tea

drinking morning tea

the monk is peaceful

the chrysanthemum blooms

Basho

we finally had some sun here, enough so that my camera might take some good photos of the tea cups i've been doing lately in the pottery studio. fortuitously the sun was coming through my garden doors and orange tree and it cast the perfect shadow to be the setting for these photos. tea and the tea ceremony are a couple of those things i wish i could devote more time to. i studied the architecture of the tea house while in school and was able to once attend a traditional tea ceremony in boston. 

i am not actually much of a tea drinker. i really only like it at a certain not boiling but not yet tepid temperature. however i still appreciate the culture behind it. i've been feeling that small tea cups are a noble pursuit for me; as i get more accomplished with throwing pottery. the cups are not perfect and there is a great lesson in that, in that they need not be perfect. fate and glaze add their voices to the process and out of everything, chance sometimes is the best course to follow.

i've been considering building small wooden boxes for some of the cups, just to make them more of a celebration of chance and the lesson that perfection can sometimes be set to one side.

many of these will go to the friends i have left in my life (though they seem to be lost like autumn leaves lately). others i may keep. one might even find its way to you.

perhaps it is time for a new blog contest?

21

heather, over at the pottery studio, had a nice surprise waiting for me tonight.

all of my recent work had been bisque fired this weekend and was ready for me to glaze. a diligent 1.5 hours later and here is a photo looking down into the kiln of the aftermath. glaze is always a tricky proposition because glazes in their liquid form look nothing like what they eventually become.  i've tried out some new tricks tonight based on what i've learned previously and added a new color - orange, into the mix of colors i am using. 8 hours to fire, 8 hours to cool, i'll pick everything up thursday and see what chance may have helped along

getting better with my brush swooshes. a good swoosh is everything in art pottery.

sawdust

a couple, who bought a table of mine at Arbor Aid, contacted me last month about building them a large diningroom table. i am re-using an old factory table of theirs for this, splitting off the individual boards, replaning them and trimming them down to size. the table was frightfully heavy and i barely got it in my house. i discovered one reason for this was the table had been constructed with four 2 foot wide interior bolts and was in fact 3" thick solid cherry.

below is the result of 6 hours work - filling the holes with dowel plugs, splitting, planing and trimming all the boards. i've evenly distributed the boards to either side of a 5" wide section of cherry which will run down the middle as a spine to the table.

next up gluing everything together. i'll be using walnut as a contrasting wood to create breadboard ends for the table. after this project is done i'll build them 2 matching benches.

current work

no, they aren't perfect. some are slightly off center and my rims are uneven sometimes still, but i am making progress and the investment of my time is beginning to pay off. here then, are some of my recent small ceramic bowls. all about 2" high and 4" wide

bento bowls

with all the recent ceramics and boardgames posts, i've been rather remiss in my food blogging duties (food posts always suffer in the winter with the lack of good lighting to make the food in the photos appetizing). tonight though i wanted something different for dinner. one trip to the japanese grocery later and we have a bento bowl supper which only needs chopsticks to be complete.

in clockwise order - yaki-soba noodles, sautéed baby bok choi, fish cake, soy sauce, seaweed salad, pickled ginger, daikon, and crab shumai and some shrimp tempura in the center.

and yes i did make every one of those bowls.

more tea for one

these might not look like it yet but they are my finest wheel thrown teacups yet. they need to dry some, be trimmed, bisque fired, glazed and fired again. but one day soon, they will be marvelous.

iTin

i had some room on a recent playing card order from the printer in hong kong so i decided to make 5 double sided cards (playing card size) with a series of traditional board game layouts. from these 10 cards and some wooden cubes in 2 colors i can play 25 or so different two player games. the larger black wooden tiles are binary lots, which were used for most games before dice were invented. add in a metal tin from Michaels and i have a portable games closet.

tea for one

my first pretty good japanese style tea cup

woodworking

finished up a recent woodworking commission for a wedding present. i am pleased with how it turned out. shaping the handle for the lid was a lot of fun. walnut and maple with wenge details

serica demo

well was a fun if long day. sold 5 copies of the game. 3 to people who stopped in and another 2 to the store itself. bob invited me back again next saturday to demo some of my other games. so i'll do it all again then. thanks to the BGGers/friends who stopped by and bought a copy. 

for now some photos for those interested

my little corner of the store and a closeup of my demo setup

Games Unlimited is packed with a great selection (view from behind the counter)

view across from where i sat showing all the family/party games

games for my nephews

a little something i cobbled together for my nephews to play on thanksgiving. built using the postcard wargame Rattenkrieg as a base idea but with spells and other rule changes. the map is from a deviant art site and the counter artwork is from the amazing melee re-design by kwanchai over on BGG. hope they like playing it.

a peek at things to come

i've been doing some intellectual legwork on one of my next games for 2-4 players. i love using full page bleed images and lots of color in my work but i think i might go minimal this time. Uruk was the very first civilization (a city populace vs de-centralized tribes). among other things, they invented writing.

the font on the cards is Apogee which is a very spacey modern font but i like the application here. it is readable but the letterforms are divergent enough they feel like a proto-alphabet. more on this game as it develops

serica - almost ready

i finally found some boxes for the game so the artisanal sets are almost ready for sale. i'll be doing a demo event with the game next month at Games Unlimited. hope you'll stop by..

winner take 2

unfortunately the winner i drew last week seems to be MIA and i have no idea who he is or how to get in touch with him. yojimbo - if you are out there somewhere, please get in touch with me 

at info@aanpress.com and we'll talk :)

so today i am picking an additional winner for the handmade copy of Serica out of the remaining entries.

without further ado then ....

(well some ado since blogger won't let me upload the film)

congratulations to

JESSICA

i'll be in touch with you. hope you enjoy the prize

we have a winner in the Serica contest

we have a winner! thanks everyone for entering. your support keeps me designing new games.

 i'll contact the winner over on BGG (i am pretty sure this person is a user there) 

and send the game out in the next few days.

and for those who didn't win, look for some retail copies soon!


UPDATE: yojmibo, who is the winner, seems to not be a BGG user and has no info in his google profile through which i can contact him. yojimbo, if you are out there, please contact me at info@aanpress.com and provide me with your mailing details.

serica contest update

well i've finished the prize copy (minus the rules which i'll print up tomorrow) and i must say, i think the eventual winner will be quite happy.

want a peek? sure you do....

i found a great wooden box that fits everything over at Michaels. added a full sheet label sticker for the box art (first time i've used these, definitely a good thing to get if you are a PnPer). modded up a divider inside to keep the bits and cards from the board and caddy.

this board and caddy were made from maple.

110+ entries and counting. a little over a week left to go before i draw a winner. it could be you....

game designing year two

and what is in store for year 2 you might ask?

working currently on 2 games. Polders, a 2-4 player eurostyle game about draining the sea to create arable land in the Netherlands. i have high hopes for this game. i think it is a great, easy to learn family game wih some great strategic decisions. and Shadows Upon Lassadar: Sorrow of Salilth, a 1-2 player prequel to the first Shadows game i developed a few months back. this is entered in the current microgame contest on BGG

a design anniversary

this week marks one year of doing board game designing. it has been both a rewarding and an enriching experience. the gaming community i belong to has been very generous with praise, playtesting and PnP constructing my games. i now have games agents in france, have signed a contract for my first published game and several others are under review by other game publishers. in fact several will be going with my agents to Essen for some one on one time with some euro companies in a couple of days.

i've been thinking about what to do to celebrate this new avenue of art in my life and i decided what better than to have a contest giveaway and offer my sincere thanks to everyone i've come to know on this road to becoming a game designer.

one of my more recent and successful games is Serica, a 2 person deck-building game about the ancient Silk Road trade routes between the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty in China.

while waiting for the company printerstudio.com in hong kong to print some professional sets of cards for the game i set about, down in the woodshop, building a custom all wood edition or myself. i decided to cut the board and caddy in half so they'd store easier in a box i'lll create soon.

so, for the contest, a complete copy of the game similar to the one above will be awarded to one lucky contest entrant. i say similar because this one was build out of walnut scraps i had down in the woodshop. the prize copy may be in cherry or maple, though i do not think anyone would much mind the type of wood.

the prize: a hand-made Serica game board and wooden caddy for all the wooden bits (15 wooden cubes in each of 7 colors, 6 wooden trading meeple peoples, 2 colored wooden score markers, rules, and a professionally printed deck of the cards used in the game. all packed in a nice box and labelled.

contest dates: the contest will run from today, october 17th through the end of the month. i'll pick a winner on november 1st and post a little video of me doing so.

how to enter: simply leave a comment (1 entry per person) at the end of this post with your name and a favorite game of yours. it is ok if you live in a foreign country, all are welcome to enter.

thanks again to everyone.

ceramics progress

post glazing of the recent pieces. i like some of the glazing effects this time around. definitely new things learned to help the next time. a few of these pieces are destined for some friends

last harvest

waning days of warmth here so i spent an hour or so this late afternoon cutting the rest of my tisane herbs to dry and send round to friends. (why yes they are all on my table for Arbor Aid, doesn't it look attractive and something you'd like in your own house)

my hands are awash in lemon verbena and rosemary oils and it is a heady combination.

drying will take a few days then i'll hunt down some glassine envelopes or something else interesting to package my tisane offerings in. this year's list will include:

a 5 mint tea blend
a lemon verbena/bee balm mix
and tins of infused lemon verbena sugar