The Twenty Year Mosaic

I've been wanting to make a mosaic for...hmmm, let's see maybe 20 years. I have the mosaic book, sure, I read it and it just never happened. Lately someone has to light a fire under me to help me accomplish my goals. Hence the 20 year mosaic is complete.

Linda is teaching a class at Clay Creations and what a great class and fun, creative people in the class. soooooooooooooooooo, tonight we grouted This dragonfly will find a place in the house to live. It will be a prominent spot I think, it's not every year that a 20 year mosaic is completed. The little frog on the left is a tiny round tile I made a while back and I glazed it green and fired it just before the class started a few weeks ago. When it all came together; happy, yay. Love the process, must do more, must do more...

Meanwhile back on the loom I have a full width warp on for the first time. (Just to experience the thrill of it). Nothing fancy but I hope I will have enough to make a vest or skirt or something when I'm done.

Whipple Procedure Recovery Day 34

My patient is recovering like crazy. After 27 days in the hospital he finally came home! We go for walks at the beach now, eat real food and everything. The only scary part for me is changing the dressing around the drain tube. My patient gets nervous about it and then I do too! Actually it is easier than I thought it would be but I will need more paper tape soon . Today was a Dr. G. day, and he scheduled a CT scan for May 12th; hope the drain will come out then! Then another follow up with Dr. G. on May 15th.

Apetite is very good even though the stomach can't handle all that he wants to eat. Grazing is now a legitimate way of dining! Antibiotics continue as well the the pain medication; to ease the stomach somewhat Trader Joe's has come in handy - I purchased some Triple Ginger Cookies and Ginger Chewies. So, he eats a cookie when he takes a pill.

I look forward to hearing what all that Dr. T. has to say (in June) about the pathology of the tumor and how often CT scans should be performed. Dr. T. is a digestive disease specialist and I trust his opinion over others. One dr. said that he didn't need a scan for 5 years but judging from the speed at which this one grew I have concerns that I'd like addressed.

Today our daughter sent a couple of boxes of goodies, crosswords, other games and a cruel 2,128 piece puzzle. We will have a good time working on it! I set up the mahjong table and we started working on it right away! Thanks kiddo!

So, I think I'm nearly done with making tiles but I DO have about 50 blank tiles so I may finish them up and move on. I have a couple of new interests right now. Lazy susans and hand built ice cream dishes...

Pictured is one of those bird tiles I like so much!

Steampunk

Here is a word I had to look up - steampunk. I have found that the steampunk kind of art and jewelry is fascinating and I didn't have a name for it, but now I do. When doing a search I found some books to order or to download from the Internet at Steampunk magazine which I am looking forward to receiving. What got me going on it was when I saw this piece of amazing jewlery made by Steve Innes; his Internet shop is called History Repeats Itself. You won't find anything like it at the Mall...

My minigama is waiting to be finished, I am nearly there and cannot seem to find a time to complete it. It's been so long I am afraid it might have dried to the point that I can't make additions to it....

While it rained and rained over the last couple of months I have done some quiet tile painting to keep my brain and hands busy.

Time for Tinfoil Hats

Another little bird trivet...sitting in an orange tree!!

Thanksgiving week is official over at my house....not that I was here much.

My grandson wants to be an astronaut and he talks about quantum theories and things like that to me. He is 10. So of course I told him about my ride into outer space dream and asked him what he thought. The gist of it is that he thought that maybe aliens had invaded my mind and they were transporting me to some other place. He had seen something like this in an episode of Sponge Bob Squarepants (a cartoon character for anyone unfamiliar with him)....just in case I forget he is 10 year old!

Just as I suspected; those aliens again. Off to make my tinfoil hat, it must need a few more layers since these are very powerful aliens.

All By Myself

One thing I like about my blog is that I can just ramble on and get my thoughts down. No one interrupts me and says I am wrong or that I shouldn't say that or that what I wrote wasn't very nice or anything at all. No one even says I am brilliant. That is one thing I like.

Here is another tile. I won't post all of them. But it's interesting to see them on my computer screen as if they are part of the story.

Plaster Mold

Well, tonight I poured a mold of a tile I made. It will be a couple of days before it is all set up enough to remove it from the plaster and inspect the mold. My tile is the 3 dragonfly design that I have hand painted using underglazes like the one in the picture. Have I shown this tile on my blog before? Probably, oh well, here it is again....

I like doing the 3 intertwined image designs, I don't know why. I look for them; so far all I have found is the dragonfly and I have a fish one I like too. My box of 50 bisque tiles is gone now so I can quit making them for a while.

Get Rich Quick

I got a pyramid letter in the mail and it tells me it is legal. I send $1.00 to the 6 people listed on the page and in turn mail 200 copies, etc., etc. This man, Dick Hollman says he has never failed to make $800,000.00 each mailing. Wow! I am thinking about sending the nice lady that mailed me this pyramid letter a sympathy card because I am not going to send her or anyone else on the list $1.00. I thought this went out of style in the 1950's. Guess not.

I am making tiles like crazy. I gotta let up or I'll start to hate them. A woman that takes ceramics classes with me said she is sick of her project. It is nearly finished and it will be beautiful but I know how she feels. I hope to sell these tiles for $25.00 - placed into a nice trivet even!

My Friend Who Makes Her Own Shoes

At lunch the other day I was visiting with Mary Loomis and she is so talented in so many ways that I almost forgot that she makes her own shoes! The last time we talked we were discussing an upcoming Gem and Jewelry show at the San Mateo County fairgrounds. The time before that we talked about her skills with gold filled wire and what she makes and how she does it and all of that. So when she mentioned her updated website and the sales of her book I was stunned, well, not "stunned" but I felt like, Oh, yeah....

I bought her book a few years ago and it is on my list of things to do: Make shoes! I think that one may stay on the list a while but isn't it amazing the things that we make??

Meanwhile, back at the beach another tile has found its way onto my blog. This is made using a technique called cuerda seca. I doubt that I will make another one, it was time consuming and messy. The black lines use a petroleum based product that is messy and difficult to control. I do like the tile very much but I'm not sure it was worth the effort...

Not a Fish TILE. A ? Tile

Look how brave I am getting. This tile was done very free and easily. Inspired by the drive to Half Moon Bay, California. There are fields of various things growing along the 2 lane highway to the north. There are some trees and a big hill. I see migrant workers as they work in all kinds of weather working in the fields, planting or harvesting. Anyway, I look at these fields and tried to capture it on a tile, this is my first effort. When making it the rules about perspective were forgotten and I just did it from memory - plus imagination. It is so different from the others.....

Tiles of Fish

My low-fire/raku class is coming to an end. There is a ton of things on the raku shelf because I haven't had my raku fix for a while. Last fall and spring I didn't get to do raku which is a long and boring story about how I was a victim caught in unhappy circumstances between some people having a personality/power struggle. So I just sat out a few dances until it was safe again. So, anyway next Wednesday is going to be a long and dirty day and of course I have scheduled 3 other things that day also. Nothing like the rush of "things to do". I am working against my own best interests here and I know it but I do it anyway!
Of course I had to do some fish on the tiles! These fish turned out kind of freaky ~ like they are I suppose! I have it in my head to do a series of them in different colors. You see, if I call them a series it deflects whispered comments about obsession, of course the like-afflicted know....
The beach, the beach...it is lonely for me!

Texturing and Drying the Fish. Plus an Art Tile

OK, this is obviously not a fish. This is a small tile I have re-glazed and re-fired multiple times. I like the rich colors, kind of like a crude art tile....

Now, the fish needs some scales so you can roll up little balls of clay - a lot of them - and apply them one at a time for a lot of textured scales. Another option is to incise lines into the clay, one could also use any number of materials (netting, etc.) for an interesting body texture. Be sure to put gills and a mouth on the fish too. Then drape it over some wadded up paper towels to make the fish look lively. I use straws to punch out 2 holes near the dorsal fin; later I use leather or wire to string through the holes to hang the fish. If you are not going to hang the fish up you don't need to do that of course. Once the fish is draped leave it alone until it becomes leather hard, that is when you can carefully handle it but it is not yet dry. This is a good time to gently remove any rough or sharp edges. They may not be sharp now but when fired, those rough spots can become lethal! This is also a good time to sign your fish. Gently put the fish back on the shelf and leave it alone until it is completely dry.

Will The Barbie Manifesto End?

Tile from the kiln unloaded on June 6th, 2007.

Good friends are hard to find. My mother told me when I was a girl that she could count her good friends on one hand. I am not sure that she said good friends or just friends. If a friend isn't a good one then I suppose they are just a close acquaintance.

The point is that a friend asked me when I was going to be done with the Barbie Manifesto and I think I frowned, I asked her what did she mean, "Done with it"? You know, "DONE WITH IT" is what she meant. "Oh, well, in a week or so I thought." I think she said, "I see, then you are DONE WITH it?" Only she didn't yell. So, of course I have been thinking about being done. The energy I used up on my crusade was not a total waste of energy although I did put quite a bit of angst into it, and re-telling the story could also do that so I resolve to be done with it and be done with it for good. Well, I am going to try.

The woman I talked about earlier; Jean Kilbourne was interested and she asked me to fax to her the images of the weight loss books I found in the Barbie package. She was appalled and advised me that I could possibly enlist support from some of the groups that advise on eating disorders. Well, I sure did that and they too were appalled and said I should contact so and so or this other person. So what happened over and over again was that the people that were appalled were appalled but I didn't find anyone willing to say that they were going to join my crusade. I told everyone I could think of about this message in the Movie Star Barbie doll packages, I made copies of the little books, I enlarged them so that others with eyes like mine could also see the subliminal words. When I didn't show my proof people started to treat me like I was just imagining things; maybe they even avoided me, it was getting there.

Shall I take a photo of the enlarged image and show it on this blog of mine? You see, I also went through a stage of paranoia during this and I really don't want that back. It was a horrid and terrifying thing to experience.

I have been told that Einstein said that 'Insanity is the act of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results'. So if he is right and I think he is...why do that?

Maybe Men Didn't Get It!

This morning I unloaded my kiln, this is one of my handpainted tiles.

I now return to My Barbie Manifesto.

I have been given hope by NBC in San Jose; they called me and we set up an appointment for someone to come to interview me. A man with a camera came to the house to ask me some questions about the whole situation. He took pictures of the Movie Star Barbie books and under his camera the messages really popped out, he let me look through the lens but not touch the camera. One thing he asked me was something like...."And what is so wrong with this?" Well, I felt like a deer in the headlights - just stunned; didn't everyone see it my way? Later I thought that maybe men didn't understand what was going on here and that is why he would ask such a silly question. Maybe men didn't get it. Ultimately they did nothing with the story, the last I heard they were out looking for a Movie Star Barbie of their own. I emailed them asking them once more if they were going to do anything with the information but I never heard back....