iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 20h

That gives me an idea. Almost certainly not original, but an idea nonetheless. Try to capture the artistic essence of a chosen culture's ceramics, historical or current, then riff on it. Maybe start in the middle of the alphabet with "M": Mayan, Minangkabau, Minoan, etc. Nah. Too much work!

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

Same kiln as in May, we just fire the back/soda chamber in the autumn by itself, without the anagama chamber. A third the ceramic pieces (a couple hundred or so), half the time or less (1½ days)

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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

not sure, but think we'll be done around midnight so around 6 more hours. So maybe hour 31

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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 · 01/10/2026

Thanks. Just a Skutt electric. As I use it only for biscuit, it will probably last forever

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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

Any sane society would have cast him out or imprisoned him long before now. Hoping for a fatal fart attack before he pushes the button and ends it for all of us just because he's a personality-disordered mortal piss baby

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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

I had no idea what it was I was looking at, hiding in plain sight! Just like Citoyen Chauvelin, I might add

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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 · 24/09/2026

All it takes is a decent teacher, attention, and yes, time. A boatload of it is best

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Don't worry, if I don't mess them up good, I'm pretty sure the kiln will

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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 · 19/09/2026

I ingested the Scotch Bonnet, sliced onto half a pizza. I actually found myself drinking milk to cut the heat, something I don't recall ever doing before. But before that, I found myself transported to a world made of fiery apple-flavored coals. Now, afterwards, my lips still burn from their kisses

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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 · 18/09/2026

The Ho Chi Minhs are an order of magnitude hotter than a Jalapeno, and the Scotch Bonnets are an order of magnitude hotter than the Ho Chi Minhs--on par with a Habanero. I tend to stay away from Reapers and Ghosts. I'll wave one above a plate, and that's usually sufficient for the spicy

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

Scoville Heat Units. In 1912, Wilbur Scoville removed the capsaicin from a pepper and diluted it until it could not be tasted by a panel of human tasters. Today, it's all about gas chromotography. Interestingly, modern, more scientific techniques produce lower ratings than the human taste test

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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

Hardwood is about the same here, if it's seasoned. Green is around $250/cord. Soft? I get it free. Just have to pick it up and process it!

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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

"Right. Not a problem, Bones. Just be sure the crew eats it morning, noon and night. Should be shut of it by the time we resupply at Epsilon Eridani"

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

"It's doubled in size in just the last hour, and at this rate it will absorb everything and everyone in the Enterprise! I may only be a simple country doctor, Jim, but something must be done, and fast!"

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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

I can only hope his ratfuckery is so transparent a con that absolutely no one is fooled anymore. I am sad to think my default view of my countrymen since his first election has been to consider them idiots or assholes or both, until they show me they aren't

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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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