Heston's slow cooked lamb and giant couscous salad

It's not everyday you get a chance to cook and eat a Heston Blumenthal recipe, so I thought Christmas Eve was a pretty good opportunity! Here we are enjoying his slow cooked lamb shank, 8 hours in the making, with pomegranate, herbs, ras-al-hanoute and many other yummy ingredients. It looks very seasonal too! The wine was one of the last bottles we were given for our wedding, so another great thing to have  with a celebratory dinner - Rioja 2005 from Viña Eguia. 

40th Birthday cake

Complete with Lego climbers!

Carters

Its a special birthday for N so we went out on Saturday night for special evening at Carter's of Moseley. We had crispy fish skin, black pudding and little meaty parcels, beetroot on smoked goat's cheese, mackerel, beef and then chocolate ganache with spiced salt - yummy!

mini birdhouses

Here I have been trying out the new Potter's Choice glazes from Amaco - I think they're gorgeous colours!

Birthday cakes

What a lucky girl....Lexi ended up with 3 birthday cakes!

Milk

So Lexi has turned one - we have been recording how much milk she has consumed across the year and here is a picture of all the 'milk powder' she has consumed in the last 9 months! The graph below shows how much she has drunk per day - very geeky but fascinating nonetheless.

Tiger cakes!

Ikon Cafe and a trip to the new library

 This was the view from the top of the new shiny library in Birmingham. Another biggest in Europe for the city!

Afterwards we had bruch in the Ikon Cafe - the cakes looked great but I had mushrooms on toast.

new molecular pebbles

The sprouts are back!

I've been busy working away in the garage for a multitude of Christmas craft fairs. Here are some polar bears which have been keeping me cool and some more sprouts cruets. The glaze on them is so unpredictable, which I rather like, so they're a little different than last years version.

cow parsely bowl

It seems ages ago that I started making this bowl and its friends, the cow parsely is now long gone but I had to do a few tests for the gaze effects before firing this one to completion. But I pretty happy with it now!

And here are some cakes I made a few weeks ago! Yummmmyyyyy!

Leaf bowls

Some little bowls I am experimenting with for the autumn shows!

Philadelphia

So work have sent me to Philadelphia for a few days - I have managed to squeeze in a little trip down to Independence Hall and even found the splendid The Clay Studio. Dodging the rain showers has been entertaining and generally I haven't managed it. Yesterday we took shelter in the metro station and I took a video on the slow motion function on my camera of the rain hitting the steps!

At Baddesley Clinton

Wow where does the time go?

I can't believe it has nearly been two months since the last post! We stayed a few more days in the US visiting San Juan Island and then meeting up with Frances and Duncan in Bellingham. We came home and spent a week furiously packing and getting ready to move house, but first I went back to work and our little Lexi started at nursery. Above is her first artwork - completed with a paintbrush, not bad for 6months old! So now we have been in the new house for a month, there has been so much change - painting, painting and painting and some new flooring and lately some new curtains. This is making us all happy as the house no longer smells of smoke from the previous owners and is a light and bright place! A bit more to do inside but the garden is not so pretty - but I think the redesigning and extensive digging may have to wait til next year!

In other news - the kiln now has a lovely clean bit of concrete to sit on in the garage and I hope to fire it up soon. Particularly as I have applied for some craft fairs later in the year and that my head is brimming with ideas........porcelain chromosomes.......ginko leaves.......and other things and bobbing about up there!

Orcas Island

Two days on Orcas Island - beautiful weather!

Seattle

Washington

Fishy transfers 2

The fishy transfers arrived yesterday and I had the kiln on today - looking good!

BEC

Today on out walk Lexi and I cut through the Brandwood End Cemetery. I can't believe how big it is, it took a good 10min to cross. There is some very interesting redbrick architecture, though its quietly crumbling to dust as I think everything has been moved to the new cemetery at Kings Norton. I have also discovered there's a friends of Brandwood End Cemetery website - http://fbec.org.uk/! May be some restoration will happen?

Fishy transfers

I've been trying out some new multicoloured transfers from foto ceramic to see what will work best on the different blues for the portholes I've been making - very please with the results!

Deep sea

Yesterday Nick took charge of Lexi for a few hours and I got on with a little making and creating. First up I added some black colour and cobalt carbonate to some porcelain to try and make a blue-black clay - it looks grey above but hopefully on firing it'll change! So what is it? - its a porthole. Inspired by one of my favourite books 'Mapping the deep' by Robert Kunzig I thought I'd make some 'views' out of a submersible - with jellies (like the one below) and funky looking fish glimpsed. The fish are definitely inspired by a book I picked up in New Orleans French Quarter last Christmas....its taken a little while but there you go! Now to think on how to get the jellies/fish into the portholes, not sure you can get white transfers, may be I need to use pale yellow/turquoise - watch this space!

Lexi's cakes

Our little girl is three months old already! So we made cakes and invited over a few friends -what a lovely afternoon!