iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Exhausting fun . The process, not the chimney . Last stoke was at hour 35, two hours less than fall '24 and '25 . Building a fire in the chimney didn't speed things up much . Maybe a propane burner at the anagama flue next time . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

About 6½ hours in last night . Candled a fire the chimney, just to speed things up . High humidity, light rain, a little wind . Great conditions . Probably go 30+ hrs before throwing soda in, hope to finish before hour 36 . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Time to biscuit . I sprayed rims and feet with Helmer (flashing porcelain), as those parts will not be glazed . The belly buttons? I want my pots to live, and everything alive has a scar . The holes in the feet? So water can drain out after rinsing . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

All it took was a good soaking rain . Dare I say it made these hens mushroom? . Harvested about 20 lbs . Time to make a few gallons of maitake pickles . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Bowl throwing session . I like throwing wide pieces on hydrobats, because I can come back after leaving them overnight and they pop off, uniformly dry more or less, ready to trim . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The rusted remains of the DT Sheridan, a tug that foundered off Monhegan 78 years ago . The name is still visible in the penultimate snap . "For though we slepe or wake, or rome, or ryde/Ay fleeth the tyme, it nil no man abyd" . The last photie? Scarlet pimpernel growing adjacent the wreck

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Good maitake morning . They're just starting . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Where I am in upgefukting those mugs . Don't worry, I'll continue to mess them up with a slew of incompatible design elements after bisquit . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Six mugs in a circle. Sprayed them with helmer flashing slip, then they got the exacto knife

Ditto, but one's been picked up for examination

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Threw this afternoon for the first time in four months . Just some mug blanks to start . I'll go for uniformity later . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

First hen-of-the-woods, Grifola frondosa, for 2026 . Just starting to fruit . Last year, this spot grew one about a meter across . I harvested only a handful, with intent to return the next day with a bag large enough to carry it . By then deer had devoured it . #mushrooms

A hole where there used to be a 300-year old red oak. Last year at this time there was a hen-of-the-woods here It would've filled the frame. This year, one is just starting to grow. It's in the very center of the snap

A close up of the aforementioned hen, just starting out. It appears to be growing from an old oak root, but it actually grows from a schlerotium. Like a mushroom potato, a foot or two underground. So then. Growing through the root

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Lion's mane, H. erinaceus . You go away for two days and things change . #mushrooms

A lion's mane mushroom, Hericium erinaceus, growing out of the bottom of an inoculated beech log

Same, just closer. Decided to harvest it, before the slugs do. It's pink instead of white because it's been cool and wet

Store bought, versus homegrown outdoors. Turning them into crab cakes

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Every seadog loves a little sun on his tumtum . #seal

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Split wood . Put wood in the gap in the rick . So it's time to buck more logs . And repeat . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Pile of softwood staves in front of a wood kiln under an open gable-roofed shed

The gap in the wood rick needing to be filled

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The orange pepper is a Scotch Bonnet, the first to come out of my garden this year . The long red ones are Ho Chi Minh cayenne peppers, which are starting to really come on heavy . The little Thai peppers are also just starting . The Ho Chi Minhs are delightful, only 30,000 or so SHU . #hotpeppers

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Moved the split soft under roof to dry yesterday . Still a gap to fill, maybe a cord, cord and a half . After that, I'll split still more . Build two sizable holtzhausen, one round stack of hardwood, the other of soft . Five or so cords to go . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

Just a little way up with the end of the rick

Could probably put close to a cord and a half of softwood in the gap

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The Suede Bolete, Xerocomus subtomentosus . Pretty common around here . Edible; not great, improves if dried . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The pile of split soft, after adding to it . It's a full cord plus now . Maybe I'll move it into the covered rick today . #pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

Made the pile higher
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Reminds me of "make the pie higher"
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Bad ole days that now seem like good ole days
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Dubya seems so quaint
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Aw shucks, just a faux cowboy war criminal

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Yesterday . Spent a few hours splitting white pine, cat spruce, some cedar . I burn hard and softwood in close to equal proportions during a firing . I'd like to have about six full cords of soft cut before winter . Enough for close to two firings . #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama

A red 28-ton wood splitter in the foreground to the right, a piled half cord of softwood staves in the middle ground to the left, and my anagama/noborigama two-chamber kiln, Bentengama, in the background, nestled under her kiln shed, with woods behind

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Chaga . A folk remedy that may have something to it . Technically, not a mushroom . Prefers birch . Will kill its host tree, eventually . I make a double extraction tincture from it, put it in my coffee . Effects? . Causation is hard to know for certain . Hermits don't catch colds . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Chicken . Ended up with nine pounds after processing . Pickled half . The rest? . I'll sear it, then freeze it for winter . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Chicken . Laetiporus sulphureus . I'll wait a day to harvest, give each floret a nice tap to release its spores . Searing them on a bed of salt is easy, and it makes everything smell great, a lot like like maple syrup . There are so many, will have to pickle . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Patience, the underrated virtue . I inoculated a six to ten beech logs with lion's mane, Hericium erinaceus, every year for three years in a row, beginning 2022 . The 2023 and 2024 totems produced reliably, those inoculated in 2022 not at all . They are just starting to . #mushrooms

a small lion's mane mushroom peeking out from the peeling bark of a beech log set upright on a pallet

A close up of the previous, with a small stone and an acorn cap to keep it company, on a bed of straw

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Before it was a "detention center," Camp East Montana in Texas was an internment camp . Once an internment camp, always an internment camp? . The road to hell can also be paved with bad intentions . Manzanar means apple orchard . But it was too windy to grow apples easily . Internment is easier?

Mount Williamson, behind a sign for the Manzanar internment camp
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Look closely
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You can almost see a picture contrasting natural beauty with human cruelty
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"A Ghost of Manzanar"
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One inmate, Giichi Matsumara, used to go up Williamson once internment orders were lifted in '45, to fish the mountain lakes and paint watercolors
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Why did he stay? He was "free" to go home to Santa Monica--except he and his family no longer had a home to go back to
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On his last trip, he separated from a group of other fisherman and went off to paint, only to die from exposure in a freak August snowstorm
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Judging it too difficult to retrieve him from the high mountain, the Manzanar authorities had other internees who had not yet decamped bury his body under rocks and erect a cairn, which was then lost over the decades, until hikers by chance stumbled upon his remains in 2019, 74 years later
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Imagine the indignity: internment to interment to disinterment
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DNA from one of his granddaughters had to be used to identify his remains, which the family then had cremated before reuniting the ashes with those of his wife
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I hate this story
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A (marginally) better one is that of Joe Kurihara, a veteran of WWI and a camp leader, who renounced his US citizenship after refusing the oath he saw no need to take. After the war he moved to Japan, never to return. At least there is principle and agency at work there
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Damn, this country has very dark, twisted parts

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

There's a frisson, a shiver, when you come across something you know from books but have never seen before on a ramble through the bramble . I had my eye out for hens, but found this cauliflower, Sparassis spathulata, instead . The species is choice, but not this one . Old and buggy . #mushrooms

S. spatulata, at the foot of a big red oak

Same as previous, but at this angle you can more easily see that it's starting to lose its vibrancy, caramelize, turn brown, dessicate. As we all must

I cut it off anyway, took it home. Considered roasting it and serving it as an appetizer, but when I sliced into it, a less-than-appetizing fountain of sow bugs flowed out. Disappointing. Humorous, but only later

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Seed pods of Chrysolepis sempervirens, Sierra Chinquapin . Tastes like hazelnut . I'll try to grow it in Maine at sea level, though its native habitat is more like 1½ miles up . At least it likes poor soils . And I've found a use for chicken grit too course to use as a clay body amendment

Some seed pods and a few leaves from Bush Chinquapin, lying on a bed of decayed granite in the Sierra Nevada range, at around 9,000 feet. Valued by the Paiute for their sweet, nutty taste, but they value piñon pine nuts more

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The Druid, yesterday . Climbed it bouldering half a century ago . The rock seems to have barely changed . Not so the worn climber

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Went to soak the bones in Keogh Hot Ditch . This PSA brought to you by the ravenous worm residing in what's left of RFK Jr's brain

warning sign at the hot springs that makes brain-eating amoebas sad

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Dolomite is why they call them the Whites . The Bristlecones would be a good alternative

A view of the White Mountains going up Crooked Creek

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Up in the White Mountains of Eastern California, around 9,500 ft

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

White Mountain Peak, sky, bird, air, cloud . I climbed it long ago . Not technically difficult, but the long hike, all above 11,000 ft to over 14,000 ft, made for a whopping headache . The view looking down across the Owens Valley to the Sierras made up for it, though

A view of White Mountain Peak, the third highest in California at 14,252 ft/4,344 m, from route 168W in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Honeys just pinning on a dead red oak . I've seen its pathogenic side elsewhere, but it seems more a rotter than a killer in these woods . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Green sweat bee on the white flower of a red cayenne pepper plant . Thankful a few wasps gave up their predatory ways and turned into pollinator bees awhile back (awhile back=100 mya) . H. sapien became a pollinator on a vast scale in an eyeblink (eyeblink=.012 mya), but predation's his real jam

Augochlora pura on a Ho Chi Minh cayenne blossom. This particular flower doesn't need any bee, as pepper plants are self-pollinators. Just a jiggle from the wind is enough. Does the plant care? Probably, in the sense it's more efficient than wind. Insects as service providers: evidence of a healthy reinforcing interdependency. Some flowers release pollen at the particular frequency a bumblebee beats its wings

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Fuzzy yellow cap, pores that don't blue, dark reticulation on the stem . I nibbled it, which can help with ID (ONLY boletes, plz, so no ☠️!) . Slightly bitter, not much . I took a spore print, which was olive . An Ornate-Stalked Bolete . Some say it's choice, others say yuck . Go figure . #mushrooms

A handsome yellow mushroom, the Ornate-Stalked Bolete, Retiboletus ornatipes

Yellow pore surface, yellow stipe with brownish reticulation, doesnt blue

Severed cap of R. ornatipes under a glass, stipe in foreground

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

They say that kings fall during a solar eclipse . It's only partial, here in 'Murkah . So the 🍊 🫏 will probably just load his diaper

Partial solar eclipse in New England early afternoon 12 August 2026

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Five days between pinning and harvest . Made chicken-fried chicken from half . What was I thinking . Why would I like it like that if I never liked chicken-fried steak . Think they're much better pickled . Or in a Thai lime curry, which is what I'll do with the other half . #mushrooms

Laetiporus sulphureus, chicken of the woods, just beginning to appear on a red oak snag

You can tell it's L. sulphureus from the lemon yellow pore surface. Hence another common name: sulphur shelf. Contains so many compounds that are good for the body

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Reposted by Clay Flambé

OryxcrakeInCanada @superdog10.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

AI is dismantling human culture and remaking us into cabbages and pumpkins. AI is overtaking Wikipedia as a data source because it’s forced on us every time we go to a search engine. Wiki is a fact based information source that is created by humans for humans. We need wiki: we don’t need AI.

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The Ash Tree Bolete, Boletinellus merulioides . A fun one, the reason why in the alt accompanying the last snap . They're edible, though barely . Not worth putting in the pan . There were about two dozen growing on the path . #mushrooms

Upended mushie. You can see the "boletinoid" surface, almost becoming gill-like as you move from stalk to cap margin

Another view of the pore surface. I scored it with a knife in a cross-hatch pattern. It bruises blue, but very slowly

The ash tree bolete is almost always found near--wait for it--ash trees. I was surprised by the find, because I wasn't aware of any ash trees around. There were. A few very small ones. Apparently the mushroom and an aphid that feeds on ash tree leaves are in league. The fungi form schlerotia in the shallow soil. The aphid takes up residence inside the nodules, paying rent to the mycelia with the carbohydrate-rich "honeydew” it secretes. Didn't bother looking for the schlerotia or the aphid. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps not. Does the tree suffer or benefit? Both? Neither? And to what degree? A mystery

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Not everybody likes chocolate . Some stemonitis on a beech log inoculated with nomeko . Sporulating on top of a plug . No 🍄 there, just tree hair

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I planted C. pubescens this year . Rocoto, locoto, manzano, hairy . There are likely other names for this pepper as well . It's a big part of Andean cuisine . The plant can grow several meters high . Just not in one season, here . I'll overwinter some for next year, to increase plant size and yield

The flower of a Capsicum pubescens plant. One common name for it is "hairy pepper," for the fuzz that grow on its leaves. The fruit is middling hot, up to about 100,000 SHU, shaped like an apple, with black (!) seeds. There are red, orange, yellow and brown varieties. Decided I had to grow some, after tasting some Peruvian hot sauces

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

First four: H. subglabripes, found under a white birch . Last three: very likely the same species (reasoning in the alts), under a red oak . Five years ago it was very rainy and H. subglab was everywhere, growing huge . Started calling them banana pancakes . Culinarily underrated . #mushrooms

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Chicken! . First is too young, just pinning out . The second is too old--how did I miss it when I walked by last month? . Great, this one is just right . I never find it anywhere but on red oak around here . #mushrooms

Laetiporus sulfureus, just starting to appear on a red oak snag

A Laetiporus cincinnatus, significantly past its prime, growing from the root of a red oak

Laetiporus sulfureus growing on a fallen red oak behind the branches of a small spruce

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

A portmanteau keeps springing to mind when it comes to the Trump/Iran War: Squandry, n.: The idiocy of continuing to use bombs to accomplish nothing except stockpile depletion on the exitless road to strategic loss

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