An Enso Crown Affair

Here is a picture of the crown that Keturah was working on.  It has since been fired, and will soon be on its way to a new home.

 

 In other news, we were not able to get all that work glazed and fired so no new pictures of finished work.  They messed up my schedule at work and my weekend was taken away.  But in better news I now have a weekend off and will be glazing and firing the kiln this coming weekend.  So be looking for new work on our Etsy site starting next week, and some posts of how the firing went and pictures of the finished work.

Cool, Cool Harvest

The cool weather we have had for the past few weeks has really effected (affected??) our garden.  This the harvest we had about a month and a half ago when it was still above 100 each day.  We thought this was a great harvest, given that it was really hot and that it's our very first vegetable garden.  

There are a few banana peppers, jalapenos, and some eggplants.   Then the cool weather started, and I was hopeful that it would cause our garden to perk up and start producing.  It did, here's a picture of our cucumber plant from "underneath".  Remember I arched some wire mesh so that the plants would have something to grow on, this created a little "cave-like" area.  It's pretty cool because it allows the cucumbers to hang down when they get large enough, as you can see in the picture.  

If you look really hard you can see about six or seven cucumbers, and a couple of eggplants in the background.   Today I go out side to see what I could get to add to our harvest, and I came up with this group.

 

There are four cucumbers (about 20 more still growing on the vine), seven eggplants (about seven more on the plant), a large pile of Serrano(?) peppers that I've already prepped for drying, and some ornamental peppers.

 

Here's a closer look at those ornamental peppers, there are some pretty cool colors growing on that little plant.   Our jalapenos used to be in the cucumber cave, but since they didn't get any light they weren't producing hardly anything.  So we moved them to where the lettuce and corn used to be, in hopes that they will put out some peppers.  We also planted some lettuce in the cucumber cave, thinking that they don't need a lot of light (direct light anyway) so they might do well there.  I think I'll go put some carrots under there as well.

 

Last is the banana pepper plant that has been steadily producing all summer.  So far I've pickled three medium size jars of them, one whole, two sliced.  As you can see I've already been at the whole ones, that's why it looks foggy it's the condensation from being in the refrigerator (they were pickled about a month ago, the other two were about a week ago and will be done in about three weeks).

Piggy for your Thoughts

Keturah finished the piggy bank for the most part, the only thing left is to give it a good sanding.  So here are some pictures of the pig.

I threw her three forms to work with, and now she doesn't want to make any more pigs.  So she wanted me to open it up to our wonderful readers to see what you kind of ideas you would have for her to make the other two into.  If you need a reminder of what the shapes were here they are again (I'm not sure which one Keturah used for the pig...).

Also, our garden is exploding in this cooler weather we are having.  I counted 23 cucumbers, 12 eggplants, and countless peppers of all types (I even pickled some that I thought might be banana peppers).  We still don't have any tomatoes growing, but we did eat some of the leeks. I noticed that the onions and garlic I thought were dead have come back to life and are doing pretty good.  We are about to start planting some stuff for the fall, more lettuce, carrots, beans, peas, and more stuff like that.  It's exciting!Anyway get back to thinking of something for Keturah to carve/sculpt those forms into...

The Once and Future Pig(s)

One of my friends at work has requested that I make their daughter a piggy bank.  They want one that she can paint her self, which makes things easier on us because we don't have to bother glazing, or anything after bisque firing really.  Here are the three "pigs" I threw today,  I should say that these are the three little pigs that survived today.  I was having a little trouble with getting the walls too thin and caving in on themselves.  So these are the three out of six pigs that survived the day.

We are also planning a glaze firing (finally) not this weekend but the next.  So hopefully, if nothing goes pear shaped, we'll have some finished work to post about.