blackmoondog

I’ve moved my old ceramics photo gallery over to this server now. Most of that work was done in 2002-2003. I haven’t really kept up on taking pics of the more recent stuff.

I am currently on hiatus from further ceramic endeavors due to a serious addiction to knitting. This combined with a 100+% increase in the cost of courses at the local community college (not to mention the cost of gas for the 30 mile roundtrip) and the departmental decision to move the Thursday evening potter’s wheel classes to Thursday mornings has led me to stop taking classes for a while. Even with the increased costs, it is still definitely cheaper than studio space but for something I’m feeling kinda ho-hum about, it is just more time and money than I’m willing to part with right now. I should probably check out the used electric kiln market. I already have a very nice potter’s wheel (nearly brand-new Brent CXC) and lots of clay, I just don’t have any way to fire work at this point. Alas, I’m not sure even a kiln of my very own would cure my clay blahs right now.

Tonight I made my first ever cake batter from scratch! I decided that I would make the Chocolate Pumpkin cupcakes from the October issue of Country Living magazine. I'm making the cream cheese frosting that they put with it but I'm probably gonna leave out the orange juice & zest.

Now I have a metric buttload of chocolatey cupcakes (that don't taste pumpkiny at all!!! This distresses me greatly since I went through the trouble to make the pumpkin puree from scratch too). The recipe was supposed to make 36 cupcakes, which was way too many to begin with, but it actually made 42! And I was filling the baking cups about twice as high as the recipe instructed!!! Also, I think I inhaled about half a cup of cocoa powder during the batter making process. I expect to be sneezing chocolate for the next few days.

Originally the plan was to take the cupcakes to work tomorrow for Halloween. Now it looks like I'll be taking them to my work (there are only gonna be 6 of us!), some neighbors, maybe Mark's work... If you want a cupcake, let me know and I'll see about setting some aside. I'll be in SLO until 2pm and then heading to the Bay Area on Tuesday afternoon.

December ate my brain, as usual. This is what I've been up to in order to remain (mostly) sane: