we are saving the shells. evidently, there’s pectin in the rinds and if you soak the shells over night in water, you can peel the skin off easily and use the rinds to make jam. yum! we’re going to try that tomorrow.

we then boiled some water and added a bit of sugar to make a simple syrup. after we thought we had the right amount of sugar, we added the fruit pulp. we are very unscientific about the whole process, if you couldn’t tell. dan read up about it on the internet. from there, we just kind of play it by ear. so, we let our pulpy simple syurp mixture boil for a bit while we prepared the jars.

so, to prepare the jars, i washed them real good with hot soapy water. then we stuck them in a bath of boiling water to get them the same temperature as the boiling mixture we were about to pour into them. otherwise, the jars might crack. we pour the multen juicy liquid gold goodness into the boiling hot jars, wipe off the tops of the jar to get a good seal and then screw on the lids! but we’re not done yet. we still need to boil the full, sealed jars to create a lovely sucction seal so that our sauce will keep and not spoil. so, back into the boiling water they go. after about five to ten minutes, we take them out, set them on a towel so they don’t break and let them cool for 12 to 24 hours untouched. after about ten minutes of cooling, the center part of the lids started popping down! telling us that the seal had been formed. such a satisfying noise.

we used about twenty fruits and got four small jars of passionfruit sauce. yum! they aren’t going to last very long, i can tell you that. over some vanilla ice cream or chessecake! um… my mouth in watering.

so, we have the jars now. all we have to do is make the sauce! i’ll let you know what our process is for that when we do it.

it was in venice in sue’s front yard. she and some neighbors put together the whole thing. there were like ten or fifteen artists selling stuff (and i think more came later on in the day). it was kind of a crazy weird neo-hippie-burning-man-raver vibe going on next door in the neighbor’s yard. it was quieter and a bit more my speed in the yard i was in. i shared a table with heidi who made some beautiful necklaces. she had one that was red coral and turquoise! my favorite. on the other side of me was a man named joe. he made these whimsical chicken clocks.

i’m totally brain dead today. i worked really hard for three weeks to get all my stuff ready for the sale. i had a great time, i sold a bunch of stuff. but totally glad it’s over. unfortunately, i was so busy setting stuff up, chatting with all the people and drinking beer that i forgot to take any photos. there were tons of people around snapping away, so hopefully i’ll get some photos soon to share. the way i set my table up looked really nice. so i’m sad that i can’t show you what it looked like.

but i did take a few pictures of my pots. here you go! these are some of my favorites. but they’re like kids, you love them all, in just different ways.

me and sara.

i was exhausted after the four hours, but managed to snap a few photos to share with you. i wish i would have taken some of the actual glazing process so you could see what it looks like. i’ll have to remember to do that the next time.

when i got the to studio, i checked the shelves to see if my first set of pots where done. and they were! they came out very different then what i expected, but that’s the fun of it, i guess. you can see them here as bisque ware and after being glazed. and also here, with little succulents planted in them.

after the basking in the awesomeness of my finished pots, i had to switch gears. the glaze didn’t turn out how i expected. instead of flat brigth colors, they were spotted and muted. i took note of the glazes i liked and which ones i didn’t, went to the wall of samples and started planning my attack.

i went to the shelves in the kiln room and gathered all of my little pots. and here they are. all twenty two of them! twelve pots and ten, what i call, donut holes or saucers. instead of throwing away the clay from carving the hole out of my pots, i decided to make them into little, tiny, beautiful saucers.

after wiping off the dust, now comes the fun part! glazing. just about every one of my pots has some sort of decorative etching on the side. i didn’t want the etching to get drowned out with too much glaze. i spent so much time carving each one, that i wanted it to stand out. so on each pot, i either used a white or black matt glaze on the etching. and then i dipped the whole pot into which ever glaze i wanted. there are samples of each glaze on the wall near the buckets of glaze. the samples only give you an idea of what the glaze might look like. then i painstakingly i filled out a little white tag with my name, phone number, date and which glaze i used. it’s a reference point for the person loading the kiln. and then, for my own reference, i drew a little picture of each pot and wrote down which glaze i used. so that if i LOVED a glaze, i could know the name and use it over and over. and also, if i didn’t like a glaze, i knew to stay away. and i am SO glad i did that!!
here they are all lined up, ready for the final firing.