A pause to refresh

OK, here's my first post since mid-November, when we went into turbo mode on our bathroom remodel. Turbo mode for us means that we worked on it for several hours, almost every day. We are finally finished! Or at least it is finished enough to use. Still needs a light fixture and paint and some scrubbing up. All the plumbing is functional, the tile is installed, and the hot water has been flowing with abandon. Ahhhhhh. Time to rest a little, take a deep breath, and brace ourselves for what's next.

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Other than the remodel, we haven't been up to much lately. We now have three rifles, and we are enjoying semi-regular trips to the shooting range to plink at plastic bottles and blow holes in the 200-yard bullseye. Gavin's birthday was on Sunday, and his folks were in town, so we all went down to the range and spent a couple of hours putting small holes in things. I was once again completely dumbfounded when I was able to put three of three holes in the target at 200 yards. No bullseye, but a nice tight grouping of shots. Now I have to learn how to do this without the bench, since it's pretty hard to convince a buck to just wander on to the shooting range.

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The first couple of weeks of December were very cold. Cold enough to make me wonder what we had gotten ourselves into, and how soon we are going to have to call for another delivery of heating oil. We had a couple inches of snow that lingered for more than a week, and a few flurries here and there. Pretty, but very cold. The word from the neighbors was that this was an unseasonably cold snap, and very unusual. Cow ponds which have never frozen over before turned into ice blocks. There was a solid layer of ice on the river and the bird pond. We turned up the heater to 'low' and put fans around the house to spread the warmth around. I was glad when it warmed up, just a couple of days before Christmas. Since then it has been hovering below 40 most days and around 20 most nights. Not so bad. The last couple of days have been cooler and I have almost been hoping for snow. I love to watch the big flakes falling against the backdrop of the mountains and the bare trees. The snow around our house quickly collects hundreds of animal tracks from the cats, the quail, the deer, and the dog.

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We are still trying to photograph as much as possible, but we haven't had time to do much Photoshop in the last month, and we are getting to the point where we are disappointed with the results and we want to get better equipment. Our camera really isn't up to the task when it comes to tough technical shots like shooting into the sunset, catching the moon in the trees, or trying to capture a herd of elk on a far-off hillside. So, we are shopping for some new gear for the new year.

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I don't come to a decision quickly, but when I do finally make up my mind, I want to get going as soon as possible and get immersed in whatever I'm doing. So, after a lot of thinking, I have come to a decision on what I want to do with the rest of my life. Or at least, what I want to try next. My first love was mud. I wanted to be an archaeologist, or a potter, or something that would involve getting earthy and dirty every day. (I suppose it's a good thing I didn't go into mud wrestling...) A sort of confluence of happenstances have drawn my interest back to ceramics, and I am getting ready to make a go of it, making ceramic tiles and other functional objects. When we were trying to select tiles for the bathroom remodel, we came across a lot of affordable, incredibly bland tiles, and some really expensive, truly beautiful art tiles. Well, mostly beautiful, but hokey. Tuscan grapes and Medieval dragons and Japanese koi and such. I was drawn to them, but I also thought that maybe I could do better. Then, I got into a conversation with someone about pottery, and where clay is mined. It struck me that the beautiful green volcanic ash soil here might make an interesting clay or glaze. So I got a lump and started forming a couple of little items from it. It's nice, very soft and plastic, dries without cracking, and it feels and smells like good clay. Who knows what will happen when it is fired. If I am lucky, I will have a really unique medium to work with, and I can start producing pottery from the native soil. If not, well, then I have tried, and this experiment has fired my imagination, and sent me on my way to get back into ceramics and maybe to find a new career in the arts & crafts.

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So, the next big effort will be setting up my studio and making some tiles. The goal is to create & install homemade tiles in our second bathroom remodel and in the kitchen remodel. Then I will have some installations for photos and self-promotion. I hope I can find some willing guinea pigs for more installations & photos. I'm not sure how long it will take to get this done, but the decision is made and I'm on the track. I'm really excited about this, and I have about 200 ideas for tiles, and about 20 ideas for functional wares. As usual, I am ready to jump in way over my head by mining my own clay, formulating my own glazes, building my own tile press, building my own wood-fired kiln, logging my own firewood to fire said kiln, doing raku and salt-glazing, producing 250+ different designs and 50 colors, and basically biting off way, way more than I can chew. I'm trying to restrain myself from doing all that, since I don't want to spend a year building things and then discover that I'm bored silly or that the ceramics business is abominable or that I just don't want to be muddy anymore... I'm telling myself that there will be time to become more sophisticated later, but now I'd better just get started. Anyways, I can't wait to have something to show for all my big ideas, and that bathroom really needs to get done sooner than that.