted with the hose.

Sweety lived a happy life. She was also delicious.

This is one of the reasons that the absolutely appalling images of the factory farmed pigs that I wrote about yesterday upset me so much.

That we allow intelligent friendly animals to be kept in horrendous conditions so that we can have cheap pork absolutely appalls me. As I said to Jayne I have put a few extra nails in my soapbox because I expect to be standing on it for quite some time.

Now my lovelies you can help if you want to. You can copy/paste this letter that I have pinched from Veronica and email it to Woolworths.

Dear Woolworths,

I am horrified to see how out of touch Woolworths is with its suppliers that it takes trespassing activists to let the company know about the sickening conditions of the pigs in your suppliers’ care that has come to light recently.

If you think a list of suggested improvements and a follow up once a fortnight is an appropriate response you are deluded. People are incensed about this! I would be on their doorstep daily if I valued my reputation and animal welfare meant anything to me apart from brand image.

I think the company has under-estimated how much this has and will continue to tarnish your reputation. I am shocked that this is how the company wants to be seen.

I myself will not be buying pork products from Woolworths until you can satisfy me that they are being ethically produced in a humane environment.

Sincerely

[Your Name Here]

Woolworths contact form.

You can click over to Animals Australia and have a look there or you can go over to SaveBabe.com and help them out.

Now for the record I am not telling people to become vegetarians because I am a deadset carnivore. I am simply asking that you think about where your supermarket meat actually comes from. If just one person asks their local supermarket where they source their meat I will be a happy camper.

Cheers Kim