The Salad Days

Lori and I got a pottery wheel over Christmas, and I've been learning to throw some pots. I've always wanted to learn, after getting a small taste of it in high school. I'm just getting started, so nothing looks particularly amazing yet. But I'm starting to get a little more consistent. We've yet to fire or glaze anything, but expect more photos of that soon.

As I mentioned in the earlier post about this table, I thought the original tile top was just too plain. I replaced that tile with this hexagonal mosaic tile. I think it looks *much* better - far more interesting.

I redid our kitchen backsplash over the Christmas break, but forgot to post photos of it. The old one was white square tiles with pictures of grapes and flowers, or something - not really our style. So I replaced it with this natural stone mosaic. I love the way it came out (especially with all of the minor color variations in the individual tiles) but working on the 45 degree angle like that was torture - it meant every single sheet of tile needed to be cut on at least one edge. I'm sure glad it's done now. :)

I made a couple more patches on the embroidery machine - the one on the left is Mario in the Megaman suit (found the image online), and the one on the right is a motto I can really appreciate - "built not bought".

I've been experimenting with some fermentation recipes lately. From left to right they are:

1) A red hot sauce from fermented Fresno peppers and garlic. Delicious and extremely flavorful, without being crazy hot.
2) The brine the red peppers fermented in. Only a tiny bit of heat - it's more like a salty brine that you can add to things like a baked potato, etc.
3) A green hot sauce from fermented green Fresno peppers and jalapeno peppers from out garden. This one fermented so aggressively that the jar would foam over every time I cracked it open to relieve the pressure. It's not really hot - it's more "peppery". Also delicious.
4) We've also been trying to make some homemade miso. It needs to age in a crock at room temperature for about a year before you can use it. While it is fermenting, it gives off a liquid called tamari, that is basically just like soy sauce (and can be substituted for soy sauce in any recipe). As the miso ages the tamari it gives off will get darker and darker - this tamari is from early in the process, so it's still pretty blond.

I used some more of scrap cherry leftover from the credenza build, and made this end table for our family room. It's been working out good so far, but I think I'm going to swap out the tile in the top. We've all decided that it is a little plain for that table. I think I might use a sheet of mosaic tile instead, to punch it up a little.

I had a bunch of scrap cherry plywood leftover from the credenza build, and tried to think of some way to use those scraps for something useful. I decided to build a wall cabinet for my hand planes. Cherry is a bit fancy for the workshop, but it sure looks nice!

Turned this screwdriver on the lathe the other day. It's a lamination of curly maple and cocobolo. It's one of the reversible ones - where both the bit and the shaft are reversible, for a total of 4 different tips.