computer limbo

my "antique" (7 years old in apple land is considered antique apparently) computer has died and my harddive is being held hostage by the computer store until my new one arrives...so will be posting soon from my shiny new machine in a week or so....

apples on the brain

well aside from dodging space junk freefalling through the atmosphere, this week also heralded the beginning of Fall. The equinox brings to mind crisp air and cozy sweaters. darkness at bedtime (for little ones). more baking, harvesting, preserving...that natural instinct to stock up for winter. and, well, one of my favorite fall things, apples! apple sauce, apple cake, dried apples, baked apples, apple and beet salad, apple juice warm and cold...and so to celebrate all things fall, we had a party. it was lovely, musical, and i'm still full 24 hrs later....
for this party i made little books with a great apple recipe - apple spice loaf. diligently used Nova's nap time to cut stamps from safety-cut block, ink and print. she helped with the collating. and i sewed a stitch in each to keep them together while she fell alseep the night before the party. and with all that i didn't get a chance to bake a sample loaf! (i must acknowledge here that my mother, finding out i had no loaf, only two very rich chocolate tofu cream pies, went and picked apples, bought raisins, and whipped one up faster than you can say "autumn apple spice bread")
all that being said i have a couple of leftovers (not only potato salads but a few recipe books) - so if you would like to have on for yourself....leave a post here by friday and i will draw one name from a hat and you might get it in the mail!

feast on the fruit of life

continuing to work on ways to combine image making on the functional ware. here we have stencils with the finger dots, mishma branches, slip trailed lettering. a fruit bowl for the season. should be full of apples, but we keep saucing all the ones we pick!

new old stuff

well i started on this quite a while back, the beginning of a portrait project, which looks like it will be a longer term project then i had originally thought, seeing as this is the only one i've made since the spring.
spent most of a stitch & bitch night cutting the stencil. used paper clay, slips and underglazes. not super happy with the frame, probably should have made it a plain oval, but for some reason am always drawn to these curlicue things...have to temper that tendency.
it's actually been out of the kiln awhile now, just took me a couple months to dig out these photos!

city hub voting

Vote for your favorite arts and culture businesses at city hub victoria. vote everyday!

Vote for Dirty Girl Clayworks on CityHUB!
">

a festival, survived and enjoyed

so FolkWest happened and the weather was so fine, and the energy was great and the music was wonderful and danceable, and the kids area was well, awesome of course!
my amazing team of volunteers helped reaffirm my faith in humanity by showing up with enthusiasm and smailes, with thoughtfulness and talents, and provided me with a stress-free weekend. it's really true that volunteers MAKE a festival. we had had them facepainting, blowing giant bubbles (i made this bubble wand, and it didn't take much practice to get the hang of it, and the bubble recipe i used was 8c water, 1c dish soap, 1/4 c glycerine), getting messy with art, and constructing an awesome box fort. we had clowns, and we had sawn lake nature sanctuary (wow, a great naturalist is a beautiful thing).

Folked UP!

okay
on top of the usually craziness i have been helping to put together a brand new folk festival here in our fair city. i am on the board of directors and in charge of the children's area and also jurying vendors. this has meant A LOT of loving support and understaning by my family and pleanty of meetings (weekly! late! lots of treats and tea!). i'm so excited and happy to be apart of making this happen, and getting to know my fellow board members. and i must say i will be happy not not have weekly meeting after the festival, which is, ahem, in about 10 days...
so i am trying to be as low stress as possible. my mission is to have a fun and creative kids area with activities for all ages and all free! art and facepainting, a box fort, soccer, hoola hoops, bubbles, water play....and shady space for kids and nursing moms. nature area by swan lake nature snactuary. it hope it going to be great.
so as i don't yet have my volunteer crew, i have started getting stuff ready...like tracing 150 mini guitars (ukeleles) to be painted










and chop-sawing cardboard tubes into drum frames....













yippee!
so come check out the festival, FolkWest! it's going to be lots of fun, gosh darn it!