New Things to Come

That is just a catchy phrase to make you read.... my bad.
I realized that I haven't written in about a month. I am bad at this blogging stuff, but you all know that already. So let's skip the apologies.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, Christina came home Tuesday. We went to San Diego on Thursday to spend Thanksgiving with Glen's family. Barbara as always was such a great host and boy is she a good cook too! We took Sparky with us, so that's always appreciated that she lets us do that, Sparky is so needy. We spent the day with great company and for that I am thankful to have the Boyd's and Henehan's in my life. For some reason nobody got their cameras out this year, so I have no pics to show the fun had.

Christina left Sunday morning and the house has been quiet since then. It's nice to have her come and visit, but it's also nice to have her go back... am I bad again??

I had a tutorial to show but the last step didn't work out... the glazing. Glaze ran down and there were some pinholes. So, I will have to wait for next firing to do more pieces then. It has to do with texture so I will give you that much today.

In this post I want to thank all of you who have supported my little ceramic creations, been there for me as a friend. I truly appreciate all of you. Wishing you all the best of the Holidays. May love, family, peace and happiness fill your hearts and home forever.

Irvine Fine Arts Holiday Faire 2009

I will be selling tomorrow Saturday November 7th. at the Irvine Fine Arts Center from 9-4. Their annual Hoilday Boutique and Fundraiser for the Center is always a lively place to be. Lots of vendors inside and outside the center bring a lot of beautiful handmade creations for all seasons and ocassions. I will be outside in the back with beautiful Heritage Pond in the background, you don't want to miss it since tomorrow promises to be a fabulous sunny day!

You can get some yummy chili on the donated bowls made by the ceramics students.Chili is pretty good! Get there early since this place is very popular. I hope to see you there, come and say hi.

The Irvine Fine Arts Center is located at Heritage Park in Irvine. Take 5 Freeway exit Culver Dr. go West and turn left on Walnut, left on Yale and the IFAC is on the left. 14321 Yale Av., Irvine.

Dia de Muertos

Today in Mexico and other Latino countries is the day for the celebration known as Day of the Dead. In what appears to sound like a day of mourning and crying is actually pretty much the opposite. Dia de Muertos is actually a celebration of the life of our loved ones who have departed. The tradition is to celebrate by visiting their place of rest and bring to them a lot of gifts to make their place look happy, festive and colorful. Flowers is the first of gifts brought, maybe their favorite dish and drink, favorite music, candles. All these things look so pretty because as you know the Mexican culture and folklore is always full of bright colors.

Today I came to realize that while I was growing up we never went to the cemetery to visit anybody, I knew about the celebration but never went to one. We Didn't have anybody that was so close to us that had died and that were resting near us. My Mom's parents and siblings and my Dad's father had died many years ago, some even before I was born in their home state in Southern Mexico. It wasn't until I was 24 that my maternal grandmother passed away in Tijuana. Being the first closest member of my family that passed away. By that time I was living in California already and was very well adjusted and assimilated to living here. It took another 14 years for us to suffer a major loss. On July 2000 my Mom passed away, that was a very hard time for us and for me sometimes it still is. I didn't visit her resting place today because she is in Tijuana, and I don't make the trip there very often but I had my sister get flowers for her.

Today I went to visit my Aunt and my cousin whose resting place is in my neck of the woods, they both died last March less than 24 hours from one another. Mother and son rest together. My cousins and I brought our chairs, chatted and then prayed the rosary. We went to lunch afterwards and caught up with things going on with our kids nowadays. It was my first visit to the cemetery on this day and it was very nice to see a lot of people visiting their loved ones. Someone even brought the mariachi band! (I love mariachi). It was just the perfect day under the hot California Sun.

This is a picture of what my Mom's resting place looks like. My brother Gustavo is so good at maintaining and cleaning all the time. I am always thankful to him, and I am blessed he is my brother.

A day with Lana

Last week I attended a one day workshop with Lana Wilson at Saddleback College in South Orange County. I was looking forward to this day since I read about it in her website... May or June I think. I emailed the instructor at the college and did not hear anything for 3-4 months, I thought that I was not going to be so lucky to get in. But I did! and it was great to attend.

Lana is a very lively and energetic lady. Her life is full of experiences from the many years being a potter, her many travels, her children, a life well lived.
She incorporates times in her life as she is describing her clay work, how a technique happened to be created when she was doing something totally different from clay, or how the night before she was thinking while lying in bed of how to improve a technique that she would show us that day. She is truly fun to watch and listen to. I wish her several days workshops were near by, I'd go in a hearbeat.



While she showed us a lot of stuff in the one day workshop, I will talk about a few things that stuck. She is working with colored slips right now in creating functional pottery, something that was not done by her years ago. She adds the slip to a wet slab by brushing coats of different colored slips. And then proceeds to alter the clay in many ways by carving, stretching, throwing it on the table, stamping and so much more. She created several pieces in the day and I manage to get some pictures of a cup, vase and a couple plates.



Lana is very giving with sharing a lot of her techniques of doing clay. I see her as a kind person who probably saw in us the eagerness to learn and to create something new, beautiful and fun with our own hands. She gave us that sense that it was okay to do whatever we wanted with what she taught us and if in the process we learned something new, or a way to improve (hard to believe) to take on it and just do it.

Thank you to Richard White at Saddleback for letting me in, and to Lana for being a great teacher and an inspiring me to take clay to a new level.

How could I

Well, here I am again with another apology post. I am so bad in keeping this blog current, I don't know what it is?? Well, I do know a couple reasons why... but there is more than a couple, but I will not get into the couple ones I'm talking about. I am finally walking much better than the last couple months after surgery in July. I can say that walking as my exercise is great, so that has me a little happy that I can walk with my neighbors again.

Also, I am missing the girl now that she is gone to College, so that is taking some time to adjust. Sadly to top it off I had to put my sweet kitty down a few weeks ago, not having her has been very hard. Every time I think of her I start crying.
She had been sick since the beginning of the year and we were trying to figure out what was wrong with her. In the end it was just too much to put her thru more tests. She lost a lot of weight in the meantime and gain some back and ultimately lost some more. Sassy was a cat who LOVED to be petted, she was the neighborhood's cat and paraded herself everywhere. Many of my neighbors are sad to hear she is not here anymore. She was quite a character always demanding of my attention, she also outlived many cats around us that were lost to coyotes. She was a smart and loving kitty that will be missed greatly.

I will post in the next couple days about a clay workshop that I took a few days ago with a very fun and wonderful clay artist from the San Diego area. I have admired her work for several years and felt very lucky to attend the one day demonstration she gave at the local college.

So without making anymore promises of keeping this always current, I'll just say, hasta luego.

Taking care of business

I had knee surgery two days ago on the 29th, all went well. Except that yesterday morning I was not feeling pain, I was actually feeling pretty good so I saw no need to take painkillers. SOB! by 6pm the pain was so ever present, took two pills and it took about 3 hours for the pain to start fading away, by that time I took another dose and poor baby was crying wishing that I had not been hopping around all day.

Another reason for not taking the meds was that they make me so sleepy, dizzy and kind of depressed. So while I'm making one thing better (pain) I'm screwing up others....ugh. Today I have been in and out of sleep like in a fog, but oh well pain has reduced a lot, so, so far good for that. Thanks to Glen, my sister Laura and Christina for being there for me and taking such good care, specially Glen who did the driving and heavier load the first two days.

As it is I am taking care of business in the knee dept. but not on the clay dept. Just a couple orders to get done but not much
that I need to worry since the people waiting knew that I would be out of commission.

Back to the pillow. Later.

Getting old

I found out yesterday that I may need knee surgery on my right knee, not what I wanted to hear. I had surgery on that same knee 15 years ago when I had a torn meniscus. Everything went well then and I really didn't have any problems since. But about a month ago I twisted the knee when I was trying to get in the car, didn't hurt horribly but it has been a constant nag to the point where I have slowed down my walking tremendously. And for those of you who know me you know that it was back in February that I started walking a lot after taking care of some health problems, and I have been able to lose 16 lbs.

But now I need to take care of this before it gets any worse. I am waiting for a call to set an appoinment for a MRI. It's funny that the first surgery I had was about the same time, I remember taking advantage of the 4th of July weekend to recover better w/o having to go to work for 4 days or something like that. And here I am now at the same time.... same knee and same problem, a torn meniscus.

I feel that once I turned 30 the warranty on my body expired and it started bringing on aches and pains, changes on body, the rate of hairloss quadrupled, depression set on bla bla bla. And don't get me going on turning 40!

I think the reason I didn't want to hear about surgery is because I haven't fixed my shoulders that have been bugging me since my late 30's... been putting it off for a looonggg time and now I have to take care of this first. Oh well, c'est la vie.