Irons in the Fire

 What was that about me posting more? I tell ya, I am a lazy bum. My excuse is being busy, well, I am. At the same time, when I have time to blog, it is not a priority for me. Relaxing and reading are more my thang. Especially since I have had several irons in the fire lately. My way of doing things is to take one iron at a time. 

Getting my sister's art show done in Amarillo was one of the irons. My next iron is Jesse's Horti-sculpture Show at Smith's Gardentown in Wichita Falls.  I have had lots of time to get some planters made for the show, or so I thought. I made a planter that looked like a little village. It was a good size planter, and I put lots of work in on it. But as things can go wrong in ceramics, it came all apart when I glazed it. In the meantime, I had thrown a few pots and hand-built one pot (a basket). Bo and Toby also threw a couple of pots for the planter show. Since I still had time, I hand-built another little village pot on a much smaller scale than the first one. One of Toby's pots blew-out a side in the bisque fire. One of mine cracked in the bottom, which is not such a bad thang for a planter that has a drain hole anyway, but maybe it would not be good to sell a flawed pot. Then we had problemas with the kiln. Yikes! It was getting down to the wire and I was having trouble firing the kiln! With much stress, we finally got the pots done last Saturday. On Wed. I got the pots to Smith's Gardentown in WF and got them planted and turned in for the show. Here is what they looked like without plants.

The Basket 

Toby's and mine

Flower Power and the Village

Tomorrow night is the Horti-sculpture reception. We will drive over to WF for it, of course. You can buy just the planter or the plant inside it, too. One iron almost done.

The next iron will be painting in the Art Battle on November 13. I need to figure out what I am going to paint. I do have some ideas. Then I need to practice it until I have it down to a 20 minute painting that looks finished. It is a little stressful, but I am trying to take one iron at a time an really start painting after this planter show.

Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men...Two weeks ago, Toby's nephew died of liver failure. They were hoping to get him on an organ transfer list, but it didn't work out. Whitney had just turned 41. He and Bo had been big buddies when they were younger. It is very sad. Yet, we hadn't seen Whitney in a few years - we go our own ways in life. Toby is going to the funeral this Sunday - driving down to Austin and back. We were really expecting the memorial service at a later date. Then because it is a very informal gathering - like a typical Austin thang - we were not really thinking we would go at all. But maybe it is important for Toby to be there. I am not going, because I have had plans on going to my cousin's 80th birthday in the Dallas area. That is a much quicker trip, and someone has to stay and take care of the dogs. 

Also, we are hoping to go to the Texas Clay Festival and take some of Toby's vacation time. It is getting kind of crazy, so I won't hold my breath. 

For some crazy reason, I started doing an ink drawing every day in October - Inktober. It seemed so easy when I was thinking about doing it. Technically ink drawings are not difficult, but I'm kind of not enjoying this. No color - no fun. Well, maybe a little fun. Here are the first three of my ink drawings