Today I woke up to this incredible clear blue sky, and somehow just knew this was going to be one of those perfect Boulder days. So I decided to take my camera around with me and share it with you.

This is what I see from my bed when I wake up in the morning:

And, if I lay in bed too long then this is what I will see:

The boyz know feeding times down to the minute, and they never let me forget it!

So I got up and fed the boyz, and had a peek at Mr. or Mrs. Kestrel, in their usual perch at the top of the pine in our front yard:

We realized about 3 weeks ago that this pair of Kestrels were nesting in our neighbor’s birdhouse across our backyard fence. She told me they have babies in the birdhouse but we haven’t seen them yet. The two adult Kestrels are so impressive and gorgeous. My camera doesn’t have enough telephoto to get a good close shot, unfortunately!

Then we headed out for the morning walk. This is my daily view, Wonderland Lake in North Boulder:

This lake borders our street on the south side. There is a walking trail all the way round it. Since I have to be out there twice a day every day practically no matter what the weather is (thanks to the dogs) I am reminded daily that I really do live in a wonderland. The boyz are so cute walking with their little coupler leash!

I brought home a branch of Russian Olive from one of the trees on our walk, and put it on my studio windowsill:

Apparently it is an unwelcome nuisance tree here and Boulder is actively trying to get everyone to get rid of them because they are non-native and use huge amounts of water. But when their little flowers are blooming they have the most lovely perfume! To me, that smell signals that summer has finally arrived.

At 10:30 am I have a tennis game at a club downtown that we are members of. So I just have time to put a few glaze tweaks on two chinas and pop them in the kiln. I have three chinas I’ve been glazing this week, that are now at the manes/tails/hooves/eyes stage, which is so pleasant because I don’t have to run the noisy airbrush and exhaust fan. I love this part the best; I just get to paint those details using only paintbrushes and my palette:

That Belgian-colored Boreas is coming along nicely!

We have started riding bikes or taking the bus downtown instead of using the car, as much as we can. So I have been riding my bike down to tennis:

The boyz are always bummed out when they can’t go someplace with me. It’s about 10 miles round trip, mostly up hill on the way home! It is especially beneficial to me as a pre-tennis warm-up. I’d been struggling with bursitis in my hips and tight muscles in my calves and hamstrings, and I can already tell the different that just riding my bike before I get on the tennis court has made. No pain during tennis or later on or at night!!

The best part of the ride, is that I get to take the Boulder Creek Bike Path. This incredible bikeway runs beside Boulder creek as it comes out of Boulder Canyon, and runs for miles through the heart of the city and out to East Boulder county. It is the treasure of the city as far as most of us who live here are concerned. Here it is right in the center of town:

Right now the snow melt is on, so the creek is starting to run high:

There was a really good snow pack in the mountains this year, so we might actually see the creek flood its banks later in the month. A little flooding is OK, a lot is definitely NOT!

Here I am at the tennis court; what a great morning for tennis, sunny but not too hot yet:

Thanks to my partner Nancy and opponents Karen and Jackie, we had a super fun set that we eventually lost in a heartbreaking 5-7 score! Usually we can get two sets in in an hour and a half, but that one took practically the whole time. Great challenging play made by all!

No perfect Karen day would be complete without lunch at the Boulder McDonalds:

Though fast food is sadly my vice, I have to say I have been doing much much better about not indulging that vice very often these days! It sure is hard to be a junk food junkie in health-food-fanatical Boulder, either. I feel like I ought sneak in there with a hat and dark glasses disguise, so nobody sees me going in!

Paul and the boyz turn out to greet me as I wheel home into the driveway. Here’s Paul fetching the mail (and he helpfully took my on-bike photo for this blog).

Nothing beats being greeted by the ones you love most in the world.

Paul telecommutes his job from an upstairs office in our house:

Our family joke is that he’s so often on conference calls, that we actually communicate best via emails. He can type when he might not be able to talk to me!

Wow, this MUST be a perfect day. I got a box of books from Amazon, including a long-awaited sequel, woo hoo!

Ooh now I get to see how the two chinas in the kiln turned out, the best part of working in ceramics:

These are two Hagen-Renakers I’m glazing. One is very very special to me, it is a bisque “Swaps” thoroughbred that I acquired several years ago and just got around to glazing. I have been waiting until I felt equal to applying a quality glazing work to match the rarity of the piece!

Well, now it is nearly 4pm, and my work-slash-play day is coming to an end. We always go out for dinner on friday nights, and what a gorgeous evening it will be I am sure. We’ll have to find a restaurant with an outdoor patio I think.

Thanks for coming along with me on my perfect Boulder day!

This softly dappled medium grey with dark points was the “kiln-mate” to the light grey Boreas in the previous blog posting. I just love how this particular color makes his face look so soft and friendly. He was a commission, and is going home to North Carolina tomorrow.

I did find a buyer for the flawed light grey Boreas; thanks to everyone who inquired. I’m glad to say I could have sold about 6 of them! I should be getting more of the chinas in from England in the coming months, so be sure to get on the waiting list for a custom glazed Boreas (or Optime) if you haven’t already. It is hard to tell when I will actually receive each china, therefore I’m just putting names on a (non-binding) list, and when the china you want arrives, if you are next on the list I then contact you about it and quote a price for your color.

I ended up with a pretty large list after I announced the opening of the glazing books a few weeks ago, so don’t wait too long to get on it. I’ll reach my limit for this year soon!

I’m really really happy to see that there is still demand for these pieces. Glazing ceramics has been my creative salvation this year—it will have to keep me going until my sculpting muse comes off her extended vacation and visits me again. (She had better be doing something FUN…!)

Also: I received my ceramic molds for casting the new Keeshond dog tile in porcelain (and other kinds of ceramic) and they look great! I’m just waiting for my order of various slips to arrive, and then I’ll start pouring. I’ll post a photo of the first glazed tile when I get a chance. I received two test tiles made from the molds, which I glazed just in time for them to be taken to the Keeshond National Specialty dog show in San Francisco a few weeks back. I had to hit the ground running the week I got back from the Italy/Croatia cruise in order to make that deadline! May has been a busy month, and I have to say it feels great to be humming along so nicely and have the kiln cooking all the time. Maybe it’s just that spring has finally sprung here!

Coming in a few days: The Kiln is a Harsh Mistress, Part II: Mystery Solved!

I got back from our simply wonderful vacation last week, needing to get up to speed on the glazing work I have taken on this spring.

I learned yet again, that the kiln does not suffer fools gladly at all.

I had my first-ever kiln accident on Thursday, with a china piece owned not by me but by a customer, unfortunately. It was the Tumlinson “Majestuoso” I mentioned in this blog post in March.

It was in the kiln for the first firing and I forgot to prop it up on stilts off the kiln floor. If you don’t do that with these pieces on big china bases, they are almost guaranteed to break a leg. Which is exactly what it did. The front down leg broke clean at the pastern. (The back leg is still attached to the base.) Apparently these bases cool down at a different rate than the thin legs, and if you don’t get air circulating under the base in the kiln the base expands or something and the leg breaks.

I did know about this base issue, and have glazed other pieces on bases with no problems. I simply forgot this time when I loaded him in the kiln. (Normally the non-base horses go right on the kiln floor with no props, and I was firing other pieces at the same time and forgot to stilt it).

Anyway, AAARGH! Fortunately and incredibly since this is a sold-out edition, I was able to find another Majestuoso in bisque, and will start again. I had put a lot of painting hours into it even though it was the first firing, since this is a really detailed color pattern, sigh. This was the first year I had relaxed a personal rule I had about not custom glazing any chinas for other people on a piece that was rare or not easily replaceable. Because of this very thing where a mistake was made or something went wrong in the kiln beyond my control. And the thing I feared has happened! I am very lucky even though I’m paying for the mistake with my wallet.

Interestingly, since the piece still had one leg attached, and it was a loss anyway, I tried a kiln-repair technique where you push clear gloss glaze into the break, and then paint more glaze all around it, and then re-fire it to the original gloss glaze temperature. And it seems to have worked. The glaze reflows all around the break and re-seals it. I’ve been handling it just as I would a non-broken piece and so far it hasn’t re-broken. It’ll never be as strong as the original, and I can never sell it as mint, but I think I will finish painting this one too and see if I can find a buyer.

Too bad, that when you do the re-glazing the colored glazes fire off all weirdly. He’s now sort of blue-grey instead of bay-black!
Here is how it looked after it broke and before I re-glaze fired it:

and here’s how it looks now! I think I can coax it into a blue/grey roan appaloosa…!

I also broke a tile this week due to my absent-minded stupidity. I think my head must still be somewhere in Italy. Probably in some dreamy little out of the way canal/street in Venice, ooooh aaaah what a wonderful place that was!

Snow on the boyz this morning. Yesterday it was sunny and nearly 60°. Tomorrow it will be sunny and in the 50’s. Just a typical April on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains!

Friday we head over to Rome for our trip, so I’ll be out of contact with the rest of my world until April 28th. My parents will be watching over the house for us fortunately, and the boyz get to go back to their home-kennel for 2 weeks of “Kees Kamp”. I am ready for the world class art in Florence, and to overdose on the drop-dead-gorgeous sights that Italy and the Mediterranean sea do best. This will probably be our last trip overseas for awhile (I think we’ve actually reached Europe-fatigue) so I hope it will be the most memorable one.

I should get more photos for my “McD World” album (see this previous blog posting) of locations in Venice, Florence, Croatia, and Rome again. (I didn’t get a good shot of the McD’s at the Pantheon last time, so I intend to try again. It pretty much epitomizes the “how could they” aspect of McD’s locations right on top of world heritage sites!)

Hopefully when I get back I’ll actually feel like finishing some art work. I am long overdue for something new to offer; I need to get excited about something. Even the stuff I have started in the sculpture dept. isn’t really calling to me very hard, after promising starts. It is amazingly hard to get inspired to do even what you love to do, when you don’t really have to do it anymore (for financial reasons anyway). I think retirement will be an interesting sort of new challenge in ways I never expected.

My thanks to you for reading my Blog!

Here’s a painted Keeshond dog tile! It’s actually a cast resin sample (heavily gloss-coated) that I painted up to have something to display at a couple dog shows next month, until I get the ceramic tiles going. If all goes as planned, that should be in May. I can’t wait to get tiles to glaze; I’m totally spoiled now with ceramics and can’t stand to paint with plain old acrylic paints anymore!