Picnic Ceramics is Coming SOON

Again it has been a while since I was here, and probably should give a point form catch up like I did in my last post - 3 months ago! Eek

But I'm not going to do that… instead I am going to tell you to get excited - as excited as I am (although that might not be possible) for the launch of Picnic Ceramics!

Some of you may remember this page and may have seen or even own a piece of jewelry which you probably picked out from a pile of pieces lying between my engineering books and some other weird and wonderful project I had going on…

Well Picnic Ceramics has been rebranded and I am over the moon to be making it an 'official' reality in the form of an online shop that will be launching soon!

And you can also look forward to updates and more from me on this little blog -  for real this time - I promise!

Hello again

Wow - it has officially been 6 months and 14 days since I last said anything here… and man oh man has a lot happenend!

The gist of it is I want to start writing here again because its fun and the whole point was to keep a record of some parts of my life (sorry future kids looking back here about the gap!)…

So to summarise the last little while:

(more or less in order and with bullet points because why not)

• Curtis and I got engaged! Which should mean we are into the full swing of wedding planning… but we're not :)
• My best friend came home from studying in Oxford and we went on fantastic trip to the Kruger which I have not spent nearly enough time in!
• I graduated and am now qualified to be a civil engineer (which I am not currently pursuing).
• We went on a fantastic holiday over Christmas in the form of a road trip style coastal adventure staying with friends and family along the way. 
• Curtis and I finally live in the same city again (although it feels like the first time because he moved to Pretoria just a couple of weeks after we started dating, so that doesn't count)
• AND we are under the same roof which has been the best thing ever  - it feels like christmas everyday coming home to such a wonderful face and not having to wait until the weekend! We moved into a wonderful little house in a place called Cosmo City which is a bit more West then either of us are used to but we are certainly enjoying discovering the gems of this side of Joburg!
• Ummm I guess thats all the big big news - but in other, smaller news we have got totally into the world of preserving and home-making essentials (ok maybe essentials is a stretch but we are definitely enjoying the wonders of home making); so far the list includes peach chutney, vanilla extract, coconut butter, tomato chutney, pomegranate syrup, bread, pickled aubergines and grape & nectarine butter (currently simmering away on the stove as I type)…

I am sure many pictures of the above events will sneak in here at some point but for now this picture will have to suffice - taken after a wonderful family engagement celebration!

Tata Madiba

A face that shows so much of life and yet is so soft and beautiful.

Yesterday was Madiba's 95th birthday - Daily Maverick's Ranjeni Munusamy wrote a beautiful letter to Madiba on his name-day that I wanted to share - take a read here. Image was taken by Mike Hutchings.

Adventures in Raku

While I have been doing pottery for about 3 years, there is an endless list of ways to do almost anything with pottery that I have barely even glanced over!

One of those things is raku firing - under which there are endless techniques and methods and and and…

Ceramics is truly an incredible art form - centuries of years of exploring and playing with clay have led to some mind-blowing discoveries and I want to learn it all! It is so dynamic and exciting.

These photos were from a raku firing day I went to a few weeks ago where we watched and learnt and played and shrieked with excitement - yes a sunny garden full of women getting beyond excited about what may come out of the fiery drum of burnt sawdust and waiting impatiently to see a 1000 degree pot pulled from the kiln and held in the air for just the right length of time to form some cracks but never really knowing what those cracks will look like or what colour something will turn, will it crack right in half or stay intact?!?

It was such a pleasure to watch Evette Kruger calmly enjoy controlling the process - years and years of wisdom subtly coming through in every dangerous and not so dangerous part of the process.

Ok, enough rambling on - have a look for yourself…

4th of July

This is an old picture of my dad when he was my age, sitting amongst the clouds of Patagonia.

While many celebrate independence in America today, I commemorate in Johannesburg - today would be my dad's birthday.