Home from Arizona!

This post is mostly directed at our friends & customers in the SCA, since it's about Dancing Pig's first trip to Estrella War...

Darrell has returned both triumphant and broken from Estrella (a SCA War in Ari-frincking-zona)(about 22oo miles from Dancing Pig's World headquarters here in the hills of WVa). He drove out with our friends Jillie/Bran aka the wode monkey & perma drui of the bog & Fael/Wayne aka Khavi's husband/ some Rozakii dude who lives in Philly. They had a great road trip out-- apparently they watched both "Pirates" movies in a continuous loop for 3 days on Fael's laptop. Good times.

Dancing Pig's sales at Estrella weren't as good as we'd hoped-- it was a new site for the event & apparently the gate was down by 60%. All the old hand merchants said that their sales were down accordingly. But the folks were incredibly friendly & here's the best part: Dogs are allowed!!! So we'll be back next year! We're loading the dogs up & i'm going to actually make the trip as well. Darrell's still raving about the landscape & he really wants me to go out there at least once & i think i'll indulge him, especially if i can bring my puppies with me!

Darrell is still broken however, by the cold he somehow managed to bring back with him. It was very dusty and windy & D. thinks he got the cold on the last night of the show, when they had a "going away" sandstorm. So the poor guy had to drive home with with a fever & nasty cold. (Bran & Fael bailed out & flew home from Phoniex) So to make it home, D. would drive 100 miles and then pull into a rest stop to nap for an hour. Not so much with the fun for the poor guy. And sadly, he also managed to kill my digital camera, so no pictures for this post.

We're hanging out at home for this weekend, while Darrell is trying to recover from this cold & i'm trying to avoid getting it. But we're also planning & potting to get ready for Gulf Wars in ::eeek:: less than two weeks! Arrgh! Never mind taking it easy & avoiding the cold; I gotta get off the couch and go trim some pots!

See ya'll at Gulf Wars if you're going! (and you should go, i am!) Apparently Gulf Wars blows Pennsic away, so come play with us!

Alright campers, i'm going to try something radically different here: an actual post about pottery!!!
This is a report on the show we did this past December. For the first two weekends of that month, we were on the Countryside Artisans Studio Tour. Our pals, the gracious & gifted Foster and Theda of Art of Fire Hot Glass Studios in Laytonsville, MD hosted us yet again. This time we got to set up in the Celtic Annex aka a carport/ garage across the parking lot from the wonderfully warm and colorful converted dairy barn that houses Art of Fire. There was enough space this time around that our friend Mary from Tuatha joined us. It was a great reunion for me, since Tuatha shared space with my when we had the open houses at my old studio in Damascus. I really missed spending time with my wonderful whacked out little goat aka Maria Maria aka the genius behind Tuatha.

We started out with this empty garage/carport:


and after a day and a half, some struggles with stapleguns & plastic sheeting, we ended up with a space that looked like this:





We were pretty impressed with ourselves. You would have been too, if you'd come out to see it.
But fear not my friends, you have a chance to redeem yourselves!!! Because the next show we're going to do in the mid-Atlantic area is the Countryside Artisans Studio Tour this coming April. Yup, we're gonna be at Art of Fire again & there's a 90% chance that Tuatha will be there too. One stop shopping for Celts & anyone else with great taste! So come on out to the Maryland countryside April 20-22 & see all our fresh new pots!!! We can't wait to see you there!

PS if you miss my longer, more personal less coherent postings, fret not! They've just moved over to my other blog: mudcelt. Check it out: you can still know more than you ever wanted to about my dogs, travels, struggles with procrastination and life in my remote valley over there.

Don't panic friends, we're still here.
No, really.
Just suffering from the winter blahs.(my guru for all things electronic told me i should keep my posts here brief, pithy & on topic. That was such a challenge that i went into a decline & haven't posted anything for over a month. Thanks Mykl!)

My latest complaint is that i am stuck here, in my sweater & wool socks, drinking hot tea & watching the snow fall in my quiet valley (tonight's forecast: temps in the high teens & more snow) whilst Darrell & our friends Bran & Fael are whooping it up out in Arizona at Estralla. Where the temperatures are a balmy 50 to 70 degrees today.
Bitter?!
Me??
NOOooo. You must have me confused with someone else.
OK, i'm not totally cranky about all of this. After all, they did have to endure 3 days of driving to get there & Darrell has to make the drive back alone, since apparently the prospect of the return trip was too much for Fael & Bran-- they're flying home-- not something you can manage with a truck full of pottery and trailer full of tents, tables & camping gear. So D. & the truck, trailer & sweaty armor are taking the slow boat home. Hopefully he'll be back by Friday or Saturday next.

Meanwhile, life goes on here. I've even gotten back to work in the studio. I've tested out a new to me clay body & i'm cautiously optimistic about it. The crow pots still only exist in my head, but they're creeping closer to reality. And we even have a new glaze grunt: my neighbor, Cindy, is learning the tricks of that trade. So far she's doing great, though she's soooo slow & careful that i bully her occasionally to lighten up. I remind her constantly of my mantra "the mistakes prove that the pots are made by humans and not machines."

That's all for now from this snow covered and cold valley in WVa!
Keep warm kids & we'll see y'all this spring, with lots o' pots for you to fondle!

With apologies to Sandra Boyton who had a card years ago w/ cartoons of a Hippo, a Gnu & a Deer-- i'd like to wish you a

Hippo Gnu Deer!

(say this out loud and it might make more sense. Then again, maybe not. Whatever.)

from all of us here at Hearth Hill!

I've got a few New Year's resolutions: to eat more & exercise less & i'm pleased to report a resounding success so far! OK, that's not totally true: I have managed to actually exercise 3 of the past 4 days. Dang! Another resolution blowed! A 3rd resolution is to update this dang blog once a week. We'll see how long my good intentions last with that, but at least know that i'm thinking good thoughts and occasionally putting fingers to keyboard and getting them up here for y'all.

Another aside: the reason i'm writing Dang and blowed up so much is cause my best Christmas present this year (and yes, i'm including the awesome iPod in this statement)(& my plane ticket to Colorado to bother my niece and nephew) came from my sister, who gave me the awesome game REDNECK LIFE. This is a board game, not unlike the old school game of LIFE, but in this much improved version, the goal is to get to the day of reckonin' with the most teeth, the fewest younguns and the smallest debt. You have to get married, divorced, remarried & pay to have your tattoo of your first spouse removed and replaced with the name of your 2nd (discount if they have one or more names in common or if you sleep with your divorce attorney) When you remarry, you roll dice to see how many redheaded stepchildren (i am NOT making this us) named Darrell you end up with. It's pretty funny & silly and very unpolitically correct & if you ever come visit me i'm gonna sit you down on the porch couch and make you play the game with us! Dang! One of you Darrells get me another beer from the yard fridge!

So, here's how i spent my holidays: AT HOME! This is an awesome and unusual feat! I've even managed to clean alot of clutter out of my house and studio. This was in part an attempt to get more organized but mostly motivated by a severe lack of money. Yep, we're broke. AGAIN.

This has driven Darrell back to his roots. Or maybe it was playing REDNECK LIFE. Either way, he's taking all of our cast off clutter and some leather and a bit of pottery down to a flea market in Charleston to make some money for dog food and the cable bill, so we can limp through this month and next. Last weekend he didn't do so good, but the theory is that even though the weather was warm, folks were spending their money on New Year's parties (around here New Year's Eve is a special party night. You get Budweiser longnecks rather than Old Milwaulkie in a can. And Jagermister too!) rather than clutter from the flea market. Just like a craft show, the next one/weekend is always going to be better!

Anyway, if you find yourself in Charleston, WV of a January weekend, come on out to the Capital Flea Market. You can score some cheap used DVDs or pig paraphernalia
(if i'd only known that picking the name Dancing Pig meant i was going to get pig stuff as presents for the rest of my life i might have reconsidered. And then where would we all be?) and a few good stories from Darrell and his pal Three Bears!

Meanwhile, i've actually managed to clean up the studio and i even scored a studio couch at the Goodwill! This beauty cost me all of $10 and it's a great place for the dogs to lounge about while i work. Or, that's the theory anyway. I haven't actually gotten any work done, since i'm having an holiday extension: my friends Ceit and Storm (who we visited in Canada three weeks ago) are here for a quick Christmas break visit (Storm is a teacher in Ontario so she gets extra time to goof off over the holidays. A whole week after New Years. How cool is that?!)

With Ceit and Storm have come their bad dogs, Ashe (a malamute mix) and his big sister Daemon (a sweet fawn colored Great Dane). Daemon is Spike's girlfriend. Or, rather, Spike wants Daemon to be his girlfriend. Daemon is mostly indifferent to Spike's advances.
Ashe is Budgth's mentor in the trouble making department. (like she needed any help!) Between the four of them, our house is all romper room all the time. It's fur filled chaos & we're all really enjoying ourselves. But we have only one more day of slack and dog centered domestic goofing off and then it's back to real life for us: Ceit and Storm and their bad dogs go back to Ontario, Darrell heads to the flea market, and i will have run out of excuses and it's back to the studio for me.

More next week, when i hope to actually have mud under my fingernails!
muddy blessings & wishes for a prosperous New Year for us all!
~Virginia

PS i almost forgot to tell y'all about the real live episode of REDNECK LIFE that happened last week. I was up late, goofing off on the computer when i heard a skid and thud. I peered out, but didn't see anything. Turned on my porch light, just in case anyone needed some help and sure enough about 20 minutes later, i had 3 wet, muddy, slightly stunned and more than a little drunk, teenagers on my front porch. The called for a ride (no ambulance or cops, thanks) and we all waited for someone's Mom to come get them. It turned out that they had put a brand new, bought it that afternoon, F-150 crew cab sunroof 40K pickup truck into the river. If they hadn't caught a rear tire on a tree branch, i think they wouldn't have gotten out of the river alive!
I took some pics of the debacle the following morning before the three wreckers that ended up on the job managed to haul the truck out of the river.