Randomly

"Seize the moment!"

It happened oh-so-au contraire with me. Most of the time, moment takes me by surprise and it seized me! When it does, I snap it with my camera...

Crossing the bamboo bridge..

Green Village

chillaxing

Brokenness

I am a firm believer of "when a series of small things brought together, it creates great things".
I always love the shape of a bowl. Its rounded, holds and whole... there is nothing more beautiful in life than wholeness.When a bowl broke into pieces, it lost it wholeness. Collecting the broken pieces and turning it into another beauty was behind this jewelry series.

"There is no perfection, only beautiful version of brokenness" S. Alder

These porcelain ceramic is handmade and high fired with a gas kiln, then I added bezel and bail hammered in 925 sterling silver, et voila...

White shirt dress

When I started with this blog of mine, it was the continuance of the style diary web that was shut down permanently. Knowing that I can put more words onto blogspot platform, I think"might as well". So some of my posts were started as a random rant that I wanted to write down, some friends asked about my holidays, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen and how much was this and that, how good was this and that -- the travel posts evolved. Some friends started to bit*h about shi*s in their life and I simply couldn’t contain all so I write them down. I start to write about what I feel that day in results of what people out-pour to me, some write up were what I experienced or what I've heard, or vaguely heard. Don't believe that everything I wrote is happening to me, oh God forbid! But do believe it happened in life, take a lesson, and I am glad if you do!

Madura Yellow Batik

While prepping for wood-fire of the anagama kiln, I have taking notes of all the potteries that I needed to make.... and then, overthinking things start to take over.

Overthinking feels helpful, but it really leads to negative thoughts! I finally come to my senses and start to sort things out… shape that I am not sure, rims that are too thin, shapes that hardly stacks.

In all honesty, this overthinking matter actually covers all areas in life as well, so this is what I did:

-          Focus on the positive that is happening right now

I tossed out and recycle the clay from the bottle shapes that I don’t really feels like keeping, save fuels save space

-          Go to a peaceful place in your mind

Going back in throwing functional shapes for friends that would love to have some of my tumbler, friends that really appreciate them. Their love is a sure thing ;)

-          Put your awareness back to the present moment

Allied with one of the girls here and create a shape that I can stack with her pcs, next time I must be sure to be more aware with others and stop thinking about my own stuff. It’s not copying when it’s different shape, it’s about fellowship of potters

-          Reverse sabotaging thoughts or worries with more peaceful one

Throw a shape that I love, instead of worrying about what functional stuff I have to create, and … have FUN!

-          Get out in nature

Hash run today, so... bye potts see you tomorrow!

#clayeverydamnday

Creativity is not a switch that’s flicked on or off, most of the time I have this potters-block (if there is such a thing). And I refuse to Pinterest!

For me, creativity is a way of seeing, engaging and responding to the world around me. I am surrounded by awesome artists! Although not everyone is directly engaging their thoughts or inspiration to me, I often loved to just talk to them, sometimes about random things or things that happens currently. The talking, gives me inspirations.

When I can call out my creativity, my practicality seems to brought me to create things that are functional. One day, I talked to Inky pots, and the last conversation around pottery she said “Throw a shape that you like! It doesn’t have to be functional, just as long as you love it.”

It strikes me, and the bottle series evolved. I am going to pursue this on my own time…

Hashtag clay-every-damn-day is on point!

Journey

It was a great evening and great dining experience last night… There was a slide show and presentation about some great places in some parts of the world with people, culture et all. It was quiet impressing! The presenter was even determined that she'll be back to one of the place she went.

I am sure some of us do feels that from time to time about a certain place :)

But last night, the magical feeling for me is to see the presenter's expression when she told us about how a place can impact her so much! The mix emotions reflected so much on her face; the excitement, the sharing, the teary eyes...

Each of us must have feelings towards a certain place, a certain space or a certain time that we hold on to. A place that we wished to go back to and to discover as it was when we left.

Sadly, most of the time the place is not the same as it was anymore, yet we can be so caught in the moment and feels for at least a second that happy-joyful-serenity feelings that is familiar to us.

Mostly; our circumstance, our condition or our current state has somehow changed, maybe the place has changed, the space, and time has surely changed. But our feelings remains! Feelings are feelings and it doesn't have any labels nor necessarily resonate in the same frequency.

I am always into new experiences, making new memories... there is a certain thrill on learning anew, discovering new occurrence; it’s such a joy! Journey ahead!

Ode

I am a big fan of Haruki Murakami, there is a certain “song” and “rhyme” that I cannot quiet describe nor put notation on, but he wrote in this sense that only him can understand and feels –the readers mostly can relate to it OR taking such gratitude for being on the opposite side of the negativity. I am the second.

Quoting his “South of the Border, West of the Sun”
“Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana.”

Imagine this is your life, like literally. You wake up every morning, encompassed your life to your working hour and your social life to your job. Didn’t we heard the news about someone just jump out the office window without harness?

Did we awake at dawn from our profound slumber, being nobody, emptied our brain, get on with our so called life, landing at our waking-point entering a black storm, emerge prostate without a thought? Then we are void from contentment.

Don’t catch hysteria siberiana! Wake up and smell the flowers (coffee in my case). Take share of your love ones: family, friends, pets, well… family

Be sure to keep update of what happen to them, reach out and really care! Your one minute is their lifetime…

Ode to a bestie

Indigo Batik

Just in case some of you are new readers or haven't read yet about my past batik post; batik is a wax-resist dyeing technique. The patterns are drawn or stamped on a fabric with melted wax than removed the wax by boiling the fabric until the pattern is achieved.

Spellbound by the beauty of Indigo Batik from Pak Tjok of Pura Pejeng, I went home (yet again) with one (yes, one) indigo batik scarf.

Aside from the fact that the motif is hand painted on the fabric (sometimes stamped, Pak Tjok is the one that created the design and the stamp), the indigo dye is harvested from their indigo plantation. Indigo is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color, it is a natural dye extracted from indigo plants (they grow local plant and Thai plant).

A variety of plants have provided indigo throughout history, but most natural indigo was obtained from those in the genus Indigofera, which are native to the tropics like Thailand and Bali. Both Indigo leave from Thailand and from Bali are from the same Indigo family plants but different in the shape of the leaves. The primary commercial indigo species in Asia was true indigo (Indigofera tinctoria, also known as Indigo sumatrana). A common alternative used in the relatively colder subtropical locations such as Japan's Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan is Strobilanthes cusia. In Central and South America, the two species grown are Indigo suffruticosa and dyer's knotweed (Polygonum tinctorum), BUT the Indigofera species yield more dye.

The precursor to indigo is indican, a colorless, water-soluble derivative of the amino acid tryptophan. Indican readily hydrolyzes to release β-D-glucose and indoxyl. Oxidation by exposure to air converts indoxyl to indigo. Indican was obtained from the processing of the plant's leaves, which contain as much as 0.2–0.8% of this compound. The leaves were soaked in water and fermented to convert the glycoside indican present in the plant to the blue dye indigotin. The precipitate from the fermented leaf solution was mixed with a strong base such as lye, pressed into cakes, dried, and powdered. The powder was then mixed with various other substances to produce different shades of blue and purple.

Indigo is among the oldest dyes to be used for textile dyeing and printing. And you know what? It repels mosquito too!