Callie Beller Diesel

@Babs They can be, but they get easier with practice. It’s a French butter dish, so the pot in front fits inside the pot in the back as a lid. You’re supposed to put a little water in the bottom of the outside piece so that when the butter part sits inside, it creates a seal that keeps the butter from spoiling. That way you can leave the butter on the counter or in the cupboard and it stays spreadable. You’re supposed to change the water every 2-3 days. If my kid is going to make bread, I’m gonna make butter dish listings online.

If you can’t find dry yeast, the fresh cake stuff is still around because fewer people are familiar with it. I think you add a bit more of it than the dry stuff and just crumble it in to the flour. The no-knead recipes also only use 1/4 tsp yeast, 3 cups of flour, 1 1/4 tsp salt and 1 1/2 cups of water. ps: @Mark C. if you crop your photos on your phone to a square format, they don’t flip. It also can help with file size. Snapseed is a free and ad free photo editing app you can use for this.

They’ve closed all the playgrounds, because kids don’t observe the 6’ social distance stuff, oddly enough. They closed schools 2 weeks ago, but they were just about to start spring break anyways. I got calls from the kids teachers yesterday asking us about tech availability. The assignments we start getting tomorrow. We’ve been told it’s supposed to be about an hour a day of stuff for their age groups (grade 3 and 6). Mostly literacy and numeracy, with some social studies and science. My kids have been going nuts for Prodigy. (It’s a math game online).

If you’re making large scale work, by which I’m assuming you mean pieces larger than 5-10 lbs of clay, you might have to add even more time to the soak in the bisque. It takes longer for more mass to even out temperature wise. When I was first figuring out how to fire even just my red clay, someone gave the advice that if you focus on firing the clay properly, many glaze flaws will be resolved in the process. This is particularly true if the glazes in question don’t bubble, pinhole or blister on other clays.

@oldlady it comes that way, and has a, well, more smoky flavour. You can roast it in a dry frying pan for a similar effect. @Min why the ice cube? It all looks yummy!

Also did some cooking for lunch, instead of the constant snacking today. Today has been a good energy day, so I am making hay while the sun shines. This is Tom Kha, or coconut lemongrass soup. There is no link to the recipe I use, because I got it off a cooking show years ago, but the link here is similar. I make a green curry paste with a whole bunch of cilantro, the ginger, garlic, onion, hot pepper and lime, but the jarred stuff works just fine. I used enoki mushrooms, because they were super cheap and they’re like extra noodles. I put some fish in, but you can use thinly sliced chicken, or big shrimp (heh) when they’re in season. https://www.daringgourmet.com/tom-kha-gai/

Bit of a late breakfast. Mixed a tablespoon of hummus into some canned tomatoes, salt and pepper, a shot of hot sauce and some fresh herbs. Simmer for about 10 minutes and then poach an egg in it. Serve with toast to dip in the yolk. Cheese toast shown, but any will do. These bowls are my go-to. I made them a couple of years ago and tried to make more for the public, but they weren’t as popular as I thought they’d be.

@LeeU if you take the same pan roasted cherry tomatoes, they’re pretty tasty on hash browns too. Or it would indeed be amazing with sourdough! Cut tomatoes in half, a couple of tablespoons of oil in a hot pan, clove of garlic and herbs. Fresh if you have, dried if you don’t. Comes together in about ten minutes and they get all sweet.

No bears in the city, however quiet it is! Lotsa jackrabbits though. And coyotes. Tonight, no one was particularly hungry because we’re not really active. Dinner was just pasta with a good olive oil, a big garlic clove, about a pound of pan roasted cherry tomatoes and some parm. I did the pots.

All right everyone. We need some pretty right about now. Show off your stuff! Works in progress, finished items, glorious meltdowns, show us your workbench!

+1 for Overdrive. You can use it to download books, ebooks and audiobooks from multiple libraries. You will need whatever your library card number is, and whatever password you need to log in to your library’s website with.

@Mark C. I look forward to your new tree fishing Instagram account that you undertake in your glorious ADHD boredom.

My sister is a nurse who works at the Cross Cancer Clinic in Edmonton. Because her patients are all immunocompromised, she thankfully will not be near the front lines of this. But her colleagues are all bracing. It is not the number of people who will die that make me worried, although that will be very cold comfort for those who do and already have. It is the capacity of the healthcare system to manage the sick people who will need ventilators and critical care to recover. If this virus makes you very sick, you need help to breathe. My mom’s bestie has it (and quarantined ASAP). It is one hell of a chest infection. Many otherwise healthy people will come around, but not without hospitalization, and the recovery is long. When too many people need ICUs and hospital beds at the same time, that’s when serious problems happen, like people who get sick or injured doing other, regular things needing hospital beds too. Medical system capacities are based on typical need, and assumes that a certain percentage of the population is in need of care at a given time. It’s not meant to handle the atypically large influxes of hospitalizations that this disease is causing. It is more important that you don’t spread it than it is for you not to get sick. Not that I want anyone sick. That’s why everyone is saying stay home. My province has declared a state of health emergency that has closed down ALL schools (k through university), daycares, certified child care programs, pubs, bars, private gyms (the municipalities have closed the public ones), and cancelled all gatherings over 50 people, including conventions, shows, sales, sporting events or practices, in person worship services, weddings and funerals. Oddly, malls are still open, but many large retailers have shuttered temporarily. Most are either paying their employees or laying them off so they can collect EI. Most restaurants are closed except for drive through or takeout. The city shut down all Rec centres and library branches and people riding transit are asked to enter via the back of the bus unless disabled, to not pay cash fares and rip their own tickets. The borders are now closed to everyone but truckers and Canadians and permanent residents coming home. They are only allowed to land at 1 of 4 airports in the country if coming by air so they can be screened. All of this has come down in increasing levels of severity over the last 7 days. Our Chief Provincial Health Officer, Dr Deena Hinshaw is becoming quite the internet favourite. They’ve started announcing the various relief programs on Federal and Provincial levels this week, but I’ve already gone on too long. Suffice it to say there is lots of very relieving, good news in there for ordinary people. We will be ok. Stores here are picked over, although I found everything I needed today. There were folks in the grocery store, but no kids. The toilet paper aisle of Superstore was empty. It echoed. It was weird. It was my first time leaving the house in a week, and I’m not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. I lucked out and stocked up on clay supplies last week before most of the above got put into effect. Don’t be selfish. Don’t spread this thing. Stay home and make pots. Do something funny and weird on instagram. Do a soothing throwing video. Support an artist friend. Call your friends and talk to them that way. The sooner we flatten the curve, the sooner we get our lives back.

My supplier is Ceramics Canada. It’s in the same town, but round trip there’s at least an hour’s drive because it’s through the industrial area and there’s freight trains. I pick up my shipping supplies and my bags and tissue in the same district so I tend to batch my trips, and I try and get a six month supply of materials at a go. That said, if I run out of something and need it in a hurry, I’m not having to wait too long. Shipping makes it way less expensive to just buy from them. I do not live anywhere near the border.

I have mixed clay in the past, but I don’t have time anymore and I’d like to save my body a bit, so I happily pay Plainsman for their fine product. Even in high school, we mixed our own glazes, so I never really learned different. When I went through college, the focus was on making your own, whatever temperature you were working at. I didn’t start using any kind of commercial products until the high fire gas kiln I was using wasn’t going to be available for a couple of months for shed repairs. I decided to “just try” some red clay at cone six, and because I “wasn’t going to have time to learn the chemistry” I bought some powdered clear and some underglazes. 5 years later, I am still working with the red clay, and I have some glazes I mix after having put in the time to learn the chemistry. I still buy the clear glaze because it fits the clay, but it makes a better base glaze with colourants than a clear. I do regular testing to find new glazes though. Edited to add: I also buy decals, both overglaze and tissue transfers. I’m looking at some ez screens to maybe make some of my own tissue transfers though. The shipping is getting out of hand.

My Mom used to say that if my Dad couldn’t fix it, it couldn’t be fixed, so I grew up thinking figuring out how to do stuff yourself was just what people did. Like Liam, and Mea I like figuring it out. My default is to look up how to do it myself, and if it’s more of a can of worms than I can handle (like hefting a hot water tank so loaded with scale it can’t be drained out of the basement) I’ll call someone. If it’s a one person job, I am on it. I can tackle simple electric and plumbing, and I’ll insulate walls and mud drywall, but someone else can hang it.

I don’t spray big bowls. I pour the inside and outside separately, and usually add a little water to the glaze to thin it. Go to the dollar store and get some large diameter plastic tubs: it makes life waaay easier. When setting them up in the kiln, place other items evenly around the rim to create a heat sink. Test tiles, shot glasses, mugs, even extra kiln posts. It took my cracking rate down to nothing.

I’ll bring a drink (tea) in while I’m doing handles, but that’s about it. No other jobs really, just handles. edited to add: we weren’t allowed to even keep food in our studios back in college, because we’d wind up finding dead mice in the reclaim. They’d come in for the winter where there was a food source, and fall into the reclaim buckets trying to get water. No food= no dead mice.

Thanks @liambesaw. The bucket system seems to be working pretty good, and the smell of changing or cleaning out a trap is something I’d like to avoid at all costs. We all have limits, that one is mine. I’d have done something about it if I’d felt it was necessary.

My basement studio has access to a sink with hot water, but I’m careful to use bucket siphon systems for disposal, as I don’t have a clay trap. 12 years in the same house, and so far so good.

I got commissioned to make a couple of things for friends for their family, but most of my fam has what they want from me already. I got to make a couple of fun commissions for others though. One lady got three stacking sets in different colours, one for each of her daughters. My favourite though, was a sugar jar that one of the sweetest boys I might have ever met was getting for his boyfriend for their first Christmas in their new apartment. I have some bowls that haven’t been selling as well as I wanted them to that I will take down to the Drop In Centre. They have a transitional housing program, and are always in need of cookware and dishes to supply a kitchen with.

I’m not doing anything in the studio this week. I’ll go back in after Boxing Day. Imma hang out here and be opinionated

That’s basically what Chit Chat’s does: collects Canadian post bound for the US and crosses the border with it to mail it via USPS. There is one in Calgary, but it’s on the opposite end of town. For the 4 things I sent stateside last year, I just went to my usual outlet. If I get too many more than that, I’ll make the drive.

Yeah, but if he’s got to ship it back across the line... costs me $25-30 CAD to send one mug stateside.