The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Today I taught an after school art class at a local elementary school. We made caterpillars like the one from the Eric Carle book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". We made them out of pinch pots that were nested together to form the segments of the caterpillar. It was a busy class full of kids from kindergarten to third grade. They made some very cute caterpillars. We humped up many of the caterpillars over some newsprint to make them look like they were crawling. My favorite is the one withe the eyelashes and strawberry on it's back. When I asked the little girl who made it about what was on her caterpillar's back she replied, "It's a strawberry for when the caterpillar isn't so full." Too cute.

I hope the caterpillars survive firing. They are mostly hollow as I had the kids put holes in the bottoms of their pinch pots - but they are still pretty solid. I also poked holes in the bottom of the caterpillars to help with drying and firing. I just hope they don't become "The Very Broken Caterpillars" during firing.

I Love Spring!

We've had a wonderfully warm winter here in the Pacific NW. Spring has sprung and the cherry blossom trees are just beautiful! My favorite is in our front yard. It reminds me of soft pink cotton. It's got me thinking of glazing in beautiful spring colors.

My kids love this tree too as it's great for climbing. When I went out to photograph it this morning, I found all three of my little monkeys in it with ropes - look closely and you'll see their legs in the middle of the tree. They love spring too!

I am included in an Etsy Treasury called "I Love Spring!" Indeed, I do!

Forever in Blue Jeans...and Rabbit Holes

I pretty much live in jeans these days, so it's appropriate that I found a glaze/clay combination that looks a lot like worn and faded denim. The brownish/gold edges remind me a bit of the gold thread used to make jeans. I like the thought - wearing demin while I drink coffee out of a denim colored mug.

This is a set of mugs that I think turned out well.

And just so I'm not misleading anyone that all pieces come out great, I'll share some of the bummers from this last load. The biggest bummer was that one of my tried and true glazes is running like crazy on the new clay body that I am using now. Even more of a bummer is that I glazed a mug I made specifically to fit in a car cup holder for a friend's birthday - and it got trashed in this run off mess. *grrr*

I'm going to have to wax up a bit higher next time - and do some serious scraping of one of my kiln shelves.

I have a permanent (*fingers crossed*) new piece of ceramic in my mouth. Yes, the dental drama of my tooth number 30 has come to an end. Today I had a new crown put on - not something I'd usually blog about but they used a really incredible machine to create it out of a piece of high fired porcelain - which, of course, I found fascinating. They took 3D digital images of my tooth and the post that they drilled it down to. Then they used a machine to cut the crown out of a block of high fired poreclain. I watched it work - and in 6 minutes I had a new tooth - that fit perfectly. No messy impressions, no temporary crown, and best of all - no return visit to put the final crown on. It really was very slick.

The Internet can be such a rabbit hole at times. You go looking for something and end up somewhere else. I was just looking at a tooth chart online so I could correctly identify dear old tooth number 30 (yes, you can can find most anything on the Internet) and I came across a website that charted teeth and the jaw in relation to parts of the body - like a reflexology chart does for feet (which by the way I'm sort of a believer in after a strange foot thing I had going on while pregnant with big baby twins - but that is yet another rabbit hole of a story for another day... or maybe not).

It said, "Basically, the reflexive relationship between tooth site and organ is an energetic one, created as a consequence of the tooth site and the organ sharing an energy channel or meridian, as it’s called in Traditional Chinese Medicine. A problem in your jaw can affect you just about anywhere in your body, for every tooth site crosses one or more of the 12 major meridians"

So is it a coincidence that my youngest who had problems with his front teeth as an infant and eventually had the both pulled at age 4 - had a bad kidney that he had removed? According to this the front teeth run through the kidney and bladder meridians.

And tooth number 30? I guess it could explain other ailments I've had related to the meridians that they say run through it.

What about the four teeth I had pulled in order to get braces?!? I hate think what ailments that might be causing me now. ;-) I can't even look.

Next time I get an backache, I might have to blame in on a root canal. hee hee.

If you read all of this, my apologies for making you follow me down this rabbit hole.