Broken Hill trip

We went up there to look at the sculptures.

What an amazing setting.

360 degree view.

Sculptures all from a symposium and built on site over 2 months.

They say the rock was very hard.

Quite a challenge to work with.

While we were up there a couple of wallabies came along.

I had noticed one of the bushes had been grazed upon.

They were not afraid of humans and carried on with their brunch.

They blend very well with the bush,

(smack bang in the midddle)

A lot of the street names are minerals and stones.

Like Oxide St and Crystal St, Bromide and Chloride St's

Who took the B out of Beryl

As a potter

I thought it fitting that we stayed on Kaolin Street

A very interesting place

Check out what the other potters have been up to this week

http://mudcolony.blogspot.com.au/

Kaolin Street

We went away for the weekend.

Broken Hill is just a few hours down the road.

     Mad Max country!

                                            

                                    

The desert is beautiful and we were listening to

The John Butler Trio which often has digeredoo in their songs.

It really helped to bring the landscape to life.

Plenty of goats and emu's along the highway. Its a travel in the daytime trip.

We stayed on Kaolin Street.

More later.

Ive been side tracked

I was asked to take up the hem of some work trousers

Which meant I had to set up the sewing machine,

Next thing I know...

I have started playing with a jelly roll that my sister Annie gave me.

All that fabulous colour.

No wonder quilting can be addictive.

I fear that this is my first UFO as I have visitors coming and

I can't leave the machine set up on the kitchen table.

I know what I would do differently next time already.....

Great rainy day activity and yesterday it rained all day.

The Millewa wheat farmers will be off to a good start this year

Market weekend again

I couldn't resist taking this photo...pre market Friday is always very beautiful

These are the flowers before I have started making any bunches.

A couple of the buckets full are from Mum's beautiful garden

but the rest are from my paddock.

A little too much yellow, but it is bright and beautiful.

I hadn't even picked any of these flowers yet. Hypoestise I think

A prolific and hardy perennial that flowers in part shade!

I forgot to pick this one...Desley.

Not so good in bunches but looks great with orange and red blooms

I am noticing in the photo that something is eating it!

Adriana from http://mudcolony.blogspot.com.au/ the question

which piece can you not part with?

This is a Raku plate that I made sometime in the 80's 

I did a series and struggled with the larger pieces

which all were prone to cracking.

More grog...raku clay which is too tough for throwing....

I love crackle glaze, I love the carbon black of raku

and the randomness of raku.

The whole firing process and the smell.

I keep it to remind me of all those things.

Sunshine Yellow

Now we have the power on

the cool room has been set up in the back yard.

It was getting hard to get more than 3 buckets of flowers in

and it is a great way to hold over the flowers until a market week.

There was an old set of shelves that seemed to be the right size

I had to reposition most of the shelves which took a lot longer

than I thought...and I was thwarted with the hanging bars being just a tad

in the way for sliding the unit in.

Now if we do some sheep I will have to get the shelves out

oh well

I think the shelves will be great to increase my cool store ability

at least 3 buckets per shelf.

I have been picking my Chrysanthemums as they reach their potential

In Australia the white chrysanthemum is the traditional mothers day flower

and I got to thinking that this is seasonally appropriate.

On the other side of the world they would be totally out of season

so what is the traditional mothers day bloom for the northern hemisphere?

Yellow is not an overly popular colour for cut flowers.

I think it is Sunshine captured.

It reminds me of Van Gogh
I like it...
I'm not so fond of the most popular cut flower colour...pink
I am growing pink flowers to satisfy that popularity but

I have wattle flowering at the moment too so there will be many

yellow bunches at the market this Saturday.

I have also been digging up my Jerusalem artichoke bulbs,

They are a great potato alternative.

Prolific producer and just before they are ready to pick, they have many yellow

sunflower like flowers.

I affectionately refer to them as farty chokes for windy reasons.

Busy busy busy

There is so much going on it is hard to fit it all in.

This is the first market free weekend for a long time.

I have a kiln to fire, its all loaded I was just waiting for off-peak power

My "Rith" inspired teapot failed the lid fitting test.

I will have to make a new bottom and a new top,

I can see this project on the back burner for a while.

What is it with boys and skulls?

The kangaroo is a members reaction to a long drive  from work,

dodging kangaroos on the four hour drive home.

An order for camel lamps from Canada has me back on the camel train...

and loving it.

I went off on a bit of tangent the other day and made some drawing charcoal.

A Willow tree had dropped a big branch..that got me thinking

 I may have discovered the Pope's smoke secret.

The tin is filled, jam packed with willow sticks

then placed on the fire.

When the white smoke stops the charcoal is ready. It took about 40 minutes

We discovered the white smoke was flammable....

Got me thinking!
I'll link this to http://mudcolony.blogspot.com.au/
click on the link to see what else has been happening in clay this week.