Clay Flambé

Hegsdeath's henchmen fumbling the Eisenhower globe and wrecking it, rather than have curators move it, is just the Trumpist Regime exhibiting its usual carelessness. For the story to truly capture the essence of the fascists in charge, they would have had to play footie with it, or light it on fire

Set up the pot display . Think we're close! . Kennebec River Pottery at Midcoast Artists Pop-Up, Maine Street in Brunwick, Maine, 10/28-12/13 . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

A plenitude of pots . . . or a surplusage of ceramics? . Take your pick . Time for listing inventory and pricing decisions, in advance of a six-week show . Just what an introvert potter needs . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

🔥🔥🔥 Killer Sauz🔥🔥🔥 . Best made under an exhaust hood . #hotpeppers

A dozen scotch bonnets . Hot sauce on the launching pad . #hotpeppers

Maybe bucked a quarter of the big pile of tree-length oak delivered yesterday . I'll split it tomorrow with a crew . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

I think rich people should buy this car

Had a few oak sticks delivered . Now to buck, split and stack to cure for next year's firings of the Bentengama . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Evil candy corn . Mixed ingredients for a Krampus holiday jelly . #hotpeppers

It's Ocarina October . Fun and games unloading the Bentengama . Ryan on blowfish . Clay Flambé on totem turtle . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Door unbricked, drawing the kiln . Can you tell the wife thinks highly of my commentary? . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Mmm, brains! 😋 . "Leafy brain," a/k/a brown witch's butter . The latin binomial: Phaeotremella frondosa . No taste at all . Used mainly in Asian soups for that particularly gelatinous mouth feel . Some would be disturbed to see it, much less eat it . Likely good for a body, though . #mushrooms

Adding homegrown peppers to the maitake pickles I'm making, for added zing . From 12 o'clock, with increasing SHUs as you move clockwise: . Jalapeños: 2.5-8K . Serranos: 10-25K . Red and yellow Ho Chi Minh cayennes: 30-50K . Thais: 50-100K . Scotch Bonnets: 100-350K . Ghosts: 855K-1M+ . #mushrooms

Eight kg/eighteen lbs of foraged maitake, after cleaning . Towards the back: jalapenos, serranos, thais and cayennes from the garden . Canning zingy mushroom pickles today . They're best that way . #mushrooms

A couple more photies from early in the firing . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Towards the end of the weekend's firing, around 2:30 AM . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Exhausting fun . The process, not the chimney . Last stoke was at hour 35, two hours less than fall '24 and '25 . Building a fire in the chimney didn't speed things up much . Maybe a propane burner at the anagama flue next time . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Some people just can't help themselves . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Hour 23 . Getting slightly warm now . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

About 6½ hours in last night . Candled a fire the chimney, just to speed things up . High humidity, light rain, a little wind . Great conditions . Probably go 30+ hrs before throwing soda in, hope to finish before hour 36 . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Time to biscuit . I sprayed rims and feet with Helmer (flashing porcelain), as those parts will not be glazed . The belly buttons? I want my pots to live, and everything alive has a scar . The holes in the feet? So water can drain out after rinsing . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire

All it took was a good soaking rain . Dare I say it made these hens mushroom? . Harvested about 20 lbs . Time to make a few gallons of maitake pickles . #mushrooms

Bowl throwing session . I like throwing wide pieces on hydrobats, because I can come back after leaving them overnight and they pop off, uniformly dry more or less, ready to trim . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

The rusted remains of the DT Sheridan, a tug that foundered off Monhegan 78 years ago . The name is still visible in the penultimate snap . "For though we slepe or wake, or rome, or ryde/Ay fleeth the tyme, it nil no man abyd" . The last photie? Scarlet pimpernel growing adjacent the wreck

Good maitake morning . They're just starting . #mushrooms

Where I am in upgefukting those mugs . Don't worry, I'll continue to mess them up with a slew of incompatible design elements after bisquit . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

When I say, "I've got it handled," this could well be what I mean . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Threw this afternoon for the first time in four months . Just some mug blanks to start . I'll go for uniformity later . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

First hen-of-the-woods, Grifola frondosa, for 2026 . Just starting to fruit . Last year, this spot grew one about a meter across . I harvested only a handful, with intent to return the next day with a bag large enough to carry it . By then deer had devoured it . #mushrooms

Lion's mane, H. erinaceus . You go away for two days and things change . #mushrooms

Every seadog loves a little sun on his tumtum . #seal

Split wood . Put wood in the gap in the rick . So it's time to buck more logs . And repeat . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

The orange pepper is a Scotch Bonnet, the first to come out of my garden this year . The long red ones are Ho Chi Minh cayenne peppers, which are starting to really come on heavy . The little Thai peppers are also just starting . The Ho Chi Minhs are delightful, only 30,000 or so SHU . #hotpeppers

Moved the split soft under roof to dry yesterday . Still a gap to fill, maybe a cord, cord and a half . After that, I'll split still more . Build two sizable holtzhausen, one round stack of hardwood, the other of soft . Five or so cords to go . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

The Suede Bolete, Xerocomus subtomentosus . Pretty common around here . Edible; not great, improves if dried . #mushrooms

The pile of split soft, after adding to it . It's a full cord plus now . Maybe I'll move it into the covered rick today . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

Yesterday . Spent a few hours splitting white pine, cat spruce, some cedar . I burn hard and softwood in close to equal proportions during a firing . I'd like to have about six full cords of soft cut before winter . Enough for close to two firings . #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

Chaga . A folk remedy that may have something to it . Technically, not a mushroom . Prefers birch . Will kill its host tree, eventually . I make a double extraction tincture from it, put it in my coffee . Effects? . Causation is hard to know for certain . Hermits don't catch colds . #mushrooms

Chicken . Ended up with nine pounds after processing . Pickled half . The rest? . I'll sear it, then freeze it for winter . #mushrooms

Chicken . Laetiporus sulphureus . I'll wait a day to harvest, give each floret a nice tap to release its spores . Searing them on a bed of salt is easy, and it makes everything smell great, a lot like like maple syrup . There are so many, will have to pickle . #mushrooms

Patience, the underrated virtue . I inoculated a six to ten beech logs with lion's mane, Hericium erinaceus, every year for three years in a row, beginning 2022 . The 2023 and 2024 totems produced reliably, those inoculated in 2022 not at all . They are just starting to . #mushrooms

Before it was a "detention center," Camp East Montana in Texas was an internment camp . Once an internment camp, always an internment camp? . The road to hell can also be paved with bad intentions . Manzanar means apple orchard . But it was too windy to grow apples easily . Internment is easier?

There's a frisson, a shiver, when you come across something you know from books but have never seen before on a ramble through the bramble . I had my eye out for hens, but found this cauliflower, Sparassis spathulata, instead . The species is choice, but not this one . Old and buggy . #mushrooms

Another view of the Druid

The Druid, yesterday . Climbed it bouldering half a century ago . The rock seems to have barely changed . Not so the worn climber

Went to soak the bones in Keogh Hot Ditch . This PSA brought to you by the ravenous worm residing in what's left of RFK Jr's brain

Dolomite is why they call them the Whites . The Bristlecones would be a good alternative

Up in the White Mountains of Eastern California, around 9,500 ft