Too Many Beautiful Sunsets

I can't keep posting beautiful sunset pictures so I've devoted an album to it on my picassa site. There are lots of pictures of the same sunset 'cos sometimes they start out beautiful and morph to spectacular over the space of a few minutes. Sometimes it's hard to decide which moment is the most beautiful. I guess I can get carried away with sunsets.

When we lived in Laura we hardly ever got to see the sunsets because we had too many trees around. Apparantly I've missed them. When we lived on the farm, you could enjoy them pretty easily. I saw quite a few sunrises when we lived on the farm too.

Last week-end, my boss, Ande, and I visited a local potter who was having an opent studio. Judith Duff's studio is about an hour from here near Brevard, NC. I visited her a couple years ago when I was down here for a woodfiring workshop. She's a fairly well-known potter (among potters, that's about the only place potters are well-known.) I love her style, it's very earthy. She woodfires and also has received grants to research and develop shino type glazes from the local minerals. This type of glaze and firing has been used in Japan for hundreds of years. I admire all the work and research she's put into it. The pots are fired for 100 hours then the kiln is allowed to cool for 7 days to achieve the desired results.

Her work that I admire the most are the pieces that are fired in a huge train kiln that was designed by John Neely. She calls the glaze affect crackle shino (or sometimes American shino) and it has very earthy qualities that compliment her forms quite well. Here's a fine example.....

Ande and I had a really nice time seeing her new work. She had a woman from Asheville there who gave a little demo in ikebana arranging using one of Judith's pieces. It was very interesting.

This Sunday I'm supposed to head up to Bakersville with some of the other pottery students from the Odyssey Center to visit Suze Lindsay's studio. She's going to serve us some chili and show us her collection of work (her own work and that of many other potters.) It should be very inspiring! I'm looking forward to it (and will take pictures!)

We loaded the kiln yesterday at the Odyssey Center and it should be firing today. We'll unload it next Monday which is our last class. Here's a link to the pictures I've taken during the class so far with captions explaining the process.

Hopefully one of these days Steve and I will have time to do some more sight-seeing. I want to visit the Biltmore before we leave and now would be a good time because they have the Christmas lights on display. We'll have to go on a week-night though, because they're booked on the week-ends.

And that brings us up to date. Next posting I'll put up a new recipe that Steve and I are experimenting with for Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken.) It's very close to what he likes to order at Amar India. It will take a little more research and development, but that's fun (and unfortunately fattening!!)

The weather today is rainy and nasty, which is why I'm piddling on the computer. But that's enough for now!