Happy Holidays everyone… on what’s turning out to be an incredible weather weekend
here in Chicago! Have fun with your family & friends. Laugh… Relax… Eat…
Be safe… but I do hope there are some fun sparklers along the way!

My “Wild Things” summer camp came to an end today… with the kids working frantically
to get all of the final details done on their animal sculptures. After clay masks on Monday,
and our Zoo Field Trip on Tuesday, we’ve been working on plaster sculptures the rest
of the week. With wire armatures and newspaper filler, they covered their sculptures
with plaster gauze and created these wonderful animals. We had quite the menagerie…
zebras, pegasuses, dragons, giraffes, monkeys, seals, mynah birds, parrots, lizards &
elephants all over the room! And bunch of adorable “Wild Things” making them!

The storms continued this morning… luckily, on the other side of the lake!
So the sunrise was very striking… lots of clouds, lots of colors, lots of LIGHTNING!!!

As I continued south, the sky lightened up a bit… and the sky turned a beautiful
shade of blue with very dramatic clouds blowing through. And I especially love how
you can see the rain actually falling across the lake.

So there I was, pedaling south… cruising around the corners, watching the “sky show”
all around me. There was a lot of debris on the path from last night’s hail storm. Lots of
leaves, twigs, branches and TREES!!! Yep… there were trees down covering the bike path!

And then… after all of the “obstacles”… the sky continued to get lighter…
but the lightning continued all around. Making this morning a very cool bike ride!

And very “STRIKING.”

With a crazy storm brewing outside last night, I was tucked away safely inside
my studio trying to finish up my latest batch of mugs… unaware of everything
going on outside until the huge chinks of hail started hitting the windows.
So after I ran downstairs to play in the hail, it was all work until the mugs were done.
Yes… the cylinders I threw quite awhile ago… and stamped quite awhile ago…
and trimmed quite awhile ago… and have been spraying down daily to keep “workable.”
So tonight was the night… hail or no hail.

So I pulled a lot of handles to go onto the “plastic protected” cylinders…
let them set-up a bit and then set out to the attaching. Later that night… MUGS!!!