Recovering

Love is the answer - hard to love my sinus infection tho!

-2 F in the Woods

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

That song was written for today. It's 8 in the morning and it's colder now than when I got up at 5:45! Winter is upon us! I will stop feeling like a slacker for not getting the sugar maples tapped last weekend.

I taught the Ceramics students how to glaze last night. I glazed the two little vases and bowl I made with some of the new glazes in the studio, but I don't like these glazes much - too much bentonite in them - they get all gluey and puddley. I should suspend judgment until I see how they look after firing - they could work beautifully.

We are planning on doing a real pit firing - dig a hole in the ground, start a fire to make a bed of coals, throw on sawdust, put on the pots, metal oxides for color, more sawdust, manure and newspaper for heat, lots more wood, let it burn down, cover it up to let it cool slowly and then retrieve lovely pots from ashes pit firing. This will happen the week after Fourth of July.

But, I need to focus on teaching the other classes I have right now. And go give the thirsty ponies some liquid water - I expect their tank is an icecube.

Snow time like the present...

Well, what a week.

My sweet old horse Candy died of the strange horse digestive problem known as twisted gut. This leaves Cesar an orphan and Sheba, now in charge, is taking care of him but seems anxious and worried. So sad.

Then, the "record breaking winter storm" hit the next night. This storm, here at Maple Knoll, gave us about 8 inches of fairly heavy non-drifting snow and one night where the low was 2 degrees. We've had much worse, although I think further east and south they are still having big problems. Adorable hubby spent most of Wednesday plowing the driveway - the Kubota tractor is one of the best investments we've made since moving here!

Now the sun is shining, and I need to catch up with all the things on my list that I have been distracted from by these unusual events. Catch up on my classes, mainly. Spend more time with my ponies. Get focused on my consulting business - need to start bringing in some more money. Make some pottery and sell it. That's what I really want to do, I suppose.

So, I spent a lot of time yesterday designing the template for a little slab teapot. I will cut the template pieces out of cardboard after I get my classes caught up and make this teapot and some matching cups Saturday morning.

I also designed and drew up a materials list for the chicken coop we are going to build this spring. Although I should be focusing more on more immediate project, maple sugaring time is almost upon us.

Ah, so many things, so little time. More later.

Thoughts on Beauty and Function

Fixing things is something I seem to do a lot. I have this little plan for how to live well:

Maintain a baseline of functional beauty.

Something that is broken is seldom beautiful and never functional, so fix what's broken immediately.

Make routine maintenance efficient and fun!

Real improvements increase beauty (and free time!) by simplifying function.