I Spent the day turning out round vases with handles in several different sizes. I’ve had worse days.

The poppies in front of the pottery shop are beginning to open. They are about two weeks early this year. Last year they were about two weeks late. That is the difference between a wet late spring and a dry early spring. I’m hopping they are still out in two weeks when our Heritage Day sale is held.
The movie guys came again last week. This time it was a crew from the local TV station channel 10. They are producing a piece about me and Lee for some future broadcast.

One must always have pie dishes. Not having them would make for some pretty disappointed patrons.


London brought her parents in for a look see and mother’s Day shopping for grandma.

I’m throwing pretty steady now to get a couple of firings off before the Memorial Day Sale in a couple of weeks.

Lots of people coming by. I don’t mind too much and the sales are good.

The Barker girls with friends.

Zina’s hiking class out walking Ernie

Bill and Tara with their girls from Humbolt County, CA.

Lee and I spent all of last week on the Yampa River. We launched at Deer Lodge Park in Colorado and ran to Split Mountain on the Green River in Utah. The Yampa joins the Green at Echo Park in the heart of Dinosaur National Monument. It was a glorious if wet week with beautiful people all but one of whom were new to us. It was so nice to catch up with our old friend Mho Salim who was the trip leader.

The gang. Lee, David, Barb, Masoud, Todd, Mho and Joe the Potter.

At Harding Hole.

Signs of Spring.

Tiger Rock.

In the Spiral Cave.

Late light at Harding Hole.

Steamboat Rock in Echo Park.

The Great Overhang.

Lee and Joe ant Harding Hole.

At home I have fallen back into preparations for the next two firings. I am getting ready for Heritage Day which is May 26 this year.

Lee stayed home from the river trip so she could attend a reception at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square in Salt Lake City where she was honored with a purchase award for this painting, “The Smell of a Kiss”. The painting is part of the LDS Church’s International Art Competition held every two years.

Adah and I went down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon last week with Shonpa Yeshi, Rick Gate, his two children Ali and Ryan. Lee was to have been on the trip but stayed home to attend the awards ceremony for the Ninth International Art Competition sponsored by the LDS Church in Salt Lake City. She was receiving a purchase award and thought it bad form to blow off the ceremony.

Rick Gate

Shonpa Yeshi is a student at Wasatch Academy in nearby Mount Pleasant. They are on Spring Break and it was to far for him to go home to the Tibetan refugee camp where he lives in India.

Rick and his kids Ryan and Alison at the top of the MIneral Bottom road that leads to where we launched our trip on the GReen river 52 miles upstream from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers.

This is the newly rebuilt Mineral Bottom road. It blew out in a flash flood incident in 2010.

Adah rowed a lot of the time. I was enjoying being a tourist/passenger. I spelled her from time to time.

The Butte of the Cross.

Looking down stream on the Green River from a butte above Fort Bottom.

An abandoned granary on the river side.

Camp on the Green River.

Looking northeast from the Doll’s House at the head of Cataract Canyon. Rick and the kids hiked up to the Doll’s House a few miles down stream form the confluence while I napped and read on my boat. I am still recovering from knee surgery in December and am not able to hike very well.

Evenings around the camp fire were very good.

The shed is nearing completion. I’ll be gone to the river for the next week. After that Shonpa and Hasib will help stain it and I’ll build some shelves inside to hold extra glazed ware for the kiln. Shonpa (from Tibet) and Hasib (from Kabul) are on spring Break from Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant.

The catalog for The Cup is online now. The show is at the ARTcetera Gallery at College of Lake County in Illinois. THe blog page featuring my work is here.

Here are a couple of my butter pots. Both of these are glazed with a local slip glaze I call Thistle Mud. Back in 1983 the little Utah town of Thistle was buried under 200 feet of water when a mountain slid down and dammed the Spanish Fork River. After the lake was drained it left a 12″ thick layer of very fine brown mud on everything. Being a potter I immediately though of the glaze potential of that layer of mud. Sure enough it made a great glaze in the cone 9-11 range that I fire to. Here you see two of the results Thistle Mud gets. There is actually quite a range of finishes possible in my firings. I enjoy uncertainty inherent in this process. If you come by the shop I can show you several other examples of THistle Mud.
We use these at home for butter. We cut the butter with olive oil to improve its spreadability and cut down on the amount of animal fat in our diet. It makes a nice homemade soft spread.

I get the fuel to fire my pots at a saw mill in the southern part of our county. Every Friday I drive to the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. On the way back I often stop at Satterwhite log homes and go through their waste wood pile for wood that will work well for burning my potsI get the wood at a fire wood price. Often there are boards, beams and the like that would actually make good lumber. So I bring thosth home and set them aside. Recently I realized I had enough to start a building project so I began putting up a storage shed out behind the pottery made of junk wood. It e=will be a place where I can store my junk.

Here is the shed so far. I have hired a friend to work with me so the shed will go up quickly. I will get he whole shed built with waste wood costing under $60. The cement for the footers was more than that.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I was finishing yesterday’s butter pots and mugs.

Lee and I are slowly making our way through the orchard while it is still winter and the trees are dormant.