Amber Dusick

Adventure Playground, Berkeley

Adventure Playground was my favorite place we went on our road trip.  It is a crazy, colorful, magical place.  For kids.  But if I lived there I'd hang out there and leave my kids at home because I loved it so.

Basically, kids get to use wood, saws, nails and hammers and build stuff and then paint it.  For free.  And then they get to take it home.  For free.  Plus, there is a huge handmade playground to explore.  It is like one giant clubhouse.  I want to move in. 

Using a saw to cut table legs.  He wanted to build a table.  We gave guidance and made sure he didn't hurt himself (actually Papa did, I mostly alternated between oohing and aahing over the place and biting my nails nervously watching my kid use a saw) otherwise he did it all himself. 

Painting his table when he was done.  We set it aside to dry then explored the place.

 
Drool. 

I think I have to go build something.  

 

Maiden Firing of the Kiln & Her Kiln Name

Here we go!  The "maiden firing" just finished!  Okay, I love the term "maiden firing" and I didn't make this up, it is what it is officially called...said so in the manual and everything.    

Why yes, I'm wearing the same mushroom skirt as earlier this week.  You weren't supposed to notice that.  I'm also clapping in that excited/nervous way that children often do.  I never grew out of it.

As I fully expected, at least one cat stood guard near the kiln the entire time.  Heating the kiln up to 2000+ degrees makes the room nice and cozy, how could they resist?  No, we do not paint his toenails.  They are SoftPaws which keep our carpets, couches and children scratch free.  They rock. 

A maiden firing means you heat up the kiln to cone 5 with it completely empty and do it really, painfully slowly...like 20 hours.  Oh how I'm itching to put stuff in there and fire it up again!  Soon.

I figure that since she completed her maiden firing she is ready for her naming...

Melvina.  My kiln's name is Melvina.  She looks like a Melvina to me.  It isn't even a sexy "fire" name like I wanted!  But it stuck.  Perhaps it is because I've always loved Malvina Reynolds and we've been playing her music lately.  She is one of my favorite folk song writers.  (Apparently she got popular recently from Weeds and her song "Little Boxes" but I've never seen the show, is it worth Netflixing?)  Anyway, my Melvina is with an E. 

Short and stout and lustrous.  Brilliant.  Reliable.  Wise.  Trustworthy.  Hardworking.  Sense of humor and takes what I dish her.  The kind of brazen gal you want backing you up in a bar fight.  That is my Melvina. 

So welcome Melvina!  I'm looking forward to a very long, happy friendship. 

------------

PS - thanks for the nice comments about my shiny new blog header.  Trying to spruce things up a bit around these parts, thanks for noticing! 

 

My Baby is Scrumptious

I want to eat my baby.  When I was younger, I always hated it when I'd hear women say something along those lines.  "Oh, I just want to eat him up!"  "I'm going to nibble on him!"  "Look at those cheeks, I want to bite him!"  I thought they were weird but now I'm one of them.  At six months he is plump and absolutely delicious looking.  And I want to eat him up.  Why do we have this instinct?

 

Well, I think I figured it out.  Evolutionarily speaking, my theory is that women are made to think their own babies are scrumptious so they keep their eyes on them at all times...because other animals will surely think them scrumptious if their own mother does.  Think about it, suckling pigs, veal, poussin, etc.  The young of other species are coveted and yummy.  So human mamas have to realize their own wee ones look yummy so they don't let their guard down for one moment.   Otherwise a big bad lion would run off with a plump delicacy. 

So there.  Phew.  There is a reason (at least in my head) that I have become one of those weird women.  I'm supposed to think he is tasty. 

These guys however:

Not tasty.  I would not call them scrumptious.  But I do want to squeeze them to death. 

And that is weird in a whole different way.    

Are you a baby eater?  A kitten squeezer?  Fess up. 

Bay Area Road Trip Quick Recap

I mentioned we were going on a road trip and I have got to post about it before to much time passes and it becomes "so last week" and I never do it.  I could go on forever about it but I'll make this short and sweet instead.

Me on each day of our trip.  Notice a theme?  I carried that baby for at least eight hours every day.  This trip physically kicked my ass every day, but I slept like a stone at night.  It felt great.

Having a picnic on Berkeley campus eating Fat Slice pizza.  Actually we did this twice.

Why I could never move to Berkeley.  You mean I can't take any rocks?  Must.  Collect.  Rocks.

 

Seeing my son eat (and enjoy!) raw oysters for the first time at Kermit Lynch's Oyster Bliss.

Adventure Playground, Berkeley.  Deserves its own post because it was that cool.

Performing on stage at a little park in San Francisco with gray squirrels as our only audience.

The houses!  They deserve their own post too.  If I had two lives (also no children and billions of dollars) I'd live in San Francisco just for the pretty houses alone.  

I filled countless pages of my sketchbook.  I was forever changed by the trip, I'm overflowing with ideas and inspiration.  It was a really great trip for all of us actually, especially the no computer bit of it.  Time to tune into each other and ourselves.       

It feels great to be back home too!      

 

Rusty Vintage

It has been chilly 'round here, which for my limited "cold weather" wardrobe means wearing layers.  It also means I get to wear my brown mushroom skirt that I debuted on my birthday two years ago even though it feels weird to wear something so fallish in spring.  But it feels like fall.  Weird Southern California weather. 

The vintage amps belong to my husband.  He has an amp collecting "problem" right now  Much like I occasionally have fabric "problems" or how some women have "problems" with shoes or handbags.  Searching, hoarding, collecting, obsessing.  You know what I mean.  I don't complain because I secretly love the amps aesthetically.

But don't tell my husband, it will only make it worse.

I will be back with some proper posts soon.  About our trip!  About kilns!  And even about eating babies...   

road trip

We are going on a mini-road trip for my husband's birthday so I won't be in these parts for a bit. 

I love traveling, even if it is just the town over.  It never fails to inspire me and I'm always a different person than before I left.  Same is true with little ones.  My son learns by leaps and bounds every time we take him on a trip.

This will be our first little trip with two kids.  I know there will be parts that will suck be more challenging but I'm really excited. 

Hey, if Jonah Lisa can survive a cross country road trip with her two little ones then I should be able to survive the six hour drive to San Francisco, right?  

So I'll be seeing you next week.  I'm not taking my work with me either.  Isn't that insane?  I think this will be a growing experience for me as I always work on trips.  Not this time.  Nope, laptop wasn't invited, it is a family only trip.         

PS - the photo is from the Fairplex Garden Railroad at the Los Angeles County Fair - it is the oldest & possibly largest miniature railroad in the United States.  I love  LA.  So much random stuff to discover here.  And with that sentiment...see you later Los Angeles! 

Keep Learning

Last weekend I spent the afternoon with a family friend.  An amazing woman, 80 years young and vibrant.  She pulled out two large portfolio folders and showed me her paintings.  I didn't know this until then, but she had only taken up painting after she retired in 1987.  She said she did because she wanted to keep learning.  She stopped painting in 2005 when her eyesight left her, and shortly after took up clay.  

She was a teacher in the Los Angeles Public school system and over her career she has seen the complete and utter decline of public education.  She tells me that when she started teaching, kindergartens had only a big cozy rug and a rocking chair for the teacher.  The teacher would read and the children would gather on the rug.  She remembers when the public school system got rid of the rocking chairs and the rugs and replaced them with desks.  (They gathered up the chairs and put them in storage.  She rescued two.  They are still on her porch.)  She says "it was all downhill" from there.  

She believes strongly in letting children discover and learn for themselves and warns me "Don't try to teach your kids to read, it will ruin it for them.  Just leave them alone and they'll figure it out."  She says that in her classrooms they had only open ended toys and she preferred wood so that children could "feel the integrity of the wood" and use their imagination.

She loved teaching.  Still does.  The fact that there is an educational scholarship named after her for K-12 educators is just a small bit of evidence of what a truly amazing teacher she was.  Or rather, is.  I know I'm learning a lot from her.   

Her lesson plan the day that she shared all her paintings with me?  "Keep learning.  No matter what.  Learning is living."

What are you learning now?   

 

  

I love the library

I've recently rediscovered my local library (especially since I can walk there and gave them all my books) and every week I get an email that more books I've put on hold are ready for pick up.  It is slower than buying the books from Amazon, but it is free.  Free!  Thanks to the good price, I've devoured 17 ceramics books in the last month. 

My Studio is Beautiful (new year's resolution - check!)

I wrote about getting my studio in order in January as my 2010 goal and I'm done!  Good thing I have more goals...there is a whole lot of year left.

This is peeking through the door.  This desk is where all sewing, painting, woodburning and pretty much everything happens for my websites and art.  Well, except the messy stuff which happens in the garage other studio.  "Why yes, I have two studios..." is a sentence that must be read with a pretentious faux Harvard accent because I feel like an ass when I talk about this.

Do I need two spaces?  Well, um, yes?  Woodcutting can not be done inside it is so unbelievably messy.  Ceramics is filthy also.  So I've got two places to art out in.  However, I'm also fully aware that this is a temporary arrangement.  The kids sleep in our room now but soon we will need this space for them and I'll get kicked out, banished to the garage.  So for now I'm going to enjoy the luxury.   

Shhhhhh, don't wake the unfinished wee houses on the desk.  Yep, wooden ones.  Made recently.  They will someday make their way into my still slumbering Etsy shop...they are just waiting for some ceramic friends to escort them. 

 
See the wee houses hanging lamp in the corner?  I designed that fabric for a quilt and finally put the remnants to good use.  I did it just like I covered this old lamp.  I love green.  Can you tell?

You can also see what the room looked like when we bought our house and read my master vision for the space.  How did I do?  I decided to skip a rug, too annoying to clean.  There is also a serious lack of art on the walls but that will have to wait due to my Paypal balance being at zero for the last year.  Let me tell you, the first thing I will do once I make some Etsy coin is to spend it on other Etsy artists.  Ever hear that joke that nobody actually makes any money on Etsy because we're just shuffling around the same $50 back and forth?  It's funny 'cause it's true.

Who are your favorite Etsy artists (especially art for the walls) right now?  I want to do some window shopping!    

  

   

 

 

 
 

 

My Secret to Happiness...Get Dressed?

Well, today completes my week of getting dressed and I have results to share!  My hypothesis was that I'd be more productive if I made an effort to get dressed in an "outfit" each day and not just rely on my "I have a wee baby" yoga pants + tee shirt uniform.   

Was I more productive?  Well, no.  What I was though was happier.  I kid you not.  Wearing skirts made me downright cheery.  Like all day.  I was even more patient with my little ones.  I had more fun and was more likely to want to go places and do stuff...which I guess could actually translate to being more productive.

It got harder this week as the weather got colder.  Admittedly, these last two outfits aren't all that interesting but it was cold!  I can't do cold.  Warm, comfortable, easy to nurse in and okay to get dirty while playing in the yard yet still "outfit" material?  Tough.  

I was this close to saying "forget it!" and pulling out some damn yoga pants yesterday.  Yoga pants, yoga pants, yoga pants.  Heck, I don't even do yoga.  Are yoga pants the sweatpants of our generation?  Shudder.  

Conclusion?  Getting dressed for the day makes me feel happy and even less tired.  This is good!  However, my 6 month old threw up on three out of seven of my outfits so that may be the universe telling me that I'm not quite ready to lock the door on those yoga pants.  But I'm close.  Very close.  Maybe by the time he is 9 months?