Donuts are easier or "Dip and cross your fingers"

OK...

I guess it's time for an entry about the creative process again... it's been a while and I don't want to lose you all as I immerse myself in the POETRY challenge... so let's just take those little letters E O P R T Y ; we'll add another T. And with a little magic we get P O T T E R Y... Yea... I love word games...

Last Night was pottery class; sans M&M... Francine announced that she'd be firing soon. Of course, I was in the middle of doing something and this announcement made my heart skip a beat (in a bad way)... You see, if all my pieces aren't glazed when she fires then they won't make it into the kiln...  that's a bad thing...  I have a show coming up in May and if I don't have my pots glazed there's no show...

So there I was, elbows deep in clay, doing something else (trimming my one pound pieces - I challenged myself to working with only a pound of clay to see what I could produce and just how thin I could throw the porcelain) time to shift gears (insert terrible grinding noise)... so much for creative process...  

Time to glaze...

I've opted to have all of my work for the past year (nearly 60 pieces) glazed in a Malcolm Davis (some famous contemporary potter) shino glaze.  Shinos [pronounced (She - No) (or however you want to - I'm not the boss of you)] are this cool family of glazes that do weird things and can achieve some fabulous results.  They will pool, they will crawl, they will pit, they will trap carbon and sometimes they just look like snot...  yup...  gross...  

Let's review my track record.  While I was on the cruise last winter I got a free chip and used it on the craps table.  Since I had never played craps, I asked for a little help and the next thing I knew I had a few more chips...   ...before long, I had none.  And so it is with shino and me...

I've been trying this glaze on various pieces over the course of time that I've been doing pottery.  The first attempt was OK, but I was a beginner who wasn't very adept at throwing, so a fabulous glaze would have done little.  The next attempt was better...

Flash forward...

Well, HotDiana asked me to make her something for Christmas and I did.  I threw this wonderful jug with a clunky handle and even inscribed the bottom...  After she had unloaded the kiln, Francine called and asked me to come to the studio.  When I got there, she was sitting at the table with Diana's jug on a turntable.  I cannot adequately describe what the glaze had done.  Francine does not make comments or compliments frivolously...  So, when she turned the piece around on the turntable and said,

"This is a museum quality piece." I was in shock and she added,

"This will always be a prize in your collection of the pieces you've made."

"Except that I made it for someone else."

"Oh, you can't possibly give this away."  Such a quandary was mine, but the piece had, afterall, been made for HotDiana...

Subsequent attempts with this glaze have produced just as many different results, but never the same thing twice...

And so it is that I have rolled the craps dice of shino glazes and come out a winner; once...

Yet (and I add, undeterred) I spent last night glazing mugs and bowls hoping that one or two will reproduce that effect...  ...and hoping, beyond hope, that they will not look like they are coated in mucus or Elmer's Glue.  

Louie's rule number one is "Don't get attached to anything"...  alas...  I should have asked if that applies to a whole year's worth of work or just that one fave piece...

Maybe I'll produce stuff so pathetic that my friends will feel obligated to buy it at the gallery and maybe I'll have a kiln load of oddities...  I'm hoping for the best and at least one piece that I can put in the cabinet...

...right next to the jug that reads, "For my HotDiana".

-silly

Plenty of room in the sunbeam or "Litterbox for one, please!"

It was a dark and stormy night... well, not really... it was one of those Friday nights when I stopped at the apartment to grab my stuff before heading out for the rest of the weekend.  This was the very reason I had a cat.  Actually, guilt was the reason I had a cat (thanks to Mr Kins), but that's a whole other story.  This was the very reason I had a cat and not a dog.  A cat will eat when they are hungry, need little companionship and can be left on their own to sleep and prowl for most of a weekend - dogs need constant attention and food and require too much care.

Fernando was black from head to toe, still had all his claws and, while some thought the gouge in his ear meant that he'd had a run-in with another cat during a street fight, I thought it probably meant he'd had a run-in with a vet who'd had a swipe at his privates.  Privates or not, he was all boy!  ...and he was a talker.  Every one of the neighbors in the apartment complex knew him.   He'd talk all night.  I slept with the bedroom door closed and a fan on so I didn't have to listen to him singing to the moon (or whoever it was).

And Crazilynn talked back to him.  One day we were reading the latest Terry Pratchett novel in a sun beam on the couch and she came calling,

"Fernando!  Fernando!"

Looking down from the second story window (knowing she couldn't see I read in the same clothes I slept in) I answered,

"Hey there!"

"Oh.  Hi.  I was calling Fernando..."

"Well, Don't let me interrupt," and went back to Diskworld.

Crazilynn never actually met Fernando.  Theirs was a relationship separated by the distance between my second floor apartment and the sidewalk.  I've always been one who thought that "love your neighbor" was one thing, but having them in for a drink was another.  Many a night I came home to find her standing below the window talking up to him.  He had this look set aside just for her that was somewhere between fascination and "lady they have medication for people like you".

So, that Friday night I got home, grabbed some clothes for the weekend, fed Fernando and headed out.  I wasn't so irresponsible as to leave him if I were gone for more than a day and a half.  HotDiana had a key to my place and I had keys to hers.  We watched each others' apartments when the other one traveled... we had an understanding and bedrooms were off limits (not that she could find a path through the clutter to snoop around mine even if she had wanted to).

Crazilynn passed me as I went to my car, grabbed her mail and headed to her own apartment.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the movement under the shrubs.  Fernando.  She dropped her mail and bags and tried to grab him, chased him for a while and finally cornered him, but by the time she scooped him up I was long gone.

With a black cat tucked under one arm she started throwing rocks up at HotDiana's windows.  

PLINK

PLINK

PLINK

PLINK

"WHAT?"

"Fernando got out..."

"What?"

"I got home and Fernando was out...  ...must have snuck out when he left for the weekend."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, we have to put him back in the apartment.  You have a key.  I just need you to open the door and I'll drop him inside."

"What?"

"I have Fernando under my arm.  Come down here and open the apartment and I will put him back."

Sure enough she came downstairs...

"That's not Fernando."

   "Yes it is, he got out."

"No, it's not."

   "He's black."

"Yeah, but..."

   "He got out.  We need to put him back."

"Are you sure?"

   "What do mean am I sure?"

"How did he get out?"

   "He snuck out...  come on, I can't stand here all night with this cat under my arm."

And so HotDiana got the spare keys, opened both sets of locked doors and went up into my apartment.  

"You wait here."

We were clear on two things:  Bedrooms were off limits....and Crazilynn had earned her nickname.

She called him, but no one came.

   "I have him here..." coming up the steps.

"Wait down there..."

She called him, but no one came.

   "He got out.  I had to catch him..." coming up the stairs.

"I'm calling him in case that ain't him.  ...but he's not coming."

And so Crazilynn deposited the little black cat on the bottom step and HotDiana locked both sets of doors closing her in.

Saying that Sunday night came quickly is like saying that a week's vacation flew by or that summer arrived and departed on a single breeze.  Sunday nights were my time to chat with Nancyboo and this was no exception.  If you don't have a friend to regularly gab with about the week and review all those things in life that you always talk about, then, well, you're probably married.

"Blah, blah...", driving home.

"Blah, blah...", getting out of my car.

"Blah, blah...", grabbing my mail.

"Blah, blah...", letting myself in.

"Blah, blah... Hey, there's a cat in my apartment!"

   "Yes, you have a cat."

"No, a little black cat."

   "umm, Fernando is black..."

"NO!  LISTEN to me.  There is a different black cat in my apartment.  This is not my cat."

   "What do you mean?"

"Who would do this?"

   "What's wrong?

"I gotta go.  I'll call you when I figure out what's going on."

I stood there terrified.  Frozen.  She looked up at me and meowed.

And then he came around the corner... talking to me...  and if it wasn't meows and growls it would have been something like, "I don't know who she is, but she's been here all weekend."

There was catnip everywhere...  the catnip hidden in the bottom of my linen closet that had been closed.

There was no catfood out, but every lower cabinet door was open.

"Meow."

...and the pillows were off the couch...

First things first, I thought as I picked her up and dropped her outside thinking that someone would be very glad to have her come home after being gone for a few days...

Then I put some food out for Fernando.

Then I checked my messages.

BEEP

"Hi.  Crazilynn was throwing rocks at my windows to get my attention.  She says that Fernando got out and she wants to put him back in your apartment.  She has a black cat under her arm.  How could he have gotten out?  This is so weird.  Call me."

BEEP

"Hi, it's me again.   Crazilynn and I put Fernando back.  I was sure that it wasn't him, but I went up in your apartment and called for him and he never came.  Please call me."

BEEP

"Hi...  When you left tonite you let Fernando out by accident.  I caught him and put him back for you so he'll be there when you get home Sunday night.  You need to be more careful.  Good thing I'm watching out for you."

If I were hanging by my fingernails from the Empire State Building no one would hear me screaming, but let one off-kilter neighbor see a cat that she thinks might possibly be mine and suddenly a colony of felines know just how cozy my bed is when the sun comes through the window in the afternoon.

-silly