Cranberry yoghurt cake

A little friday night baking - cranberry yoghurt cake/muffins a la Clothide

Some dinky little butterflies fresh from the kiln

Atomic pebbles

I have been reflecting on the molecular pebbles and thinking towards making atomic pebbles guided by actual/estimated atomic size and the number of electrons and which orbitals they might be in, ultimately aiming for a full periodic table. In the course of my Internet wanderings/wonderings I have found some great resources: Web elements have a nice spherical representation of atomic size on a graph (click on scatter plot under the periodic table) and Crystal Maker have a fine periodic table even! The chemistry consortium have a brilliant guide to 'electron habitat' (click on an individual element for its details) - have a look at Astatine as an example.

Bacteria watchglasses

I have been having a bit of fun with illustrations inspired by the book An introduction to the bacteria and its cousin An introduction to the algae, both circa 1950.  Having made little porcelain watchglass shaped discs I have used transfers from the lovely Fotoceramic people to apply the drawings to the discs. They look like I'm peering at them down a high powered microscope, not quite getting the whole organism in view.

Network node number nine

In the latest firings I also made earth network node #9 which is imprinted with a plastic spides - you can make out the eyes on the picture and used some gravel from Helsinki - collected by Ada, Laura and Erich. They mentioned that there was even elemental copper near the collection site! The gravel was a pink crystalline type, quite different from the other samples I have had so far.

Mini jelly baby cakes

N fancied cake last night so we did some miniture baking - tiny cupcakes in petit four cases with a mini swirl of icing and some jelly babies on the top - they're mini ones too! Their destination (the ones N didn't eat) was the lab for Kat's final day.

Time for tea?

I have been having fun with porcelain again! Here are a few of the latest creations - gearing up for Valentine's day mostly, but also some ideas from New Orleans!

earth network

The earth network was convieved a little while ago as an exploration of how soil types could be used to glaze little thumb pots, which I used to make nodes for a network. The connections (edges) I have puzzled over and wondered about using the connections to me, as creator/curator, with the people who donated soil or the time when the samples/donations of soil came to me. But I have settled on using the geological definitions/types of rocks at the location where the samples were taken.

This is fairly easy for the UK as the British Geological Survey have a fabulous database that gives information on both superficial and bedrock deposits. The samples are most likely from the superficial band but I could only find limited information for my international nodes, plus the connections were simpler for the bedrock geology, so I have gone for that. Above I have made coloured nodes from the geological maps too, and once I print it out I can put the porcelain nodes on top. The picture below show which nodes are where - for those with nodes your number is on the bottom! The network was drawn using cytoscape and the nodes were made in photoshop.

Happy New Year