Right Brain Feed

 Spoiler alert: I’ve never taken a pottery class in hand building, so there’s a whole lotta basics in hand building that just flummox me.... like the beginners skill of making a simple rolled coil. My coils were alway horribly uneven, flat in places, and got really dry really fast. I own a book on hand building, and it had some great tips on making a coil. Here’s what I learned: Use the thickly padded palm of your hand (not the fingers, they make it go thin and flat in parts, thick in others).  Roll it in one direction in longer movements, not short back and forth rolls Work from center of the coil out to the ends If it does get uneven, twist both ends , make it into a twizzler shape, and keep rolling Use non absorbent surface to roll so the coil doesn’t dry out while rolling Use the friggin books that you own, instead of letting them gather dust on the shelf. I had a decent book on handbuilding right under my nose.

 Yesterday I tried out my new spotting scope, and took my first stab at digiscoping. This is my first scope, digiscoping is the act of holding/mounting some sort of camera up to the scope, and taking a picture thru it. Yesterday I tried it with my cell phone. While I am loving the scope, it brings in tons of light, and is crystal clear, the photos didn’t do it justice. But it will be interesting to try different setups, and I can’t wait to use the scope to spy on loons across the lake next summer. Trying to learn about spotting scopes was an odd experience, on one hand you have the mild mannered bird geeks like myself using scopes to look at cute fluffy little birdies, and on the other hand you have macho guys all camouflaged out wanting to use scopes to go kill animals.  So this bird stalker found herself perusing spotting scope reviews a few times on websites clearly not geared towards watching cute fluffy birds. Uhhhh....Celebrate diversity?