"Hairy" Houdini...

  This is how my Saturday turned into "Caturday".  Allow me to tell you the tale of this hairy little escape artist with a fluffy little tail...

  A few days ago this little black cat started showing up around dad's looking for someplace warm and mybe some food.  Not willing to let the poor thing starve dad started feeding her...(mistake #1) then we got snow...and dad didn't want her to freeze so he let her in to eat food before he put her back out...

(This is still a pottery blog...I'm getting there)

  So now, having been invited in, this little monster knows how the "other half" lives.  Not willing to be cast out into the cold she finds a broken window pane and chews her way through the "temporary" replacement pane and finds her way back into the house after 2am...not once, not twice, but 3 times between 2am and 4am.  (I might mention here that upon each successful breach the barricade to keep her out became increasingly Macgyver-ed)  In a house already full with 2 dogs and another cat, there were loud objections to this "cat burglar" waking the entire house each time and earning her "Houdini" name...

  Ok, you have been patient and we are getting to the pottery part...I finally had some time to come visit dad and start turning a few things today.  When it became evident that turning pots from frozen and thawed clay was not going to work in my favor, I switched to hand building. 

  This...is where "Hairy" Houdini comes in. Sweet as can be, but the most mischievous cat I have seen in a long time Houdini decided she should help me...by walking all over the drying racks!  

  So this October, if your platters and trays have "paws" on them, now you know why!  

If you fire it, they will come...

Ok, not quite the same as baseball fields and Kevin Costner...but the 10th Anniversary Hilton Homeplace Sale was a big success!  This was the "last" year of the free cider cups (last being tentative since I heard that the 5th year was also the "last" year).  Nevertheless the free cider cups (also affectionately referred to as "those damnedable giveaway cups" by my father) were a big hit.  We had a line waiting at 8am wrapped around the corner and into the parking lot...

It is really humbling to think about how much this event has grown since the first show in 2003.  That was a true "kiln opening" with dad (BR Hilton) Sybil (Pottery by Sybil) and John (John Hilton) where the three of them literally opened the kiln on Saturday morning and sold pottery from it. 

  Now the show has 8-10 potters, 3 generations of Hilton potters, live throwing demonstrations, a Hilton Homeplace cookbook, and we've invited 700 of our closest friends and family to show up in dad's front yard to shop...(shameless PR plug here...it's the 2nd Saturday in October each year info at www.hiltonpottery.com) We have so many visitors from all over the country...even 96 South Carolina (just past 95 but before 97 ha ha!)  thanks so much for all of your continued support. 

  While I don't know that I would quite call myself a potter, I certainly would say the light at the end of the tunnel is not a speeding train headed for me...that is I guess to say, if you fire it...they will come...

Thanks so much to all of the friends, family, and customers who helped make my 3rd pottery sale a success.  I still say it's cheaper than therapy...and I have to get rid of it all so I can make more!  Until then...

Wood you believe that?

Well if it looks like wood, and feels like wood...it must be clay! (Wait, what?)

My adventures with texture appear to have been successful.  The trays with wood grain actually made it through the firing without warping or cracking!  

I made a few larger trays with leaf and acorns so hopefully they will survive as well.  The large leaf sets appear to have survived, and a few other things will be added to the shelves for the October 12th show.  Hope to see you there! 

Those legal, perfectly legal, herb pots...

  Again I have to share that while dad tells stories of running a "little pot business" from the "family farm" he does, in fact, mean pottery...so as I share pictures on Facebook of my "herb pots" you can only imagine the comments I get from those who aren't exactly looking for a piece to use for planting their parsley and cilantro.

  The few mini-planters (and I do mean mini not many) seemed to survive glaze firing and will be available for the October show...(I am forced as the chief marketing officer to insert shameless Hilton Homeplace 10th Anniversary Sale promotion here). Stop by and see us the second Saturday each October.  

I will also have a few trivets to place hot pottery on in your serving area without worrying about damage to your dining table or countertops.

From text to Texture...

After having spent the bulk of my free time in July and August working on the Hilton Homeplace Cookbook I decided I have no desire to ever become an editor...I am so sick of looking at text on a computer screen I couldn't imagine doing it for a living...I also have a new appreciation for all those English teachers out there making 25K a year and doing this for the grammatically challenged future of our country...

Nevertheless, having finished the final, final draft of the Hilton Homeplace Cookbook it was time to get back into the clay (otherwise I will have NOTHING to show in October at the sale)  Feeling a little artsy I thought I would play around with a few things using textures to detail the insides of pieces.  I'm hoping the glaze will break over the edges and create a depth and dimension to the pottery. 

We are only a few weeks away from the show, so fingers crossed these survive the firing.  Not sure if I have mentioned this before, but the kiln is the enemy...

Pottery in Print...(possibly)

  Never afraid of a good challenge, and also one of those people who doesn't say no very well I agreed to help my aunt Linda publish a cookbook.  She's always been the "Martha Stewart/Paula Deen" of our family, only without the jail time or inappropriate racial slurs. 

  If you have ever attended one of the family feasts the night before the Hilton Homeplace Pottery Sale, celebrated any major (or minor) Holiday with her, or been walking into a Carolina Panther's Game and passed that group with the 4 course meal complete with real food cooked in pottery dishes and silverware to serve it all, then you know Linda makes sure we are never going hungry...

  It was only appropriate for the woman so passionate about cooking to gather our favorite Hilton Pottery family recipes and put together a cookbook to share them with the world.  Now...there are two things you should know about our family other than we like to eat, and we make pottery...

1. The cart...will always come before the horse...
2. Everything, no matter how far planned in advance, will come down to the very last possible minute before impending doom to actually work out. 

  So on the hottest day we could find in July, during the wettest summer in North Carolina history, we decided to have a photo shoot at the Hilton Homeplace.  (reference numbers 1 & 2 above)  I will say she had an idea of most of the recipes at this time, even if we didn't have a text for the actual cookbook yet.  After a week of cooking and a vehicle FULL of food (seriously Rickey, how did you get that all in the jeep?)  Linda and I set off to get the photo shoot underway! 

  As always, our photographer Dawn Crouse was on hand to make the most of this festivity of family fun.  After many hours of cooking, baking, staging, and photos the best part of this endeavor was at hand...EATING!  What do you do with 142 prepared dishes?  Invite everyone you know over to help eat them, and send as many leftovers home with them as they will take! 

  So now we have a ton of recipes, photos of them, and still no cookbook...well who would have imagined the hardest part of publishing a cookbook would be formatting it and finding a printer? 

*Note to any out there wanting to publish your own book...there is so much more to it than you could ever imagine, and it will haunt your dreams at night...

Skip ahead to the first week of September.  The final draft of the Hilton Homeplace Cookbook is done, edited, all the photos added, cover and spine designed, ISBN registered, and still...no...printer...

Now, I will remind you that the Hilton Homeplace Sale is the 2nd week of October every year (just 6 weeks away from the 1st week in September where we currently are in the timeline) so finding a printer is becoming an example of item #2 listed above...impending doom...moments away.

Never fear...Linda has an idea for packaging books and giveaway goodies for those who purchase copies at the show.  Really cute ideas with printing the book cover on bags, red tissue paper, cute ribbon, all the fun things someone in sales is supposed to think about...(refer to #1 above...cart before the horse...although in this example there is still no horse...) Not to say that Linda is the only one who puts the cart ahead of the horse, as I have already started marketing the book on the Hilton pottery website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. (but it will be a great story to tell if we don't end up with an actual cookbook) 

  So as I write this blog with sweat dripping down my brow, looking at a calendar with the second Saturday in October quickly approaching, know this...whether we end up with a cookbook or not, the time and fun my aunt Linda and I have had working on it is enough for me.  I have enjoyed this project and can't wait to share it with all of you. 

Cut it out Bro...

  Now that he lives in Raleigh, I don't get to see Robert as much. (my brother) I used to visit him once a month when I traveled for work, but now it's much less. (the visits, not really the travel for work)

  I managed to get him to come visit this week and, as we so often do during July and August each year, we started carving jack-o-lanterns.  

  While the rest of the world celebrates Independence Day and Fireworks, Labor Day and Summer pool parties...we celebrate Halloween!  

Why?  Well it's tough to sell Jack-o-Lanterns in January so it's better that we have them done for the October show.  Several new designs this year, although not as many total "pumpkins" as we've had in previous years.  You are all required, having read this blog post, to cross your fingers with us and hope that they all survive the firing...(the kiln is the enemy)