GarrettWare - Online Pottery Shop!!

I'm OPEN for business!!

You can see my pots at GarrettWare, just click that link!

My Slipware pottery is now available to buy. It's taken me a while to decide whether i should sell what i have been creating. I was waiting to iron out a few of the issues i've been having.... but finally i gave in to peer pressure, to just let people buy them, even with the odd blemish!

They were right and as long as i'm upfront about any defects, i'm happy to sell them... and have sold them. Which has pushed me to update my online shop to now make it a purely pottery space... and hence the name GarrettWare (i know a bold move, claiming a whole niche in pottery to myself!

Anyway it feels good and is motivating me to step it up a gear!

I shall keep updating it as i create more pots and hopefully get some of the larger, more elaborate pieces on there with more sgraffito!

It's exciting, i'm excited.... and that doesn't happen very often!

Pickles, Ferments and Sandor Katz

Been having a lot of fun and playing with my ferments. Started to broaden out from just krauts, brining more things, making more cultured drinks and being a bit more experimental, just made a small trial batch of coffee kombucha!

My spicy pepper kraut (more like a kimchi, i guess) is always a hit. The continuous kombucha gets amazingly fizzy, love that stuff! I've made pineapple skin vinegar and a melon scraps one, fermenting has become my form of composting!

I've made fermented buckwheat bread, thanks to Amanda Feifer at Phickle (a great resource for us fermenters!) I've pickled water melon rinds (a bit tough) and recently made some garlic-dill sour pickles, they were delicious. I took Sandor Katz advice and added a couple of cherry tree leaves to the brine as the tannins are supposed to help keep the pickles crunchy. They were crunchy, sour and absolutely gorgeous! I left them to ferment for 20 days in a 5.4% brine.

Then i made a ginger bug starter and a batch of ginger beer from it, still have a week to go until that's ready to drink. Yesterday i pickled some carrots and ginger. I'm so glad i started to lacto-ferment... and discovered Sandor Katz. My innards have never felt so good!! ;-)
It's great fun, have a go... it's alchemy!

'Ginger bug' starting to ferment.
water, ginger and sugar, which you keep feeding like a sourdough starter

My garlic-dill sour pickles at the start of their journey.

This Will Take You Places

Built To Spill cover Neil Young's Cowgirl In The Sand. Love both. Going to see these guys play soon too. Looking forward to it. Now listen, get in the groove... and drift off...

Go Tex!

A proud day yesterday. Put the pedals back on Texas' bike and took him out to try proper riding... and he went instantly. I held him to start with but (almost immediately) as soon as he started to pedal i could feel he had it, so let him go and he was off.

It made me so happy to see him pedalling around. It took me back to when i first learnt, talking to my Dad as he pushed me along on a big flat football pitch, then he wasn't talking back... and that's when i realised he was way back, smiling! These are the wonderful moments of parenting (to be fair most of it is.... most!)

Go Texas!!

Rye Harbour nature reserve. Wonderful (and photogenic) shack.

All The Dads Together

I've now gathered all the School Run Dads together in one place on my website School Run Dads
They were only quick drawings done later from memory, just to see if i could remember the outfits mostly. A few actually still look like the Dad, that's a bonus for me. I don't do portraits, but i do like characters!

here are a few you haven't seen before... i don't think...??

Last Days Of School

... so thought i'd creep a new School Run Dad in. This guy is one of my playground favourites, i love his superman trainers with their huge 6 inch tongues sticking straight up.

91cm From Myself

I love this animation. I first saw it a few years ago and had forgotten about it until recently and then remembered enough to track it down. I sometimes feel exactly like this, 91cm from myself.