The News from Home

We're home from our travels, of course. Got home a couple days ago actually. It was a really fun, exhausting trip. I still have one or two stories to tell...maybe.

Since we've been home, a couple of things have happened:

I've been to the doctor with yet more ear pain only to find out that I have a perforated eardrum. That means that I'll be seeing an ENT this coming week to make sure I don't have a more invasive infection in there. So, yay for that, I guess. In the meantime, I've been living with this constant, low-level pain in my ear and my hearing in that ear feels a little...blurry, I guess. Most perforated eardrums heal on their own over the course of three or so months, so we'll see how this turns out. In the meantime, I'm supposed to keep my ear dry and warm and avoid blowing my nose. That's always fun. I'm glad it's not allergy season.

I've also recently put in a little work at the studio on a new La Muerta figure.

She's still minus arms, obviously. (I don't particularly enjoy making hands--and each arm goes on as a single piece including the hand--so I always leave this to do last.) I also want to tweak the face a bit and then add a crown of flowers to her head.

She's got quite an elaborate dress on. I had planned on using my new piping set up (tips and piping bag) to pipe on some decoration, but the thick slip I made had too many lumps in it. I'll need to sieve it before I use it, a messy task I can already tell I'm going to hate. (I'm going to have to go out and buy a sieve specifically to use for this task, too. Sigh.) So instead of doing that, I added rows of ruffles made with a coil method I learned from Janis Wunderlich.

This calaverita is the smallest one yet, maybe eight inches tall? 

The back of the skirt was very plain, so I decided to add a trio of esqueletos running around like fools.

 This all needs to set up a bit. I'm not using my usual clay, but a mix that Dave likes to use called "Marilyn's Bod Pugged" that is a lot smoother than my usual groggy red clay. (You can see a bit of the color difference in the halo of red around the skeleton that is the result of my using my red clay slip to attach the pieces.)

My clay is a lot tougher in a lot of ways, but it's hard to get tiny details with it because it's so short. It's as likely to crumble as not if a tiny piece dries out. This clay is a lot smoother and it's easy to get carried away with tiny details. I'm using it because Dave threw the bell of the skirt on the wheel for me out of the clay he was using at the time to throw bowls.

So that's what I've been working on.

Last night, we also loaded a kiln of Dave's stuff to be fired to cone 6. We'll probably fire on Sunday and unload on Monday.

And that's the news from home!

P.S. I'm typing this up on my new computer, which stayed home while we were out galavanting around with my old computer. Actually, this is only the second time the new computer been out of the box. Dave surprised me with yet more gifts when we got home, including an external DVD drive (which Apple calls something like a "Super Drive"--ay yi yi) and a pair of Bluetooth-enabled, cordless headphones. In addition to those new computer things, Kelly and Kevin gave me a really awesome, dark gray, felted computer case that fits the new computer. I'm going to give it a try as soon as I shut the new baby down for the night.