Flocks of Buttons

Is there anyone who can't recall sifting through a button box, searching for just the right button to replace the one you lost off of your favorite blue blouse? Our household button box was a green MJB coffee can. It held other artifacts too, a dented brass thimble, a liberty dime, and a tape measure that pulled out of a small red plastic crabapple.

I'm following a long line of craft with my porcelain button offerings. Egyptians liked them, and the Greeks too. But it was the Germans in the 1200's that devised the buttonhole. And more button frenzy followed;

Porcelain 'calico' buttons from the mid ninteenth century.

Hand painted Victorian birds and mammals

My idea of high fashion which is not very. More of a country cousin look, where everything appears homemade, because most of it is. My buttons are two-holed and about one and a half inches in diameter. They are lightweight, and once attached to apparel, do not like to be thrashed about in a washing machine, but rather sloshed gently in lavender scented water then hung on a line to dry in the warm summer sun, country cousin style.

Now all this button talk has made me hungry for a piece of crabapple pie.

Care to join me?

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Stages

Elf light, bat light,
Touchwood light and toad light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
And a small face smiling,
In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away.
Walter de la Mare

Now sleeps the crimson petal, Now the white,

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk,

Now winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;

The fireflly wakens. Waken thou with me.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Circus stages and woodland ones too.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Keats and Fanny

Now hold on just a darn minute. I see the month of May is nearly over and I'm not ready to say goodbye. I want it back. May has been good to me and I would like to do it all over again.
For instance: In the sky the swallows are swooping and spinning. Climbing roses have topped the garden with squishy pink clouds, and in the studio I am making Boombah pieces again. Like the two rabbits above, "Keats and Fanny" in honor of the English poet and his true love.

This shadow box is nearly ten and a half inches tall. It qualifies as a boombah too. The lady reaches up to a passing bluebird, who flies by with a heart in its beak. The word 'away' is written on the heart and there is her small suitcase too, just out of camera shot. The moon looks down on the whole scene.

But looking forward, June has good things brewing too. Fresh cherries, apricots and baseball games. Migrating pelicans, birthdays to celebrate and talk of a tea party at a friends wonderful house close by. So we will have to let May go. And one of these days, just like a dear friend, May will come visit us again.

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Homemade rocks

Grandma couldn't cook. Overdone meat, mushy veggies and eggs sorta rubbery. She even gifted my mother a cookbook on her wedding day, and its inscription read

"To Marjorie, with the hopes she become a better cook than I"

But us kids saw it different. My sister and I still talk about the big slab of chocolate cake she'd put in front of us on a red flowered plate, the frosting dense with bitter chocolate and all washed down with a half a quart of milk so cold it froze your throat. Did I mention she made the cake with bacongrease?

But her masterpiece was Molasses cookies. And she made them in the big bowl in the top picture. Then she'd store them in a coffee can lined with wax paper. That can always seemed to be full of cookies. Chewey, gingery, and and big as baseballs.

So this morning I decided to throw out a batch of rocks. I've had the right molasses for weeks in the cupboard, it has to be Brer Rabbit because thats what she used. I am happy to trumpet the news I can still operate a mixer, follow a recipie and my spices are even reasonably fresh.

At the last minute, I decided to add extra raisins.

Here they are baked and stacked on a pedalstal cookie stand I made special just for today.

I only got sappy once while making these, the moment I took the first bite. The light-as-a-cloud texture, the cinnamon and dark molasses taste and I swore I could feel her standing in the kitchen with me. Its not really about the cookies, its about the love.
Pottery news: new pears in my shop tomorrow

Here's the cookie plate painted with a naturey theme. The base is made to look like a tree trunk.

Grandma's Molasses Cookies

One half cup shortening creamed with 1/2 Cup dark brown sugar

Add one beaten egg

3/4 C. dark molasses

1/4 C. boiling water. mix

dry ingredients

3 C. flour

1 t salt

1 t soda

1 t baking powder

2 t cinnamon

1 t ginger

1/2 t cloves

One cup raisins*

Mix to drop consistancy

Place on silpat well apart, they spread.

Bake 15 to 20 min at 350.

*I mixed black and yellow raisins and its very nice.

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

A new workspace and I can't stop making pears

Thank you, sun, for blazing through the clouds this morning. I can now wear one tee shirt instead of three, reassure myself spring really is here, and take photos of my new claywork space.

A whole five foot worktable thats deep enough to allow me room for making larger pieces. Above which I've arranged some old plates and some of mine too. And a clock I like, which does not work, but reminds me not to fritter time away.

I can stretch out here, roll out big slabs to make things like this fourteen inch platter fresh from the kiln. A country lady with her donkey, rabbit and stripey stockings.

I don't have to scrinch in my elbows. And more than one spoon at a time!

A long bench to store clay, tools and works in progress. Can you see the boquet of lupin to the right? I risked jail time for that bunch of flowers. My mother informed me its against the law to pick them. I hope she doesn't drop a dime on me.

(Scene of the crime.)

See what I mean about pears? My sister and I decided this morning they are one of the most beautiful shapes in nature. Here they are drying on a shelf under a sunny window, which I can open when the afternoon sun hits. This was a bit of a motherlode in terms of time and sweat equity (Mostly my husbands), but I can't wait to arrive here in the morning, put on music and turn the lights on, one by one.

xx

julie

Look what Nina did with a couple of my simple bird charms..........

Isn't she amazing?

www.ornamental.typedad.com

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I Brake for Donkeys

I am partial to donkeys. If my father's people came from County Kerry in Ireland doesn't it follow that they may have owned a donkey to convey peat back to their cottage, and that donkey's name could of been Sally or Seamus? So its in the blood. Thats why I visited the Donkey ranch today in Harmony, just a few miles from our house.

They came up to visit me as I sketched. Donkeys like people. They are kind and sociable and I'm not just making that up. I have a first hand knowledge.The summer I was nine, the donkey ride came to our town and set up in the school playground.

I stood in line, plaid shirt starched , my favorite jeans turned up at the ankle and blue keds tied tight. I hoped for the furry, taffy colored burro with the flicking ears and thats just who I boarded. His name was Tommy. I thought I would take a benign stroll around the playground with the other kids who were riding at a steady gait in a large cirle, but Tommy had other ideas. Get away ones.

As soon as I was situated, bridle in hand, he tore off down the hillside and to the open field, carreening towards the eucalyptus grove. My ponytail streamed behind me as his hoofs pounded over the dry summer grasses. Soon the head handler galloped along beside me and bellowed "Tighten your knees!, Pull his head up!"

I knew riding terms from watching TV westerns, but for a moment I wanted to run off to the woods too. Me and Tommy camping under the canopy of stars, eating beans from an old tin pie plate while coffee percolated on a smouldering oak fire. But the ramrod cut us off and we stopped short. He pushed back his stetson and scratched his head. "Never seen the like" he said. and we turned and plodded back. My legs shook and my rear was sore, but I felt a little bit like Annie Oakley. I made plans to memorize cowboy songs and learn to play the harmonica.

Back at the playground I climbed off and felt sad to leave, but Tommy flicked his ears at me and almost sort of smiled. "What an adventure!" he seemed to say. and it was.

Donkeys can live to be fifty years old. That means my wild and free loving friend could be chewing spring grass in some field today, just like the one in Harmony. Maybe once in a while he even thinks of me. I know I think of him. Love ya, Tommy, wherever you are.

The tattered outlaw of the Earth,

Of ancient, crooked will

Starve, scourge, deride me

I am dumb

I keep my secret still.

from The Donkey by Chesterton

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Green Fingers

On Friday I delivered a pottery order to Birds of a Feather on Main Street, and thats when my temperature started to climb. Because the sun is back out on a regular basis and I think everyone around town has a case of March Madness. One of my first symtons is always a craving for nasturiums. On the way to Bonnie's I stopped at our garden center and found myself swooning over bags of compost and flowered garden gloves, which I never wear. I like to get soil on my hands and my knees damp through my jeans.

For the last few years I've been using the Hit or Miss gardening method. I have planted and lost, but I am not deterred. All arrows point to woody herbs, shrub roses, scented geraniums and the afore mentioned golden lovliness of nasturtiums.They grow so well here that I feel like an accomplished gardener as I tuck them in every available space around the fence. Even though I know in my soul of souls that even Charlie Brown could succeed with them. All my garden horizons are dripping with froths of Magnolias in blossom, clematis exploding over doorways, and cabbage roses so enormous I could lay my head on them to rest from all my gardening glories. In the meantime I've got the rustics.

I left the garden displays long enough to take pictures of some of the lovlies Bonnie collects for her shows. A gardening friend.

This is only a smattering of the ribbon.

A rural looking bird cage that relembles a cottage.

Can a person get heart palpitations over a garden hat? Yes, I'm living proof they can.

http://www.2birdsofafeather.com/

Candlesticks from Bonnies. With dark cherry wood showing through worn putty colored paint.
And though my house is beginning to be mistaken for a florists shop, I couldn't resist the potted deliciousness of this homespun nasturium, 'Black Velvet' . Its so much more than a pretty face.

I wanted to share Lesley's work from Bird Ahoy. I sure was fortunate to win this beautiful necklace of carved stone, which is so light! The stone is carved with a key, and the second stone asks as a fastener. Simple and the kind of piece that goes with everything. The earrings too, light and simple, and a surprise from Lesley, they are going to go with all the grey I wear. Yup, love the greys. Thanks so much, Lesley! Both pieces are beautiful.

http://www.birdahoy.blogspot.com/

http://www.birdahoy.etsy.com/

Spring

The Spring comes in

when no one is looking.

You're lying in bed

with a cold in your head,

Or you may be cooking;

Putting new covers on the chairs,

When, suddenly, taking you unawares,

A thrush in the orchard starts to sing,

and once again, you have missed the spring.

Reginald Arkell

xx and happy planting

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com