Prepping to fill the pool

The pool will be filled this weekend!

Bob in the Bobcat

Some clay works, will trim them tomorrow.

Small bottle, big bowl

Tall bottle

Round bottle

Tux Update: She hasn't eaten much since starting the new meds Monday and her ribs are showing again. She's been eating off and on today but I have been hand feeding. She's alert and more active but still sleeping a lot.

Big Pot, Little Pot

Tired of doing regular old pots, worked on something a little more fun today. Big pot:

Little pot:

Tux Update: Immediate effect of the Baytril, Flagyl and doubled Fluconazole is to destroy Tux's appetite. I'm afraid she is going to lose a lot of weight and this week will be just as perilous as the first week of anti-fungals. I am exhausted.

Good News Bad News again

Good news on Hooper. The kidney diet and probiotics are working wonders. Blood testing today showed her creatinine and BUN levels have returned to normal! 

There is some good news for Tux. Her body is accepting the Fluconazole and her liver is still functioning well. The bad news is she has lost weight after a rough week of bloody stools, depression and loss of appetite. She still has a low grade fever and evidence of sepsis. Poor thing seems to be losing the battle with this fungus. We are doubling down on the anti-fungal meds, eliminating the anti-inflammatory, and treating with Metronidazole and Enrofloxacin for the sepsis. I still wonder if it wouldn't be kinder to let her go peacefully, but I guess we'll try the more aggressive approach and see how she is in three months -- if she makes it that long. Yes, it's that bad.

We interrupted a couple of lizards in an intimate embrace on our walk yesterday. This appears to be the female with her tail frozen in "position." I'm taking the camera with us now, hoping to catch a couple of tortoises in the act.

I am working on large clay bottles for a specific glaze combination. Here are the first two. Clay is Cone 5 Sedona Red that fires to a pretty toasty color. The dark clay is making an awful mess in my studio though.

Glaze Fix

This is the troublesome pot with pits from the initial firing I posted a few back. It's been through a second low fire cycle and produced a quite good result. I filled the pits with a little more of the Cone 06 Mayco Copper Aventurine that had bubbled, then fired it with a Cone 04 bisque load. It produced some interesting coppery sparkles and streaks and runs. Photos don't show it well, but darker colors are glossy while the butterscotch color and white are matte. It's a little darker than the first result, but I'm really pleased with it overall. Usually my glaze experimentations are pretty awful. In fact, I feel like most of my glaze firings are disasters, so thank goodness for small favors. The swimming pool hasn't been filled yet (in it's transformation to RV parking pad) and makes a great place to throw ugly pots. I love smashing them almost as much as making them!

It's been an awful spring for wildflowers. Not nearly enough winter rain. Creosote, brittle bush, ocotillo and a few other shrubs like the two below are flowering a little. It will be a tough year on the bees and other insects. 

What's new?

Seems early for cactus blooms

No more funky deck. Nice metal roof instead.

Too Warm

First rattler of 2014 on the afternoon walk. A small diamondback curled up in a depression in the trail.

Changes

Well, we have taken down the For Sale sign and taken up the hammer. The balcony deck is going to be converted to a roof over the back porch, a door on that wall was removed, a window added, metal siding is going on the outside wall and Plum Pudding paint on the inside.

New window and siding

New window inside. Door was where the dresser is now.

The pool is a thing of the past! Bob finally emptied the water and that turned out to be a very good thing. He discovered a big crack that had been leaking for who knows how long. This will bring a big savings in water and electric bills, pool chemicals and maintenance, homeowners insurance and property taxes. An all-around win for us. Plus, we can convert this area to an RV site.

Crack and gap at the water intake

Goodbye pool.

Something frightening happened to Tux yesterday. We think her bad leg popped out of the hip socket, which is malformed. Poor dog was wheeling around trying to stay upright with the leg sticking out at an odd angle but not having much luck because her other rear leg isn't stable enough to support her weight on it's own. She got to lay on the sofa with a heating pad for a few hours until an additional small dose of carprofen went to work, and today she went in for another laser treatment. I'm upping the dose of carprofen a little bit, watching for nose bleeds of course, and she's clearly feeling better now. The vet thought she is looking much better even though she isn't putting on any weight. Blood tests for liver function are scheduled for next month, and Creatinine/Bunn testing for Hooper (who is rebelling against her kidney diet). Tag got some laser on his hips and legs after pulling up lame one day and he's getting around much better now, too. His back legs aren't collapsing anyway. No more wild Frisbee games for him anymore.

Tag getting laser treatments too.

Lizard in a Pot

My pots are proving useful as lizard traps.

Dogs in a Red Hat

Bob found this dog-sized red cowboy hat in the desert so now we have... Cowdogs!

Cowtux

Cowhoop

Cowtag

Tux update

Cheers are in order. Our million dollar dog weighed in at 58 pounds this morning! Her hips are responding well to the laser treatments and she is feeling good enough to want to run, but the left stifle is holding her back. She has one more treatment scheduled for Friday and I hope that leg begins to shape up. We'll definitely continue the treatments on her hips... I think it will be needed once a month to keep the inflammation under control... until she is off the anti-fungal meds at least. Keep fingers crossed that she makes it through the week without a new health emergency.

Glaze Disasters and Not So Disastrous

Time to make a clay run to Vegas. I need to make a few more pieces to fill the kiln and try to rescue these glaze disasters.

First is this neat pot glazed with Mayco Elements Copper Adventurine (cone 06) under Mayco Alabaster (cone 5/6). I applied the copper glaze a little too thick and even though it was a slow glaze firing with a slow ramping down after a seven minute hold at cone 5 I still got a lot of bubbles. I used a rotary tool to grind down the sharp glassy edges of the bubbles. Later I'll fill them with more glaze and try firing the pot with my next bisque firing to cone 04. I'm hoping the glaze will smooth out because I think this is really striking.

Bubbles

Grinding the edges

Close up of neat colors in the Copper glaze

First time I've used these glazes so learning as I go. Here is Alabaster again with Mayco's Sapphire, both cone 5/6 glazes, but clearly they were applied too thin. Guess I'll try a second glazing and hope for the best. I like the size and shape of this.

Here are some mugs decorated with colored slips and glazed a clear matte. I like working with the more predictable slips and consider these OK basic mugs. 

Next, misc. things I made for Jason, glazed with Coyote Clay's Oasis on the inside and Opal on the outside. The piece on the left has Copper and Archie's Base under Oasis to emphasize the decoration with Opal on the interior. 

Water pitcher in Aqua

Small bowls

Glaze tests

Two I like: Archie's Base with Turquoise (left) and with Oasis (right)