WTF-Beta

Migraines - uhg. I hope the hat continues to work for you! I’ve had more than usual this past 6 weeks or so. If I’m lucky, it’s just once a month, but it’s been every 2 weeks recently, and a couple of times, two days in a row. I am super sensitive to triggers - stress, salt, dehydration, and a big change in weather can bring them on. Alcohol as well, so I don’t drink. Light can do it - I got a bad one the last time I went to the get my eyes checked and my pupils got dilated. I’ve overdue for an appointment, and I keep putting it off… So far, I just take Rizatriptan - one dose takes them away, but I have to take it early on, or it takes a long time to work.

I bought a Japanese made plastic ocarina to try. I played the recorder and the clarinet when I was younger - The ocarina is a little trickier that those - two thumb holes and you use every finger to cover a hole (or two) - so the fingerings don’t feel intuitive (based on what I’m used to playing). Fun fact - Ennio Morricone used an ocarina in his music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

@jon-nyc said:

Saw a comment online on a picture showing Marco’s shoe:

“See that gap behind Marco’s heel? That’s where he keeps his dignity”.

We unloaded the glaze kiln yesterday and a few more were fired. Here’s a video I made showing the difference in pitch after the firing - it went from close to an E major scale to an F#, so a whole step up. This was fired to cone 10 in the gas kiln, I can’t remember the exact shrinkage of this clay - somewhere around 12 - 14%. (Turn the sound up to hear the iPad video, then back down before I play at the end).

I will eventually make enough to sell some of them in the gallery, I am currently too attached to the ones I have made so far to let them go! As in most things clay related (for me, anyway, as I love to hand decorate each piece) they are incredibly time consuming to make.

They shrink slightly in firing, so the pitch will raise a little. You form the body, and then noise making part. That gives you are bass note, then you punch one hole at a time - starting small - and you enlarge That hole until you get the next note you want (I usually go with a full step up, but not always). You then tune the next hole off the first hole, And so on. Sometimes I can only get one or two holes before it quits making noise. What fascinates me is that I end up with very close to the same bass note with a lot of them - even though I’m not trying to make the chamber the same size. Several of the small ones in the first video are the same starting note. And the two large ones in the last video start at very close to the same pitch.

Back in early December someone making a whistle made out of clay showed up in one of my social media feeds. I decided to give it a try - it’s much harder and more frustrating than it looked like in the tutorials - sculpting the sound making part is tricky, and in the beginning I felt lucky to get any sort of noise at all. But 3+ months later, I am getting the hang of it. Here’s the menagerie so far:

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I have started experimenting with my foraged clay pigments as glazes and underglazes on the studio clay, as well as using them for the clay body - the unglazed red ones are clays I’ve dug up nearby, the others have earth pigments I’ve found painted on them, a couple with studio glazes over the top:

Some of them sound really good, some do not. Probably the nicest one is the little spotted horse. The larger the chamber, the lower the sound, and the less air you have to push through to get the sound. I put as many holes in as the ocarina can handle - as some point it quits making sound, and that seems to be dependent on the size of the window(compared to the size of the chamber) and how well I made the airway and the air splitting mechanism. “Helmholtz Resonator” is my new favorite name. I finally figured out how to make more notes out of fewer holes (YouTube is your friend) - finger hole size determines the pitch and a much larger hole next to a small one allows for 4 notes instead of 3 (by alternating which hole is open). So I’ve managed to make several that play an octave. Here’s what they sound like:

How frightening. Nothing helpful from me either. I am so sorry!

We have a block with wusthof knives. All our sharp knives live there. I put some wooden pegs into it so the non-wusthof fancy butcher knife I inherited from my MIL lays flat on the slanted top of the block. Steve maintains them regularly with his (too large)collection of knife sharpening tools (that I am always trying to fit back into the drawers).

@dolmansaxlil said in Who is the biggest threat to world peace?:

@wtg said in Who is the biggest threat to world peace?:

@dolmansaxlil - is it as bad from the Canadian perspective as this poll indicates it is?

The other thing to keep in mind is that many Canadians never LOVED the US. It has always been a grudging respect because they were the bully next door so we have always been resigned to just being under the shadow. But Canadians biggest point of pride is NOT being American. It’s pretty much our national identity. So I think public opinion is just as terrible as your article shows, but also, I don’t think the US was as loved by Canadians as many Americans think it was prior to this.

When were visiting my grandmother in London (mid 1970’s), we were in a museum and I heard the man next to me speak, I asked him if he was from the US, and he exclaimed, “Oh, God no! I’m Canadian!” Since my father and all my relatives had British accents, he must not have listened that carefully to mine. He did apologize, but it was pretty apparent that he did not want to be mistaken for his southern neighbors. I’m sure it is so much worse now.
I cannot forgive the current occupant of the WH for what he has encouraged/allowed/done to this country. Or those who are enabling him.

Excellent.

Was that the massive snowstorm in 1978? I lived downstate and had an interview for the medical illustration program at the medical center in Chicago that day. A friend of my dad’s flew us up to midway in a tiny plane and some kind soul picked us up on the street and took us there - me with a massive portfolio and a life sized humanoid soft sculpture (we couldn’t find a taxi). It was a bit of a nightmare. (Happy Anniversary)

I was at the Seattle concert. Funny - I was just listening to their CD yesterday.

Omgosh, Andy, I wouldn’t change a thing about that fireplace. That “eclectic mess” is beautiful. Those Victorian tiles! ️

https://www.canaanstreetlakeinn.com/history

Pretty!

This one is one of my favorites. I never learned it all the way - but I still like to muddle through it. So beautiful.

@ShiroKuro said in Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff?:

My mother came over and Mr SK made toshi-koshi soba (year’s end soba noodles) for dinner. We visited for a while, she went home at 8pm maybe. Then we watched a movie, and were in bed 11pm.

Today we’ll take down our christmas trees (which will break my heart) while watching a recording of the 4-hour New Year’s Eve Japanese song contest Kohaku.

Taking down the tree makes me sad too. I also do it on New Year’s Day. It’s quite beautiful this year (even though the lower limbs are sparse and it’s slightly crooked - we cut it in the forest south of town) and I finally realized how much I hate LED christmas lights (the brightness and intensity of the colors) and I purchased some good old mini incandescents like I used to put on the tree. It made me very happy.

Crazy warm here. Too warm. 44 degrees today, supposed to hit above 40 all week, dipping into the teens at night.