Pssst! Spread the Word!!

. . . . . .

I have three great causes I'd like to do my small part in spreading the word about. Please read on!!

First: Help a PhD student!

Who: Adam at ah ok lah and Adam Ok Dot Net
What: needs A LOT of respondents to answer his survey thus providing vital and valuable information for his PhD research looking at consumers' perception of blogs.
Where: click on the link at the top of his My Research Methodology post
What's in it for you: for every survey completed, Adam donates 50p to Cancer Research UK. He also has a £100 cash prize and some amazon.com certificates to give away to lucky respondents.

Adam is one of my early blog buddies, and I really like that he's pursuing an advanced degree studying the blogosphere and its perceptions. You don't have to be a blogger to help -- you just need to have been reading blogs for more than a year. So please swing by and answer his questionnaire, k?

Next: Help purse-less students in Springfield!

Who: MochaMomma
What: Calling for your unused / no longer used small (8.5" x 11" max) purses (a.k.a. handbags), which will be sold cheap to female students who can't afford / find purses of a size that's allowed in her school.
Where: Read more about it at One Small Thing. One Small Purse (its GENIUS tinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/tinypurse)
What's in it for you: you get to reduce the clutter of unused purses/bags in your closet ~and~ do good at the same time!

If you've only read just a post or two of MochaMomma's blog, you will already know that she writes beautifully, and that she CARES. Her heart is THIS BIG! So while the plight of purse-less high school girls is not one I have experienced personally (the difference between Malaysian and US schools is really huge!), MochaMomma does a great job explaining why this is something that would make a difference to her female students.

... of course, if you know ~me~ you'll also know that I don't do purses/handbags, that I am the epitome of fashion and purses – NOT! The only semi-fashionable/decent one I ever had was a leather backpack styled thing which broke, is now fixed but waiting for me in Switzerland... so in the meantime, I’ve been making do with a 13-year old fanny pack... yes you read that right. Fanny pack. 13 years old. Oh yeah. That’s me!

So I'll be just donating some cash instead. Some are volunteering to make purses to be given/sold. Others want to just go out and buy some for this effort. There are plenty of ways to participate. I hope you do. :)

Finally: Help Heifer International!

Who: Fantastic fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss
What: Pat is giving people a chance to get their names into his second book The Wise Man's Fear while raising funds for his fave charity Heifer International.
Where: See his So You Want to Be a Hero? post for ALL the details
What's in it for you: Your name (or a name created by you) might appear in Pat's next book! And you do good by helping needy families worldwide obtain a goat, cow or other livestock.

Patrick Rothfuss is one of the newer generation of authors who not only has a blog, but interacts a lot with his readers and fans there, and on facebook. He even visited one of my pottery albums and left a message! He's also not shy about being silly (who else would have the cojones to wear such an item, let alone endorse a caption contest for this image??!). And I do like the principle of Heifer International, which I had never heard of until he ran his first fundraising effort for it last year -- I admit, I entered/donated just for the change to get at some of the swag offered, but don't mind not having won anything, the $$ went to a good cause.

And in case you're not keen on parting with your dough, but want a chance at getting your name in the book, there's also a "no purchase necessary" method of joining this raffle - read the post with all the details, k?

I thank you for your time, and hope you will at least consider following-up with one, two or all three featured bloggers and their causes. And no, I'm getting no kickbacks from this, I just want to do my part to spread the word... it is Blog Action Day after all, even if this doesn't talk about climate change.


Image Credits:

• Businessman by surely
• Bags by salsachica
• Pat Rothfuss in cat ears taken from Tobias Buckell's post.

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booking through history, shredded fingers and book presents!

History:
In 2004, I had been in the U.S. for just a few weeks, starting out in my new life with Kosh, when the Bush vs Kerry election was held. I remember sending out sms'es (phone text messages) to a whole bunch of folks in Malaysia saying something like "Hmmm looks like Dubya's going to win" on the assumption that 1. they cared about the elections, and that 2. they knew who Dubya was. Lesson learnt: don't assume! Every time I think back to that day, I find myself shaking my head in incredulous disbelief at how many either emailed or sms'ed back "Ummm, who or what is Dubya?".

But in 2008 ... what can I say? Even though I couldn't participate in making it happen, I saw everything unfold, and saw history being made. I love the pics that PolitiGal posted - made me all a-teary-eyed :) Makes me believe in America again, y'know? Obama's got a tough road ahead of him: the economy needs addressing, yes, but perhaps more importantly, the entire population needs to do some self-reflection: the racism, the hatemongering, the racism, the blatant lies and the swallowing of said lies, the racism, oh did I mention the racism? This was an ugly ugly ugly election. How to heal from that?? Not going to be easy...


Shredded fingers:
So recently I had my appointment at an USCIS facility to "capture fingerprints, photo and signature". They seems to have improved their system greatly. I was in and out within 15 minutes!

But while doing my fingerprints, the person doing me asked "Do you work with glass, or metal?"

"Ummm, no, why?"

"You have all these lines, you see?", she said, pointing out fine lines that ran across my fingers, "We usually see this in people who do a lot of work with their hands. What do you work as?"

"Umm, I don't work. Back when I did, it was just a regular office job..."

"A lot of typing?"

"Meh, sure, but not much, and not very well!", I joked.

"How about crafts?"

Crafts? Having just visited a Michael's store the day before, and my unsuccessful search for cross stitch kits as something to do in my spare time besides eat, tv, blog and drop card still fresh in my mind, I speculated, "Well, I did some cross stitch a long time ago..."

She shrugged and continued with the fingerprinting, while I studied the screen as the fingerprints were taken. Yeah, there were a lot of those fine lines.. how on earth had I shredded my fingers such that the fingertips, which heal and slough off skin just like the rest of the body, still had traces of this occurrance? What a mystery.

Later, I told Kosh about it. Immediately, he said, "From all your pottery, right?"

Duh, what else??!!
Can't believe I didn't think of it.
I suppose it's been too long, I've stopped even missing it? :(


book gifts:
This week's Booking Through Thursday's question is "What, if any, memorable or special book have you ever gotten as a present? Birthday or otherwise. What made it so notable? The person who gave it? The book itself? The “gift aura?"

One book immediately comes to mind: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

My parents gave it to me for my birthday back in 2000 when it had just come out amid quite a bit of hoo-hah. Since I read all things fantasy, and since they had heard that this series was enjoyed by adults as well as its original target of children, they assumed I was wanting this book.

Well, you know what they say about making assumptions... because while I'd certainly heard of the series, I just wasn't gonna bother reading it - it was, after all, for kids... but now I had Book 4 in my hands!

I certainly wasn't going to read it without going through Books 1-3 first, but it's not like I had access to a library, so if I wanted to read them, I was going to have to buy them... but they're KID's books!!! I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw away $$ like that, y'know? Books are NOT cheap! So Book 4 sat on my shelf, gathering dust for a few months....

... until a chance remark with a work colleague, who was a fan of the series, who immediately offered, insisted!, to lend me his copies of Stone, Chamber & Prisoner so that I could read them *and* Goblet, he was confident I would enjoy them all. And whaddaya know,,, I did!

Now I have all seven books.

Funny how that turned out, eh? :)

*more* piles of pot ...

The pile has grown...


Some new pix have been added here.

More coming soon...

quickie

No thanks to the whole tabula rasa phone mishap, I realise I'm almost back to square one in terms of documenting the pottery pieces I've created since the start of 2008...

One small step forward: today I made a new small album of pix to document how I'm getting rid of the last of my clays ... click here to view the album. Only 4 pix so far, more to come as the pieces get finished :-)

Ciao :)


p/s: here's the fate of my pieces - most of them ending up in "piles of pot" LoL :-) We're running out of kitchen counter space :D :D :D

"creamy"

So recently I've been debating whether to risk trying to throw (make on the wheel) some porcelain, as opposed to the grey clay I've been using since forever, and this week I happened to mention this dilemma (haha) to my instructor. "Oh, tell you what," says he, "I'll let you have a chunk of the stuff so you can try throwing with it first, see how it feels."

Cooool!

He proceeds to give me a HUGE chunk of the stuff :D

Which I then proceed to use all in one go :D :D

Here you see the wedged and shaped chunk of porcelain awaiting actual throwing. After this pic, I got the wheel turning, slopped some water over the clay, then pressed down and inwards to center and attach the clay to the wheel (technically, to the bat I've got attached to the wheel itself). Couldn't take any in-progress pix - hands get really full of the stuff, and I'd rather not break momentum anyway. So just imagine me doing some rather sexual-seeming manipulating of the clay, then making a hole, pulling it out to make the base, then slowly and carefully pushing into the walls (to a uniform thickness) while pulling *up* ...

If there is one word to describe throwing porcelain, it's gotta be "CREAMY".

I'm happy to report I didn't dirty up the work area too much:



Here are what I produced that day:


... I've added more pix to this album, I think it's now complete, covering items produced Oct - Dec 2007. Still working on getting the newer items photographed and uploaded... I'll share the link once it's up :-)

In the meantime - have a good rest-of-the-week!

more pix

I decided to document my pottery products.

Here's what I did in Oct - Dec 2007 (still missing one or 2 pix, will add in when I get a hold of 'em).

Parts 2 & 3 coming soon.

ego boost

"That is an excellent piece. Congratulations."

- my ceramics instructor

"Ooooh girrrl, that so pretty!"
"Hey Lynne, I really like your bowl!"
"Wow, that's beautiful!"

- various potterymates

[The Cat lording over my latest piece of pottery]

That's quite an ego boost I got today, so I just *had* to share :-)

Pothead News

Got your attention, didn't I? So what if it's false advertising! :p

As promised, here's some more pottery pix.

Last week, I showed you this, promising that despite the yellow substance covering this thing, it was going to come out a delicate shade of green.

So, here it is:
I can't seem to make my phone focus on close objects, sorry for the fuzzy picture.

I'd textured this quite a bit, you only get a hint of that in the pic. Oh well. Also, this glaze doesn't really highlight texture - unlike some others that really change color (green to black, or black to blue, or grey to red...), I'll experiment with another similarly-textured piece next week, maybe there'll be a better effect then?

And what, you ask, is this piece for? Like I said, I didn't create it with anything in mind, but it turns out it's the perfect size for a tea light :-) Here's a totally set-up shot of the cat checking it out with candle within.

And remember that coiled bowl with the mini coils around the edge? Holy cow that took forever to glaze because I wanted to do so much with it, but the holes along the rim made for glaze leaking where I didn't plan on, and I had to figure out the order in which to do the glazing, and everything went pretty much awry... so much so I didn't even bother getting a pic of it before its final firing. We'll just see it in its full splendour? horror? next week :p

So, that was a major learning experience all by itself.

Then add to that my first time using the wheel.

I'll spare you the details.

Here are the results -->

What, they don't look like anything you'd expect?

Well, I was doing all my wheel work after the official class time, so I didn't have the instructor around for help and advice, and I was kinda working from the memory of his demonstration earlier in the day (which then got overwritten by the whole glazing-the-bowl endeavour!), remembering more things as I went along, but still, messing up every time.

So these bridges? That's what we were told to do with things that didn't go well - can't immediately reuse the clay because it's way too wet, so making them into this bridge thingy helps the clay get to a uniform dryness.

Four bridges, four tries.
ONE came out semi-decent. Or rather, one actually took shape, LoL!

I debated whether to keep it or not, you know, "my first wheel product" but decided I was going to have plenty of dust gatherers already, let's not add yet another. So squish squish squish and into a bridge it turned :-)

I'm confident that based on all that went wrong this week, I'll have a much better feel for the wheel next time. More updates then.

Ciao!

pinched, bisqued, glazed...

A quick rundown of how my pottery class has been.

Week 1: intro to very basic handbuilding, getting the feel for three different types of clay (porcelain, grey clay, brown clay). We produced about 3 little things per clay, as initial test pieces. They needed to dry for about a week, before getting fired, so on our shelves they stayed.

Week 2: transferred the now dry pieces onto the rack for bisque firing (that's the first of two firings the pieces go through). Learned the "coiling" technique. Created another piece or two. Placed one *in* instead of *under* a plastic bag, so instead of drying slowly, at Week 3, discovered it didn't even dry, LoL!

Week 3: intro to glazing. now THIS was fun! plunging most your arm into these buckets of creamy liquid, with colors that do NOT indicate the final color of the glaze. One of these days I'll need to remember to bring an apron, because it can get rather splashy and messy! Glazed pieces left on appropriate rack for the final firing.

Week 4: FINALLY get to see our finished pieces. Most came out pretty much as expected, one or two with a slight twist, overall cool and a good learning experience on color combinations and glaze behaviour. Also learned the "slab" technique. Kinda went wild with that!

Next week, "throwing", or, THE WHEEL!!! Whoohooo!

And now, some pix.

I wasn't kidding when I said I went kinda nuts - here's what I produced this week, all but one from "slabs".

The large pic is a textured slab (can you see that level of detail?), which should end up being a slightly curved serving dish.

Those coils you see on the bottom are just to prop the slab up so that it gets and keeps the curved shape while drying.

The clay looks rather dark because it's wet.

Here's how the clay looks a week later.

Fyi, this is my first attempt at anything big - Kosh had asked "when are you going to make somehthing we can throw our spare change into?" - hmmm, ya think this'll do? ;)

I built it up in Week 3 using coils, using a "bat" (a mold, essentially) that sat slightly lopsided, so, whaddaya know, this is lopsided too, LoL! In this pic, it's dry and awaiting its first (bisque) firing.

Still haven't decided how to color it. Matte vs glossy. Blue? Green? Mixed? Speckled? Decisions, decisions.

Here's an indication of the deceptiveness that is glaze.

This is my second coil attempt from Week 2. No idea what it is, really, so don't ask. As you can see, it's covered in something yellow. Not going to come out yellow tho. It should be a delicate light green.

I'll give you "after" pics another time, once it's ready.

And finally, here you have the assortment of test pieces made from the first class, now all glazed.

A motley crew of sizes and shapes, eh? Nothing really practical, I guess they'll all be dust-gatherers :p

Oh wait, the gift-giving season is coming up soon... maybe.... handmade gifts... hmmmmm.... ;-)