The Season of Abundance

It's fall. Okay, technically it's summer for another ten days, but, ya know...it's fall. Like every September, I am about buried in a mound of tomatoes right about now. I also have cilantro, garlic, and jalapeños. Now all I need are some limes, chili powder, and cumin, and I have the makings of fresh salsa. I will make approximately a boatload, and freeze most for later. 

Basil and oregano are in abundance, too, and I am pureeing up a storm with my tomatoes to freeze for future spaghetti sauce. I'm also clipping and drying those herbs, along with thyme and rosemary. I love this admittedly illusory sense of self-sufficiency, and every year I am tempted to go further: Keep bees! Maybe chickens! Does Augusta have an ordinance about goats? 

Fall does this to me; it puts me a mode of producing, and hoarding: what is instinct, except millennia of collective memory? Mine is telling me, make and save. Make and save. Winter is coming.

In the studio, too, I am a busy bee. Making and saving, also for winter, in a different way: for the shopping season. I am incredibly bad at guessing what people will want to buy, so I just make what I want to make. Here's what I want to make:

• Mugs! So many mugs. 
• I got a little burned out on butterdishes in the spring, but I am ready once again to embrace one of my favorite forms. (Speaking of: I've been asked a few times about the video of my Process Room demo at NCECA. The answer is, I don't know. There have been many videos from the conference posted to NCECA's YouTube page, but none from the Process Room yet. Believe me, when it appears I'll share it here like five minutes later.)

Altered oval vases! These are a new fave: fun shapes, lots of surface to decorate. Also, they demand handles. 

Wine Chillers: These seem like such joyful pots to me; it makes me happy to imagine them in use. Holiday dinner. Date night. First night in a new apartment. 

Serving bowls! Obvs.

This will probably be the last kiln load I'll throw in the summer studio before the whole operation moves upstairs. That's a bummer in some ways, because making stuff in the summer studio feels like camp. Everything is fun upta camp! (Throwing a little Maine dialect atcha.)But I have more room in the winter studio, more shelf and table space. I can make more stuff, more quickly! It's fall. That urge for making is upon me.

It's fall.