Busy Weekend?

Hey, its me again. Looks like I'm back in the blog business.

I just wanted to let everybody know that we are having a 'Saturday Sale' THIS Saturday the 21st from 11 am - 4 pm. It will be at the studio/shop here in the greater metropolitan area of Beaver Falls, PA. We are located about 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh and if your in the area, stop by and check us out.

Unfortunately I will be away this weekend but I will have plenty of work there along with several other potters, weavers, jewelry makers, and painters. The fam and I are taking a weekend trip up to the Hudson Valley area of New York. So much going on, things are kicking in to high gear...the official start of Fall, my birthday(woohoo,ugh), the sale at the studio and way more that I will post about next time...including the trip to New York.

Till then...

True Love

I think its love.

Cool flower pots for your Fall mums? Praying Mantis not included. homefry ceramics

He Went That-A-Way

More new stuff. homefry ceramics.

Been A While...

Oh, Hello...remember me?
 It has been a good while since my last post...I admit it. I thought I have moved on from this blog. Although, maybe not. Honestly, I'm a bit undecided about the fate of homefry sketchbook. Just know that its me...not you. I thought I needed some space...you know, to get my head together. But here I am again...back at your virtual doorstep...and I am bringing lots of juicy pics for you to check out. For some reason you keep me coming back...not sure I can quit you.

So lets just leave it at that...no explanations, no details, no anything but a load of new work to have a gander at...

Please feel free to comment...I do love that...I miss the way some of you would talk such sweet words and the way others would bashfully just lurk in the darkness of the internet. And if your interested in seeing more of me...because I would love to see more of you....follow me on Instagram @khouser922 because I have been living through my cell phone camera quite a lot lately. AND if you want to get serious...visit my Etsy shop... khouser.etsy.com ...where there is plenty of work to purchase.

Enjoy the pics. click to enlarge and just remember that I love you.

Mermaids, Hula Girls and Glaze Failures...

As most potters know, there is nothing quite as frustrating as opening the lid or unbricking the door of your kiln only to find...dunh,dunh,dunhhh... glaze failures! Instead of being like a kid on Christmas morning with their shiny new gifts, its like a kick in the gut and a horrible sinking feeling about all that work that went into those pieces. Last time I posted I mentioned that about half my load was not so good due to application issues...well, I tried to re-fire them...added another coat or two of the questionable commercial glazes and fired to a true cone 6 instead of cone 5 with a hold...rationale being it might need that little bit of a higher temp to flatten everything back out...but NO DICE. Still dry and still looks like crap...bummer. I am currently looking at a couple new glazes and moving on...oh well, as I have said before, "that's ceramics".

But on the positive side, I did get to work on some of the wall platters that came out nice...decal city baby! Posted here are 3 images of thrown and slab built wall platters made to hang...all are roughly 12 x 12...some softly squared, others thrown, circular platters. The layers are looking good...slipped and carved, under glazes and other glazes, and now my graphic decals are in place...they still need to be fired so cross your fingers and hold your breath.

I shot these pics with my new smarty pants phone...and I used Instagram...man, I love Instagram. I will admit to being a little late to the party but hey, better late than never. Its my first smart phone and it does take some getting used to but like Instagram, there are a lot of cool things to do with it...and I am just getting started.

Hope its starting to feel like Spring in your neck of the woods...decal firing next week...aloha!

Half Way There

Easter Tulips in the kitchen window...

Like our current weather, half way to being decent, that's where I am with my cone 5/6 transition...half way there. I recently fired my first glaze load at Stray Cat Studio and it was about half and half as far as the results went.

 Honestly, I am so pleased with some of my pieces that the rest seem like not too bad for a bad half. Fact is, the bad half has more to do with my brushing application of a couple new commercial glazes that I am using more than anything. I am not used to brushing multiple coats that are obviously needed...I have been a "dipper"for a long time and flashing slips in the wood kiln always needed to be thin.
 The clear glaze and the aqua blue need several generous coats and my application was so thin that those areas were dry, almost underfired-like. So I will be layering on a couple more coats of each and popping those pieces back in the kiln.





Pictured in this post are highlights from the good half....now I need to slap some decals on these fellas. Most will get images but a few are just fine like they are...I'm even going back and forth some about graphics for the "scalloped" bottom mugs. Are the dots of color and scalloped line enough? Hmmmmm, good question...maybe or maybe just something subtle to add to the surface interest....

mixing bowl...

needs to be re-fired...

Finally here is one of the "fail" mugs...it should be fine after a bit more glaze and another go round in the kiln. More to come...

Enough Already

Another lovely Spring day here in Western PA.

Although its theoretically Spring according to the calendar, I do believe Spring has not really sprung...it is still tightly coiled and laying back like a rattlesnake in the tall grass. And today that fact was underscored by the almost 4 inches of wet heavy snow that fell during the night. The wet snowfall continued for most of the day and then eventually turned to a misty rain more than anything. Slush, slush, slush.

My daughter had a two hour delay and we measured the snow and eased slowly into the day. But all this crappy weather and pokey moving morning didn't deter me from getting some more glazing done. I am underglazing a black line that loosely follows the carved areas and/or breaks up the surface space and then overlapping my mid range glazes around the surfaces. I have picked a color palate that I am interested in that seems to work well with the light brown clay body...an earthy but glossy caramel to yellow-ish glaze...a translucent aqua...a nice shiny white...a darker semi translucent brownish liner for the interiors ...and random bright accents of a few opaque glazes. Then its decal city of course...

Speaking of decals...I have entered into an unholy alliance with some inexpensive Ikea stoneware mugs. I was shopping at Ikea the other night with my wife and daughter when my wife reminded me of us talking about trying to re-fire some generic restaurant ware similar to the one I did for my friends at the Beaver Falls Coffee and Tea Co, see the pic at that link....so why not some of these clean Ikea forms!? Why not indeed?! Here they are pre-fired...I just put decals on and did some glamour shots of them in my kitchen. I will fire them and take some pics to post whether they make it or not...could be nice...could be a blistered, bloated and slumped pile of shards. We shall see.

 And a shout out of thanks to those folks who went to NCECA down in Houston recently and are posting pics either on blogs or on Facebook. Love seeing all the great work...oh well, maybe next year. Hoppy Easter to everybody...think Spring and send those thoughts my way.