A taste of Spring

I am working on a new computer, trying to learn new skills to go with.
So, here are some butterflies for you to enjoy while I work out the bugs.....

We make pots and we grow butterflies

This happened this morning when I was taking pictures.
What a treat to be there at just the right time.
Cheers!

Forever

It seems to have taken me forever to load this last kiln for a cone 6 firing.
Forever.
I was close yesterday afternoon, there is that thought of push it through, or waiting until the next day.
I waited.
I find if I push too hard I start getting clumsy and either make a mistake or drop something.
I dropped something.
Check out time.

 I was working on tiles and some of them are quicker than others.
 The one on the top I had done weeks ago, weeks ago, I just could not come to terms with the background glaze.When I am doing background glazes I don't want them to be the focus point, they are background to the work that I want to stand out. I bet I picked up that piece, thought about it and put it back no less than 50 times, possibly more. Finally I made a plan and stuck with it.
Fingers crossed it comes out the way I want. Then again I am not always the primary player on this. I take all the work apart, while it takes the customer to bring it to life for me.
There are times just getting it hung makes it look like what I am going after.

I am set to fire tomorrow.
We'll know after it's all done.

I have been keeping an eye on the garden off and on, and we are in the butterfly business once again.
These showed up on the parsley plant this time.
Now to see how many I can grow into full butterflies.

 Happy Sunday.
Do something kind this week.
I am going to do the same.

A butterfly, a flower, a mug

A Black Swallowtail butterfly

A Flower

And

A mug

I hope you have had a great week, things are pretty nice around here with cooler mornings that are perfect for blueberry picking.

Then there is that butterfly.

And, the mug, traveling off to a new home.

No complaints, just a week to try to be a bit more centered.

Best,

M 

Sunday for a quick look

It's windy today,keeping this butterfly on her (maybe his) toes just trying to hang on to the flowers as they sway back and forth. He is tattered and torn, much like we all feel these days. Yet, he keeps right on going from one flower to the next with the same intensity of survival that we all have.
Take a breathe, hang on, be smart and be safe.
Unloading the kiln in the morning, more pictures to come.
M

Oh, we are still here

 We had a visit from one of the next generation and needed to do some fishing, chase some butterflies, hang at the park, go to the zoo.
Now I am back in the studio.
Pots are coming.
Meanwhile, enjoy the butterflies.

Coffee at the mud cafe, NC zoo.

M

Finding October

 In the blink of an eye we roll right past another month, landing fully into fall.

It is cider and pumpkin time.
Cool days and even cooler nights.
Hay rides, hot chocolate, apples and sweater time.
It is the weather where a potter turns the page of the calendar and goes into a full blown panic attack.
Really, fall is here, how dare fall come calling when I was not looking.

I am thankful that this year we made a choice to work earlier in the year just a bit harder. We have been stocking back a few pots out of each firing and making ourselves a bit of inventory.
Inventory you say? What's that?

I think we would all like to work on the theory that each kiln load fired magically sells as soon as it is unloaded. But, in the times that we are living today that is just not the possibility or reality.
So, instead we cleared some room in the work area to store pots as they came out of the kiln.
Fired and ready inventory. What a concept.

We will be working the next  few weeks on  a late October and maybe a mid November firing.
Pots are on track to start tomorrow.

Mark has been putting some time in painting some hollow core doors that we plan to use for displaying tiles at the November show.
In case you can get to Seagrove put this down as a must be weekend.
The Seagrove Potters get together on the weekend before thanksgiving and set up at what was the Luck's Bean factory in Seagrove NC, pop over to the website for more information. You need to go ahead and buy your ticket for the Friday night Gala. Get them while you can.

Our booth number is b18 this year come find us.


Maybe in January I can spin a coccoon of silk.

The other day it turned fallish

 Fall is in the air.
The last few times we have gone to walk it has been so cool that I am pulling on a sweatshirt and happy to have it.
We are still making a round at the zoo when we get the chance.
Last week things were tight for us with tree trimming and all so we made some walking time closer to home.

We have a great walk that we can do just out

 the front door.
We did that twice last week and then made one day out to our local park.
We have found tha the park has a bit too much red mud for us and it all tends to hang on to the bottom of our shoes.
The walk here is better, quicker and less mess.

The sassafras trees are starting to turn this week. The red of the leaves is so pretty.
Inside many of those leaves I am still finding some  caterpillars of the Spicebush butterfly.

 I check them everyday hoping that I can see one in the pupa stage.
No luck.
You can see that the one on the leaf below is changing from green to a yellow.
The more yellow it becomes, the more ready it is for the next stage.
This one has been hanging out for a few days. I  hope that it will hang around somewhere close and let me watch it become a butterfly.

I know you all think I have lost my brain to bugs.
I am thinking the same.
Then I listen to a program on the sense of wonder.
It talked about how we should never give up the wonders that are around us everyday. The flowers, trees, bugs and anything that makes us think.
Maybe the bugs are my sense of wonder.

A friend gave me a butterfly book today and I have been looking through it off and on. I am looking at the butterflies that I have not spotted here.
And, I am looking up some new ones that I have spotted and did not know who they were.
Knowledge and a sense of wonder.


I really thought I would hang these wall vases up together and take their picture, but it just did not happen.
With the morning walks back in place I am finding that it is replacing some of the time I was using for other things.
Not that this is a bad thing, since making pottery can keep a person in one place for a long period of time.
We all have our stress points with our jobs.
I find that the more I move the better off I am.

About these wall vases.
Mark put this finial on as a way to finish off the ends .
I thought at first that this was just a tad over the top, but now that they are fired I find it does finish off the piece very nicely.
Below is a smaller vase with just a close base.
What do you think?
Do you think it makes a difference one way or the other?

Time to get ready to get horizontal .
Cheers,
M

Wednesday

 Finally.
This morning as I made my way over to glaze pots for the next kiln load I stopped to look for one of the caterpillars that I had spotted yesterday.
I noticed that it was gone.
I had read that they move down the tree and attach themselves to some of the bottoms leaves closer to the ground.

Most of the limbs have been trimmed from the bottom of the sassafras tree but there are these trees that my grandmother always called choke Cherry trees. As far as she was concerned they were weeds. I remember her having me pull them up along the fence line when she and my grandfather raised cows. She said that the cows could choke on them.
 

 As I was looking for a place that the caterpillar might want to call home I found a chrysalis.
I have been looking all summer for one to watch.

From what I was reading just now, the later in the summer it is, or the less light; shorter days, the chrysalis will be brown, as this one is, instead of green as they are in the summer months.
It also said that if they are brown they are preparing to winter over.
That means we might just have some months together.

I plan to check some of the other ones that I have been watching to see if I can catch those in the same stage.
I know, I know, obsession is a wild beast.

Now, about the butterfly from yesterday that I was all excited about.
I had good information from a reader that it was not a Spicebush.
In fact it is a  Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis) a polytypic species of North American brush-footed butterfly, common throughout much of the eastern United States.
I am still trying to get them all straight in my head.
I want to go up to them and ask very southern like, "who are your people?"


Should I update you as things progress, or is this a bit like paint drying to you?

It could be a long wait to see this one come out.



We are glazing away in the studio with about 7-8 shelves to go before we load.
I'll keep you posted.
Cheers,
M


 

Shadows, spice and sweet

Yesterday we did our zoo walk.
As we were coming back over the bridge we noticed the great shadows that were being thrown through the fence. In looking at the patterns we saw I have to believe there was some thought in how the fence was made.
It cast wonderful patterns across the base of the water jars.
Then there is the water lady with these great polka-a-dots showing up on the base she is standing on.

 As you well know I am into all things butterfly.
I was with some friends last night and one of them works at the zoo. I was talking about the butterflies and she told me how to find the caterpillars for the Spicebush butterfly.
This morning I went straight over to a sassafras tree and looked for the folded over leaves.
I pulled one apart and- there it was!
I found about a dozen!

   My camera would not take a picture so I found this one the web.
They are the strangest looking things ever!
They look like this so that the things that want to eat them will think they are snakes.

Then, are you ready!???, I was walking in the door tonight after work and what do I see.
Yep!

There she is!
 A Spicebush butterfly.
Sweet!
Correction below! 
(Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis) is a polytypic species of North American brush-footed butterfly, common throughout much of the eastern United States. L. a. astyanax has red spots on its underside and the top of the wings are notable for their iridescent blue markings. 

The Red-spotted Purple is a mimic of the poisonous Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) and is typically found in open woodlands and along forest edges.)

They are not as easy to shoot as the other swallowtails that I have been following (stalking) this summer.
I was happy with this one shot that I did get.

We are working on glazing, getting there slowly and surely. 
M

 

August ends and September begins and so does the next firing.

 It is the end of August, the end of summer fun, the end of long days and soon the end of the butterflies.


 I had an email from a customer who wanted to use one of my butterflies on her website. Of course I said yes. I enjoyed being able to share one of mine with her and her audience.
We meet so many folks in our little shop here in Seagrove and many times they know what we do for a living, but we don't get to know what they do.
It is just as interesting to us to know how other folks make their way in this world.

We are at the end of our throwing, turning, making cycle and I have started the planning for a firing.
We plan around the size of the pottery that goes on what we call the crown shelf, the last one in the stack with the tall pots on it. I use the size of these to plan the rest of the kiln around them.
The bottom two shelves, back and middle are always 9 inches.

 Then I plan for 3inch up to 8 inch shelves up to the top.
The idea when we are planning and loading is not to create hot spots and cold spots in the stack.
If it is too open it can make that area too hot.
If it is too tight, we find that that area might not fire the way we want and the reduction can be spotty.




Finding a balance as I plan each shelf is extremely important.

I try to pay attention to the pots that are placed at the edge of the shelves.
These can take quite a bit of flame and that is where I place our filler pots.

 Then, if they do not match their cousins, it is not as much of an issue.

Then again it is pottery, should it match?
No, but that is another post.

The count on planned shelves for the firing so far is 14.
I always plan at least 21 shelves. I know that of the 7 left 2 of those will be tall, crown, pots.
That really leaves me with 5 more for the inner shelves.

Of the 21, 3 always have the same placement and size across the bottom. Of those 3, 2 will always be 9 inches and the front one is always 6 inches.
If those pots are made it is a good place to start.

It does not take me long in planning the load to figure out if we have made all the pots we need to fire.
I can get into the bisque-ware and see pretty soon if we need to step back to the wheels and toss out more pots.

Yesterday we knew that Mark needed to make a few more tall pots. We have one shelf that is 21 inches tall for a lamp order. It is better for the kiln not to have one 21 inch shelf and then 2 at 12 inches.... that makes that 21  inch one a real hot spot.
By making more taller pots we can even out the space at the top of the kiln.

Now, if your head is spinning then take a minute to just look at the butterflies.
That is what I do.

Meredith

Butterfly Tiles

One of the things that I have been doing with the pictures I shoot of the butterflies is to use them as models for some of my tiles.

I am not sure I can capture the true colors that I am seeing, but I figure that I am allowed to make up my own.

I do find that not all butterflies are alike.
There seems to be some variation in them all.
( hey- I think that there is, I could be wrong...)

(Oh- that wall color is not pink but it sure looks pink- please excuse its pinkness..)

In looking back over my fascination with the butterflies I noticed that all I did a few years back was to just take pictures of them.

Then I became fixed on the wings.

This year, I am all about their faces.
It is like someone whacked me on the head and said, " have you really, I mean really looked at these things?"

I am now fascinated with their faces.

They really pay me no attention and fly all around me as if I am a tree or just some mass to get around.
They are fully intent on doing their job.

Just look at this face....!!

I have been going out to be at "one" with the caterpillars.
I have been watching the ones in the parsley as they nub down every bit of the plant they can find.
There were at least 3 different hatches, making for some interesting watching.
I had wee ones, middle size ones and of course the bigger ones.
We counted at least 14 in different stages.
This morning when I went out many of the larger ones had moved on.
I want so badly to see one all cocooned, but I don't think I will be able to find them in their final stage.
I now know how lucky I was to get the one I had a few years back.

do you ever feel you are at the end of the road?

There is no love lost between the caterpillars, when the big one wants your place you need to just move on.

Tomorrow its back to the pottery and I will have to ignore the butterflies and caterpillars so I can get some work done.
But! I am already planning on more parsley next year.
And, some dill.
I need to feed these hungry critters.

Cheers!
M