My First Craft Show

The wife has once again talked me into an appearance.  The Potters' Guild turned out pretty good... so I guess I'll trust her on this one too.  She and I are going to share a booth:

          Hermitage Arts and Crafts Show
          355 North Franklin Turnpike, 
          Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ  (next to Ridgewood) 
          August 17, 2013 from 10 AM to 4 PM

Her idea is that I'll have my brushes, and any kinds of stands or hangers I come up with, on one side of the booth and she'll bring only pottery that she painted with my brushes.

She thinks this will be a conversation starter and help us both out.  She tends to get excited about this kind of stuff.  She has already started buying bags,  planning signs, looking to borrow a tent since this is rain or shine and she is certain we will need it only for shade.  She's getting ready to order business cards for the brushes and she took a special shot for cards she's ordering for herself to remind folks that it's a team effort. 

I hope she's right and all this works out, I'd hate to see her disappointed. I can only hope I manage keep this aloof realist exterior. So - wish us luck!!

 Oh -  here's the shot she took. (Let's keep it a secret that I gave you a preview, OK?)

Latest brushes and related tools

Now I have caught this blog up to my latest work.  About a week ago I made brushes from blue buck tail - yet another foray into my fly tying materials - they are dyed to tie different flies.  The wife loves the look of the blue bristles and has already run tests to be sure the blue dye won't run into the glaze or affect how the glaze fires.  The brush passed her tests so now I'm moving into the occasional colored brush.

And while I was at PGNJ last month, one of the potters showed me a sponge-on-a-stick that she'd picked up somewhere but which was disintegrating from constant use.  She wondered if it was something I could make.  The answer - a resounding "Yes!" and we'll see what she thinks of this tomorrow at the next PGNJ meeting:

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Meet Bruno!

I saw many pictures of horse hair brushes - The question was - where to get the horse hair?  and what's better, mane or tail - that is if I could get any at all. Certainly when I walked into a stable cold, where I knew no one, you'd have thought I was asking them to shave the horse bald for me.  Luckily the wife has all kinds of friends and two stepped up.  This is Bruno:

Loyal companion to Lucille who is a PGNJ  member and a past member of Icehouse Studio, where the wife does her pottery work.  We lucked into good timing for his summer hair cut and Lucille provided me with mane hair, where she trims him so his harness won't tangle, as well as tail... which I suspect has nothing to do with care of the horse, Lucille was just really nice and we did bring carrots with which to bribe Bruno.  Although, truth be told we'd have fed him the carrots just to keep him close enough to touch.  He was a wonderful and gentle creature - a mustang who was retired from the rodeo.  How about that?!?!

Much longer handles to handle the must longer bristles.

One of my wife's friends sent a video of a potter making huge splashy  glaze patterns on his platters using a particularly long bristled brush and we both hope to see someone work the same magic with these brushes.

These brushes are from the tail hair  - courser and creates a brush with less flexibility - better control - an interesting change from other fur.

 Her second friend Cheri has a place in Kentucky called Darling 888 Ranch and when she got home from a visit realized she hadn't  trimmed a horse like she said she'd try to do - she actually called the folks down there and had them mail a pony tail of horse tail to me.  I'm looking forward to getting the curl straightened out and the brush made.
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Fox is the brush of choice

So, what did go quickly at that PGNJ meeting?  FOX!  and one woman knew exactly what she wanted and got 2 of the 3 of them right off the bat.  I've made a few more - let's see if they go fast again....

My wife is fascinated by the bent handle.  We'll both be particularly interested in the attention it gets.

Woodchucks may not be the first choice for brushes

We have wood chucks -ground hogs - in the yard.  We like them.  That is not to say the landlady likes them, so we don't' tell her they are there.  Her landscaper guys probably know, but they are not paid to be exterminators, so the groundhogs are probably safe enough.  Good news since every couple of years there are baby groundhogs and we really like watching them.

Nevertheless, a fly tying sort like me has a woodchuck pelt or three hanging around that was NOT taken from one of these near-pets.  The wife has declared these too silky for her use with what she calls "underglaze".  So I stopped at two.  Maybe she'll introduce me to a water colorist someday who will like these.  She tells me that if I would just learn to be a potter I'd understand better what she and her friends need.  Well, first off, potters aren't the only brush users out there and second, there is no wifely nagging strong enough to get me muddy in the studio.  If I want to be that dirty it'll be fish oil and we'd be having a really good dinner.

But here are the wood chuck brushes:

Squirrels make pretty good brushes

My wife really does NOT like squirrels.  Oh, they're fine on the ground or in the trees "where they belong", but she holds the entire species responsible for a rat infestation.... I guess I should tell the story:

When I married her and moved her to New Jersey from Toronto, the wife informed me that she'd left her family, friends, job, and house... and she sure as shootin' would NOT be leaving her cat.  So, Bernie came with her and I was suddenly a cat person.  Apparently a responsible person who is owned by a cat (if there's a cat in your house you know what I'm talking about - it's not like a dog person owning a canine)  won't let said cat out, then you must bring entertainment IN.  And the way to do that is to provide "kitty vision".  In my wife's mind this meant a bird feeder very close to Bernie's favorite window.  Bernie was pleased - the aim of every good human owned by a cat.  The squirrels at first were an added entertainment for Bernie until one day when she got particularly excited at the creature in the feeder and when we looked closer, we realized it did not have a bushy tail.  The rats found the seed shuffled to the ground by the squirrels was easier pickin's than the corn next door where the geese took offense at the critters helping themselves.  Then they found out that if they climbed up an easy trunk, there was a whole lot of food to be had without sorting through the husks the birds dropped.  Bernie lost her kitty vision and we spent a few weekends killing off the rat family.  THEREFORE - all squirrels are bad.

OK - so now I have made squirrel brushes and the wife finds it somehow satisfying that she's getting back at the ornery fur balls for the whole rat fiasco.

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PGNJ - That's Potters' Guild of New Jersey, for the Unitiated

So by now I am using all my buck tail - the leavings and the good white stuff - and grudgingly giving up a wee bit of squirrel and fox. And the wife is chatting me up with her pottery friends because she has hand made brushes. (I think I'm supposed to thank her for that.) She's vice president of the Potters' Guild of New Jersey (I"m pretty sure I'm supposed to chat that up) and her friends decide I should come give a demonstration of brush making.  Being me, I drag my feet for as long as husband-ly possible, but I eventually succumb to her nagging (and her friends "casually mentioning" the possibility every time they phone).

Surprisingly, it went very well and I learned a whole lot about what potters other than my wife look for in brushes.  Apparently, an addiction to brushes is fairly common in potters - maybe it has something to do with the stuff they breathe in while they're in their studios.

I was pretty amazed that there were 15 people in the room and they were all sitting quietly listening to me... well until  I ran a buck tail brush through my mouth to show them the point it came to when moistened - then they all seemed to gag at once...that was surprisingly loud.

After the talk, they forgot I'd had the south end of a northbound buck in my mouth and they all got down to testing them out.  A bunch of brushes didn't go home with me, which made me feel pretty good.  Plus I learned a lot about what they spend all that time in brush aisles looking for, which got me fired up to making more!

I was even the star of a Video they took of the presentation which I'm told will be in their PGNJ library for the folks to watch if they missed the show.  The wife says there's usually 30 people there.  Glad there wasn't 30 that day.  This was not a time to find out I had stage fright.  They even asked me to return with more brushes since they'd given me my marching orders (does everyone think they're my wife?)

My Wife Invades My Fly Tying Cabinet

So, you'd think that using all my buck tail would be enough for the wife and her friends.  You'd think wrong.  Who knew answering the question "is deer the only fur that you use with fishing flies?" with the truth would result in my sacrificing all the other pelts I'd collected over the years in my favorite fishing stores?  Not me, but I should have known - oh she is a sneaky one.  So my materials list grew and continues to grow.

Buck Tail - the Under Side

I finally gave in to my wife's begging for the smoother white fur from the underside of the deer tail.  This is the side that flashes when they run - you've seen National Geographic, you know what I'm talking about.  Yes, I was sacrificing the precious portion of the tails I needed for fishing flies.... but I was keeping her out of the art supply store brush aisle, after all...

A few different length handles and a fishing line loop on each...

so she could hang them to dry because I wasn't wasting this fine fly making fur to have it wasted!

And when her friends asked for them, they wanted longer handles - these suckers are 15 inches long and use  much more fur than the detail brushes my wife now favors.

Buck Tail - the top side

I started out making brushes from the outside of the buck tails friends gave to me after hunting season.  I had to learn to de-bone and tan the hide and the white underside was mostly gone because I use it for my fishing flies.  I supposed that since she put up with many of these pinned to boards, covered in all the salt she had in the cabinet (I swear I didn't know it was unlucky for a home to run out of salt!) it was only fair she should benefit from the leavings after I used the good stuff for my flies.

My Wife is addicted to paint brushes.....

She's using my brushes now...

And this is what she does with them.  

http://sunottinghampottery.blogspot.com/ is where you can see the other work she does - but in my opinion the best stuff is the stuff she paints with my brushes.