NaNoWriMo Again

It seems like last year’s National Novel Writing Month was not that long ago but it has been a year. Last year I couldn’t keep up the writing because of work and classes. This year threatens to be the same. In fact, in terms of hours, this year may be even worse. I have class after work Monday – Thursday. This leaves me with time to write on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only. With a little math, that leaves me 14 days in November, and If I am going to make the 50,000 word goal, I will have to churn out 3571 words on each of those non-school days. A daunting task to say the least.

I am going to go for it.

There is no penalty for failure. If I come short of the goal, then I can just add those words to the pile and still call it progress. I am going to continue on the book I was writing last year, Cascade. It was inspired by my trip to Banff in Canada to visit my sister-in-law and some of my wife’s college friends. It is fiction but not science fiction or fantasy as are most of my ideas.

I have never been short on ideas. I keep my story ideas on a OneNote file and go over them from time to time. I have about 20 story seeds there right now. My problem is stamina. Sitting down to write with consistency on the same topic is my greatest weakness. As you can probably tell from the frequency at which I post on this blog, my writing time, never really consistent, has dwindled in the last few years. That is the true challenge of writing for me. I know that I have a novel in me but if I can ever dedicate myself to getting it out is yet to be seen.

Today I head to the local National Novel Writing Month kickoff to meet the other writers in my area and get my head in the game. I have also made plans to start writing on midnight, October 31^st / November 1^st with a friend. I will get out as much of this as I can. I also have to remember to keep writing outside of November. It will not do to only write one month a year; I have too many ideas. I need to make this part of my life, and if nothing else, I can write a blog post every now and again.

Wish me luck

Tribes and Leadership

Leadership is a funny thing. It is sometimes confused with authority and sometimes confused with effectiveness. I am reading a book called "Tribes" by Seth Godin. He is an interesting character and quite a prolific author of what I have been calling "Success Literature." This little book talks about the tribes that develop around leaders and how leaders can shape culture and habits. I haven't even gotten halfway through it but I am already thinking about the implications.
I have been blogging for years for personal reasons. This blog is unlisted and marked do-not-index for search engines but I have branched out. I have tentatively started building a brand with @MakerMead, MakerMead.com, and I will likely eventually open and Etsy.com store with that same name. This is very basic preparation and not true leadership activity.
One of my favorite examples if this is kind of online leadership is ZeFrank. He is an internet personality with a strong following. He did a year-long project where he posted a vlog nearly every day. it was called "The Show with ZeFrank" and it was kind of amazing. He built a viewer community with forums and games and thoughtful comments. Ze was a leader with no authority, he played with the internet and the internet played back. When "The Show" ended, a good friend of mine suggested that it might be time for "The Show with Brian" and I shrugged off the idea with shyness or fear, or some combination of sour emotions. I was not ready to stick my face on the internet and talk.
I wonder if now is the time? What would I talk about? Art? Crafts? Politics? Ze would do political sections, thoughtful pieces, and silly songs. What would my show be about? Who would be my tribe? Is it time to find out?

First kiln firing

I have finally fired my kiln!
On Saturday I fired my first bisque and on Monday my first glaze. Neither firing went perfectly but the results were better than I dared hope.

The bisque firing was supposed to be cone 06 but I ran out of time (I was going to see One Night in Miami by Kemp Powers for the fourth time) and had to turn the kiln off early. I am not sure how close it got to the right temperature. My 05 and 06 witness cones survived unscathed but the ware was within the bisque range so it must have been close enough. I had a teapot, 4 cups and 7 bowls. I did loose one bowl to cracking but I believe it had been weakened by handling before the firing.
For the glaze firing I gave myself all day to get it done. I was aiming for cone 5 so I set the kiln for normal speed, 2150°f, and put the time at 12 hours, which is the longest it will go. After 8 or so hours I started using my shade 10 welding goggles when looking in the peephole to check the cones. After 11 hours the #4 come had bent over completely. By 12 hours the #5 cone had bent to 90° (pointing at 180° for those of you who love polar coordinates) so when the timer went off (sounding like a kitchen egg timer) I shut everything off, and went to bed. I unloaded the next night.

I fired the teapot, the 4 cups, and one bowl all with the same Laguna Clay forest green (ms-4) glaze. The glaze all melted nicely and the kiln wash on the shelves saved me from the sleight drips I had on one of the cups. The application was a little spotty because I did not have enough glaze to dip the pieces and had to apply it with a brush. There was a fair amount of flow of the glaze and the lips of the cups came out a bit thin but nothing to worry about. I got a little pinhole-ing of the glaze and clay sagging on a bowl that was on the bottom shelf so I may need to be careful what I put down there.
The teapot and two of the cups are a donation to an auction held by a charity called More Than Me that a co-worker of mine works with. I am proud of the way they came out and I hope that it can bring in a good donation.

All in all a success!

Kiln test

This weekend I tested the coils in my electric kiln. I was told to check that all of the columns were working by placing a slip of paper behind each coil and turning on the kiln. I performed this test and every coil charred it's slip. Now I need to read the manual and do a first firing. I am going to aim for this weekend. I just need to finish some cups first.

Changing Flow Direction

It sure has been a while. I am through with Spring 2013 semester. I am getting close to being able to transfer to a 4-year institution. I have decided not to take any classes during the summer. The pace of summer is very demanding, and the classes that I have left to take are tough so I decided to leave them for the fall full semester and to shift gears and spend my summer working on projects and being creative. I am really itching to produce some of my own work, especially after my two week vacation in Italy. I saw so many things, and took in so much inspiration It is time to change from input to output.
With my new found time I have started doing a little pen turning and hope to get back on the ceramic wheel. I have had the electric kiln for months now and I still haven't fired it. I am also looking forward to being able to spend some time learning to program.

Perhaps I have too many hobbies?

Other Blogs

Blogging is an interesting thing. I have been posting in this blog for years but it is mainly for my close friends and family. I have decided to branch out with mixed results. I have trouble posting with the regularity that I intend but here are the addresses of my other projects:

My Novia and I write about roleplaying games here:

http://rpglifelessons.blogspot.com/

My Novia, our friend Scooter and I write about the plays we see here:

http://notintheatre.blogspot.com/

I have started a new blog dedicated to my craft work and as an eventual companion to an etsy store here:

http://makermead.com

Passing Througn

It is difficult some times for me to get comfortable with my job. I am the designated tech for setting up systems for new users and picking up the systems from users who are “no longer with the company.” It is an easy task but one that is not without a little bit of angst. I am painfully aware of what the turnover rate is at the company and of how some people don’t make it past a month, let alone six. I am also aware that I am the most junior member of the team and therefore the most expendable. I watch people come and go. Sometimes they are here for a couple of weeks and other times I hear about a coworker being honored for being with the company for 20 years. I cannot shake the feeling that I am not going to last that long. I may be here for years but not many.  I don’t exactly fear for my job (any more at least) but I am constantly aware that it will eventually come to an end.

I don’t fit the IT bill. The mindset of a tech is one of maintaining control and keeping the network safe and stable. While I understand and respect the need for that attitude, I am inclined to focus on innovation and solving problems. Whenever I apply out-of-the-box thinking, the response is “NO, that isn’t in the box. We don’t support that” That attitude is stifling to me. I know that I won’t make this job my career.

This brings me to the thought of what I want to do professionally. I have several irons in the fire as they say, but I am starting to wonder if I am dividing my attention too much. I am pursuing my IT career by working on earning a CCNA. I am beginning down the path to learn how to program by taking an introduction to CS class where I am learning the programing language C++. I am also about to try out selling my ceramic work on Etsy (this kind of half-in production pottery work would never have been possible before Etsy). Each of these pursuits has its own problem. The CCNA class will be useless if I leave the IT field. The programming may be out of reach if I cannot go back and get a BS in Computer Science. The pottery may be some pipe dream that is unsustainable in the real world. I have so much doubt but these are the best plans that I can come up with so I will go with them. 

Dreamlines

I have been reading Tim Ferriss's "The 4 Hour Work Week. I am finding it to be an interesting attitude adjustment. Just as Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad Poor Dad" re-arranged my thoughts on what assets or liabilities are, "The 4 Hour Work Week" has seriously affected my thought process on what it means to work during the best years of your life.
I understand that the concepts in either of these books cannot be widely used by the public at large. If everyone in the world (or in the country) tried to make their living in real estate or through some niche internet business, then there would be nobody to do the real actual work that keeps the economy running. These books are very first-world information-age. It may be somewhat conceited to say that I am special (and everyone thinks that they are) but I am not your average minimum-wage lifer. I am (or will make myself into) the kind of person these books apply to.
The thoughts that are going through my head now are about the whole concept of retirement and its place at the end of a long career. The contemporary wisdom is that you are supposed to work hard for the best years of your life, saving and sacrificing so that when you are old and sick you have enough money to pay high prescription prices long into your 80's and 90's. As you can no doubt tell from my word choice, I am not enamored with this prospect.
To satisfy the traditional model, I have spent a lot of time reading books and have been testing a small (but growing) portfolio of stocks for a few years. I am very dedicated to constructing a healthy retirement. I keep informed of the current financial environment and of the different things that people invest in. This approach is a slow and deliberate one. The question remains, what about now? what about the best years of my life?
Tim puts forth the idea that you don't have to work your whole life away and that you can create cashflow from a low maintenance business selling some niche good and outsourcing almost all of the work. I am not taking his approach for gospel but he still has quite a few lessons to teach about what work you need to do for yourself and what you can pass off for others to do for you. He encourages you to reach for your unrealistic goals called "dreamlines" (like timelines for your dreams). Sometimes sensibility can be a cage that you only realize you were in when you look back at it from the end of your life. I have been caught for a long time between the desire for things that seem unrealistic and the inability to make that leap of faith and give it a shot.
It really reminds me of some of my artist friends and how they are willing to work second jobs or collect unemployment in order to do the acting that they love. I have been wondering if I have that kind of dedication.
To that end, and with the added support of my currently stable job, I am going to dedicate myself a little bit more to artistic goals. I have bought a used electric kiln and will be borrowing an electric wheel from a friend. It seems that an Etsy shop is inevitable.

There is a logical break here.
I am talking first about working less and then talking about adding ceramic work to my workload. The link is that I would be doing what I love to do. Would it really be work? some people say that the best way to ruin a hobby is to make it your job, while others say that if you find a job you love you will never work another day in your life. I will find out. I am going to give some of my time to being an artist with an art blog and website and store. I already have the name and will be filling in the spaces in the next couple of months. I am Makermead.com I have @makermead on twitter and I have the username Makermead on etsy. I have been slowly collecting these things over the past 6 months with this dream in mind. I have been denying it even to myself but this is what I want and I have to try it.
The craft that I am best at is ceramics, and that is where I will start, but that is not where my passion ends. I want to do woodwork, weaponsmithing, bookbinding, painting, writing, and meadmaking. I don't know what is next on the list but I know that there will be more. I want to visit others and do write-ups on my blog. I want to show off my shop and others, my methods and the methods of my contemporaries. I hope that this project will grow from a simple shop selling bowls and cups to the foundation of a multiple discipline artistic endeavor with occasional collaborations and a community. I hope this is only the beginning.

Mead Batch 8

Novia and I just bottled mead batch 8. This batch has come out wonderfully. It was made with two vanilla beans, and had oak chips added to simulate barrel aging.

This batch was one of constant adjustments. It started with 12 lbs of honey and a 1.10 original gravity. After primary fermentation the specific gravity had fallen to 1.022 I was concerned that the yeast would not have enough sugar to reach full fermentation. Because of this, I added 5lbs. of honey and brought the specific gravity up to 1.060. During secondary fermentation The specific gravity dropped down to 1.038 but because of excess sweetness I added 1 liter of water and knocked the S.G. down to 1.034.

This batch yielded 18 liters of mead in 16 regular size wine bottles and four double size bottles. Unfortunately because of the constant adjustments, especially the addition of the liter of water, I am not able figure out an accurate percent of alcohol. My guess will have to be based on fuzzy math. I think the resultant mead has 12.3% alcohol by volume.

It will be hard to keep from drinking this one up. I need to keep a bottle for competition next year. I will definitely be opening a bottle tomorrow for my birthday party.

Mead batch 8 Move

Novia and I moved batch 8 to secondary fermentation today. I decided to add 5 more pounds of honey to the batch to allow it to reach full 18% alcohol potential. We also took this opportunity to taste the mead and judge its progress. It is delicious. The vanilla flavor comes through strongly and with the added sweetness it tastes like vanilla honey ice cream. I am excited for the possibility of this batch. It should mellow down to a smoother flavor in time.
It was measured at 1.022 Specific Gravity when we opened the bucket and then after mixing 5 pounds of honey the Specific Gravity was 1.060. This should allow the mead to ferment up to its full 18% Alcohol by volume and end at around 1.01 and 1.00 Specific Gravity.

Alcohol Potential

I have been looking further into Alcohol By Volume and Specific Gravity, and I am a little concerned about my 8th batch of mead. The Original Gravity is 1.1 which according to my hydrometer allows for a alcohol potential of 13.2%. The yeast we selected has a alcohol tolerance of 18%. This means that this batch will wind up being completely dry with about a 13.2% alcohol by volume.

I am a little concerned because batch 7 was a fairly dry mead and this time I intended on making a medium sweet mead. Now I have to decide if I want to add more honey when I transfer the must to secondary fermentation to allow it to ferment to its full alcohol tolerance and have sugar left over for sweetness. I can also let it ferment to the available sugar and then add more honey after filtering the finished mead down to 1/2 micron sterile filtration. It depends on how much sweetness and how much alcohol I want in the finished batch. 

Friends: feel free to chime in here and let me know what you think. The comments are enabled on this blog so I can get your opinions on things so let me know.

Community

There are oh so many things that I want to make and I don't know how I will ever get them done. I become interested in new crafts very easily and inevitably I find myself at a point in the development where I would need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy the tools or materials to go to the next level. It is at this point that I back out and move on to something else. I get frustrated by the barrier to entry and then I quit. I wonder if this is reasonable pragmatism or weakness.

I want a wheel and kiln for ceramic work, a forge and anvil for metalsmithing, a torch and precious metals for jewelry making, a bandsaw for woodworking, and countless other things. I may as well wish for a griffon to ride on while I am fantasizing.

I find myself wishing that there was some kind of community where I could join with like minded people and work. I guess this is the dream of all artists, to be able to join together and be creative. I have heard of it from so many places. The idealized artists community somewhere out in the desert where people can be creative and work together in harmony and love and all that shit. How many of these places last? None! It is not economically feasible. I am left to do it on my own.

So what do I focus on? I can only really do one thing at a time. There is just too much expense and space required to try and branch out at first. And what do I do to make it sustainable? My dreams are not suited to the time in which I live. I am stuck, unable to make a decision on what to do next. This leaves me in the state of failing because of not starting, I just cannot see a path to financial success in any of these endeavors. Could I start a successful meadery? A woodturning business? Maybe I lack vision and maybe I am being realistic.... Frustrating,

Mead Batch 8

Novia and I put together our second batch of mead today. This is my 8th batch total. We made it with orange blossom honey and two vanilla beans. I want the vanilla flavor to be noticeable so when we are getting ready to bottle it I may add more vanilla extract to the batch. We also added toasted oak chips to the must. I am not sure how many chips we added but it was more than last time because I want a noticeable oak flavor to compliment the noticeable vanilla flavor.

Because we started with only 12lbs of honey and were using a yeast with a high tolerance, and are aiming for a medium sweet mead, we ended up with a must of about 4 3/4 gallons.

The details:
orange honey 12lbs
vanilla beans X 2
Oak chips 
Lalvin Yeast EC 1118 (Alcohol to 18%)
Original Gravity reading: 1.1

What a Novel Idea

I have had a great deal of spare time lately and so I have started writing more. I know that I have written less in this blog over the past few months but this is a different kind of writing. I have had my girlfriend in my life ever ready to talk about whatever I need to get off my chest so I have had less need to write things here in my blog.
The writing I have been doing has been fiction. Novia has written the first draft of a novel and is currently in the process of revising it. While she is writing I need to find thing to do that won't distract her, so I have turned to writing my own stories. I have never had trouble thinking of settings. Places real and fantastic come to mind easily. The problem I have is creating a story arc. A conflict and a path to resolution. I am now stuck on what to do next in my story. I am at a fork in the road and I need to take one path or the other. I have started a few things and begun a few mysteries but I have yet to commit to anything past the initial premise. It is time to break out the big guns and start making the hard decisions. It is daunting but I must proceed or I will fail by default.
Wish me luck

Mead Batch 7 Part 2

Today Novia and I moved the mead to secondary fermentation. The cherry flavor comes through strong, and the yeast managed to consume nearly all of the sugar. The specific gravity reading was 0.995 which is a serious drop from the 1.090 that we began with. The alcohol percent is up around 12-13% which is about all this yeast can handle. I figured that I could add more honey to compensate for the dryness and the tart of the cherries but all I had on hand was 3/4lb of clover honey in a honey bear. We added the clover honey to the mix and tasted again. It is better with a little more sweetness, but is still harsh. I hope that time will smooth it out.

Mead Batch 7

Today Novia (my girlfriend) and I started my 7th batch of mead. We are aiming to make a medium sweet cherry melomel. We used twelve pounds of cactus honey and one pound of dried tart cherries, I am a little concerned about the cherries releasing enough flavor to be noticeable. Next time I might buy cherry juice to use instead. The starting gravity was 1.09 which means the must has an alcohol potential of 13%.  I used Lavlin 71B-1177 wine yeast which has an alcohol tolerance of 14% I am concerned with how sweet the result will be. I will have to recheck things after two weeks.

Shopsmith Repair

I was able to repair my Shopsmith today. My father hunted down a replacement part for me on ebay, I picked it up yesterday, and installed it today. This means that I am up and running again on my wood turning. I guess that this means that my next craft endeavor has been decided for me. The problem here is that the olive wood that I had looked forward to turning seems to be all cracked beyond use. I have now attempted three goblets (one today and two a few months ago) and given up shortly after roughing them to round because of too many deep cracks. Perhaps the climate here is too dry and I should have put them in plastic bags to slow the drying process. It seems that sealing the ends with wax was simply not enough.

Today I worked on one piece of olive wood and the piece of purple-heart that I damaged the lathe with. I finished the outside of the Purpleheart bowl and stopped to consider the inside. I  can see a lot of hairline cracks on the surface of the bowl and now I am worried about the bowl exploding when I carve out the inside. I think I will give it a try while wearing a full face shield and making sure to keep out of the plane of rotation. I have been making an effort to be safer on the lathe lately. I don't want to learn to be safe the hard way and this time I wore safety glasses the whole time and a dust mask while sanding. These failures leave me with a dismal record of success on the lathe, and I am starting to get disheartened.

I really need to get a job so that I can afford to build a raku kiln and buy the stuff to do lost wax casting. What ever happened to the days where you could make a living as an artisan?

Craft Confusion

I am caught once again by the dizzying array of projects that I am interested in. I want to build a raku kiln and learn lost wax casting and carve a pimp-cane for a friend (but I lost my drawknife) and write stories and learn oil painting and so many more. It gets to the point where all the choices just serve to paralyze me and I do nothing. What should I make next?

Mead Batch 6 Failure

I went to bottle mead batch 6 this morning and found out that it is a failure. I am not sure whether it is the inconsistent temperature or the time I let the fermentation lock run too dry, or if it was when I moved back home during the process, but it was so bad that I poured it down the drain. I was so disappointed that I forgot to take a specific gravity reading before dumping it so I have learned almost nothing from this batch. next time I need to find a temperature controlled place to store it and I need to not move while I am making a batch.

What shall I do for my next batch?

Bent

I was just out working on a bowl on my lathe and I think I broke it. I have an old shopsmith 10ER. When I say that this thing is old, I mean that this thing may be 50 years old or older. I was working on making a bowl out of a piece of purpleheart not unlike the one that I posted a picture of recently, and I caught the tool digging into the wood and stopping the revolutions of the blank. This put too much pressure on the spindle and it bent.

I know that my father has one of these machines (in fact he has managed to collect 4) and had done the same thing once. I am going to have to consult him on how to proceed from here. one thing is certan though. I am putting this machine through more stress then it was designed to handle. I have to face the fact that I need to get a real lathe. The problem is that the kind of lathe that I want costs around $5000 and I don't have that kind of expendable cash lying around.

What the hell do I do now!?