Sometimes this saw starts, but it is unreliable! The carb has been re-built, fiddled with, fed expensive cocktails, and cussed at.
When the thing DOES fire up and sustain putt-putt, it binds real easy, the chain falls off, it dies; take your pick.
One time it ran for fifteen minutes straight. A record.

With one great crockpot and one dead Betty Crocker Cooker that I picked up at Saver’s, I am making all my Christmas gifts for the doggie people on my list.

The blender is the next tool used, and the resulting slurry is lightly baked in the oven, then allowed to cure in the Arizona sunshine.

I am a big fan of tool use.

Well, today I had a couple of “Aha!” moments at the wheel and threw three stemmed dessert cups, two rice bowls, and a salad-sized plate.

Today was one of those days where the clay actually felt centered, there was no elbow wobble at all.

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As you can see, I work real wet. Haven’t been able to be much tidier yet, I’m pretty messy.

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I fired these today and will glaze this batch on Thursday. They are for the Empty Bowl fundraiser.
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It was just one of those good days for me. Some days you just can’t throw, you may as well pack it in, take a long break.

I am looking for a potters wheel and doing a bit of research. My ceramic teacher, David Bradley advised against a kick wheel just because when you have aver a couple of pounds of clay on the wheel it’s hard to keep it going evenly. For a couple of hundred dollars more, I can get a nice used electric wheel.
David Bradley has a show on campus of musical pottery that just fascinates me. These figures have flutes inside and a bellows under their shirts. When you lift the torso, they whistle.

I love them,they are so tactile and visually satisfying at the same time they make great sounds.

I was unhappy with the amount of upper thread my new machine uses in uptake. I hate to waste thread since I use so much of it, so I like to cut it as short as I can, but my new Brother CS 6000i seemed to take a whole lot to not come unthreaded every time I started.
I found out (by accident) that the reason my new Brother CS 6000i took so much upper thread on the uptake is because the tension was too tight.
Not TOO tight, really, as I was top-stitching quilts and then making handbags out of heavy material. When I got to lightweight fabric for the series of blouses, I found that the wasted upper thread problem on the uptake isn’t a problem on light thread/light tension. Also the machine is much quieter.
When I went back to handbags, I put in a ‘heavy duty’ needle and the thread problem is solved. Also, I don’t need to use as much tension and the machine is quieter, humming like a song.

Arts and crafts form a large part of my world. Not only do I believe in the mental health and intelligence gains generated by exposure to arts and crafts, but I feel there is a place for art and crafts in third-world community building. A lot of poverty can be eased through the creation and marketing of arts and crafts around the world.
And I love machines! And tricky inventions!
This space will be devoted to the tools we use to create our arts and crafts, starting with my new sewing machine, a Brother CS 6000i.

I am learning to use it, even though it’s a lot different than may last machine, also a Brother, but a very basic model.
I got this machine specifically for the leafy vine stitch number 49, but have found that this machine is superior in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
The bobbin is dead easy to wind and thread, take apart and re-assemble, and clean. Easy Peasy.
(Note: take the shuttlecock out at least every eight hours of use and brush the lint out. It really builds up and can cause skipped stitches.)
The tension requires a tighter tension than my old machine, around five for two layers of broadcloth, which on the other machine would be three or four. Up to seven or eight when quilting with one layer of medium loft batting and two layers of cloth.
I love the push button start and stop because I sew standing up at the work table and with my new machine I don’t even need to plug in the foot pedal. On the old one, I had to suspend the foot control in front so I could lean into it with my hip, and I hadn’t realized that it was uncomfortable until I didn’t have to do it any more.