The Salad Days

Our living room has a high ceiling, which leads to lots of bare sections of flat wall up high. Because of this, when we watch the TV in there the audio is always sort of muddy - just too many reflective surfaces and echoes. In an attempt to break up those flat planes with some texture, I'm making these decorations for the wall above the window in the second picture. They're made of lots of scraps and offcuts of hardwood that I've been unable to throw away over the years. They're also lots of different thicknesses, which should help break up the reflections even more. Once I get them finished and installed we'll see if it helps!

Finally had a batch of glazed pots come out of the kiln and I was happy with every piece. Usually there are at least a few duds or mistakes in every load - but this time they all looked great!

Sean asked me to make him a bedside table so he's got somewhere to charge his phone at night, have a lamp, etc. I made this out of red oak, and in a mid-century modern style. That's not normally the style of furniture I build, but it was a fun change of pace. He likes sort of a 'minimalist' look in his room, and I thought this style would go well with that.

I found a nice glaze combo I really like - if I remember right (I have it written down, but not near at hand at the moment) it's Amaco's Toasted Sage over Laguna's Turkish Amber. The sage becomes a cool blue-green, and the combo with the amber leads to some nice blending effects. The one in the front has the sage on both the inside and the outside, and the one immediately behind it has the sage just on the inside (and a little bit on the rim).

Carter's collection of books has started to outgrow her existing bookcase, so she asked me to make her another one to handle the overflow. I let her choose all the design details. For the wood, she went with hickory. And for the top, she chose some really cool tiles. They look almost like a sliver mother-of-pearl or abalone, which really echoes the grain of the wood.

I made these drawer organizers for our 'junk drawers' a few weeks ago. They're made from some cherry scraps I had left over from another project, and are two-tiered - the top tier can slide around on the bottom tier, for even more storage. Working out great so far!

I've done a whole bunch of test tiles so far - and it's a good thing I did! Out of all of these tests, there are probably only about a half-dozen that I really like and would use on a full-size piece. I've got another batch of test tiles in the kiln right now, which needs to cool down for a few more hours before I can open it. Hopefully there are some good ones in there, too!

I've been throwing lots more pottery since the last time I posted about it. But as I've been burned several times now with glazes that didn't come out the way I wanted, I decided not to glaze any of this stuff yet. I'm going to make and glaze a whole bunch of test tiles, to see which glaze combos come out nice. That's a lot easier than spending a lot of time making a pot I like, only to have to the glaze look bad and essentially 'waste' the pot.

A friend turned me on to an artist on Etsy called "Woodcut Emporium". He does Japanese-inspired woodcuts of pop culture subjects - they are pretty cool. I ordered the one you see at left - a Japanese coastal scene, but with Godzilla in the bay. I built a custom frame for it too, and tried to stick to the Japanese-inspired style.