amelia studio

Akorn This Way

We have survived the first illness of the season! Oh my, that wasn't a fun one. I'm finally starting to feel like a human with ambitions beyond getting a shower or guarding my box of lotion tissues. (Lotion tissues: wonderful invention, says my delicate little nose.)

Here's a shot of my oldest daughter helping the squirrels with their acorn harvest. A leaf plate AND a sign. Spoiled squirrels.

The acorns were collected on my mom's driveway the last time we ventured out of the house. We celebrated my middle daughter's birthday outside on the driveway, both to enjoy the beautiful fall day and to prevent my mom's house from being completely contaminated with our germs. We did take our germs over to Red Barn Farm, where we picked the last remaining apples and inhaled lots of gravel and hay dust. Since then, we've been in our PJs, coughing and crying and watching television.

So it's been a couple weeks since I've had a Parent's Day Out day or a work night. I've been spraying a number of pots in an attempt to keep them from drying out. Maybe they will get trimmed tonight! It's good to be alive again.

In Progress

Here are a few pieces I've been working on, in the greenware stage. I'm interested in working with ombres, gradients, landscapes, horizon lines, nature-sourced graphic patterns and color. If that makes sense. Well, it does in my head.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with colored clay, inlaying, and painting with slip. My first try with the colored clay (above) came out rather light, and I'm thinking I didn't use enough stain. Supposedly it fires darker, so we'll see. But I overcompensated on try two, used too much stain and ended up without much of a gradient. That kind of forced me to use a brush to create the ombre on the lower left pot, and I kind of like how that came out.

I'm considering combining these gradients with some of the handpainting I've been doing (urchins, etc.), but I don't know if that will just be too much decoration. I do like simplicity. I will try things both ways.

Happy accidents. Must remember to keep an eye out for them.

Nutty Green Smoothie

2011 has been the year of the green smoothie for me. I've been making a lot of them. I started off hooked on one that had a lot of tahini and vanilla in it. That was good, but I've moved on to this concoction because two of my three children will actually share it with me!

This is a good way to get some greens into the two kids who won't eat greens. My oldest will eat salads and other cold veggies, but oddly, she's the one who won't drink this. I think she isn't fooled by the pink cup like the other two are.

Did you hear that? Pink cup with lid! It's the key to disguising the brown-green color of this smoothie.

Peanut butter is one of my favorite things. If I had to choose one flavor to eat forever, peanut butter would be it. We get these giant tubs of organic natural peanut butter from Costco, and we run through them at an amazing pace. I make this smoothie about four to five times a week.

You can change the sweetness of this smoothie with your choice of almond milk and kefir. Get the unsweetened versions, and you'll take a few grams of sugar off the total. My kids like the low-fat strawberry kefir, and it is practically sugar in a bottle, so I'm going to try to wean them off of that. You could also replace the kefir with yogurt. We use unsweetened vanilla almond milk.

Why chia seeds? Here's why. Why hemp protein powder? Here's why.

 

Nutty Green Smoothie (makes 14 ounces; if I'm sharing with the kids, I double this)

Put these in the blender in this order:
2/3 c. vanilla almond milk
1/3 c. kefir
1/2 Tbsp. chia seeds
1/2 Tbsp. hemp protein powder
1 handful kale
1 handful spinach
2 leaves romaine lettuce
2-3 frozen strawberries
1/3 of a frozen banana
1 Tbsp. peanut butter

I find this blends best if I give everything a push down before I start blending. My blender is no bueno, so I pulse and settle, pulse and settle, until things are relatively combined and then I blend away until there aren't any huge pieces of greens. I rarely have to open up the blender and rearrange things, but it's taken me a long time to figure out the smoothie touch for my sub-par old blender.

Here's the nutritional info for the combo of unsweetened vanilla almond milk and strawberry kefir:

298 calories, 33g carbohydrates, 13g sugar, 13g fat, 2g saturated fat, 16g protein, 9g fiber, 58% calcium

This is lunch for me! Yum.

Short!

I finally, finally made a hair appointment. I need a cut so badly. It's not good.

I have been finding myself drawn to cuts like this one for about a year and a half (the one on top). But I know my hair would do no such thing. Many a time did a teenage Amy bring some photo of a stick-straight hairstyle to the salon and force some poor stylist to do a cut she knew was just not going to happen. They all tried to tell me. I'm stubborn. I know better now though. So I've been looking for curly-girl versions of that cut.

I've had short hair before, and liked it, but I am a little nervous. I've gained a little weight since my '90s pixie cut days, so I don't know how short hair will look. Elise says I will look like a boy. I'm thinking we can do some sort of combo of these two styles. Maybe?

Like a more modern Liz? A bit shorter on the sides and longer on the top? Yeah? Yeah?

(Wasn't Elizabeth Taylor pretty?)

Barnacles and Urchins

I've been finishing up the last set of pots from my class. I thought these were done, but some of them could use some glaze touch-ups. The celadon was not cooperating with me, and some of the pots seem to be totally unglazed in large patches! I think I'm probably done with the Clay Guild celadon. I like celadons that are more ethereal water/air types, and the Clay Guild celadon is more grassy/earthy. I do dig their Dellar Chun and, if you treat it right, their Turquoise Oribe. The iron oxides came out OK, but I think I should only use that for chunky brushwork, not small details. Sometime I'd like to try it as a filler for some incising, but I'll leave that for another time. For now, the underglaze seemed better suited to the fine details.

I have about two and a half bags of cone 10 clay left, so I'll be using the guild kiln a bit longer. I still haven't bit the bullet and paid to wire the home kiln.

On my last Tuesday work night, I trimmed some bowls and worked more with my colored clay. I absolutely cannot wait to see how the colored clay comes out of the bisque fire. I'm having trouble letting it dry slowly. I just want to run it over to the guild NOW!

Here is the rest of the load. My oldest daughter helped me throw a pot! It's the one with the hearts on it.