The Pig’s Ear, Chalk and Cheese

Posted on 28/01/2015 by hotnsticky

My new batch of native bai tunze porcelain stone clay body is ready – if you can call wet rock dust a ‘clay’? Whatever it is, it’s all lifted from the drying bed and stored in plastic bags waiting for pugging. I have been up in Sydney all of last week teaching a MasterClass in porcelain bowl making. I took along a couple of samples of my homemade porcelain bodies for my students to try. I got to throw this batch for the first time during this week. It was lifted on Sunday and thrown on Wednesday. Not a long time for ageing, but it was surprisingly good for something so fresh. It had quite a bit of stretch to it for milled stone but showed its true character by tearing with lots of stretch marks and little cracks as it was pushed to extremes.

On the potters wheel it held up reasonably well for something so thixotropic. I had found that I needed to dry it out a little more before throwing because of the thixotropy effect of the kneading. This kind of milled stone body with lots of alkali present has very low plasticity and a very narrow range of Atterburg limits. This means that it goes from being too wet to hold its self up properly, to so dry that it becomes crumbly in a very short space of time, so drying is critical. I have learnt to keep it on the soft side until I need to use it and then stiffen it up to the desired consistency just before throwing.

Conventional potters kneading doesn’t always give the desired result with this kind of paste. In fact, it doesn’t knead well at all. I learnt to wedge and knead clay in the traditional Japanese spiral fashion a long time ago when I did my apprenticeship with a Japanese potter. I became quite proficient at it. I had to. He was very demanding. As it’s turned out, this is one of the two things in life that I can do well, so I’m not embarrassed about my spiral kneading/wedging skills, in fact I considered myself competent.

So when a new teacher came to the National Art School in the early/mid seventies to teach there and we shared a class together. I got to learn something new. Gillian Grigg was very well trained in Stoke on Trent and later, topped off with a Masters degree from the Royal College of Art in London. She was a gifted artist and potter with an amazing range of excellent skills. Everybody was in awe of her capabilities, while she was was quietly diffident and understated. It transpired that one day we were sharing a class and the subject of porcelain came up. I mentioned that it was hard to knead, but could be done well with some practice and proceeded to demonstrate what I had learnt. Gillian watched and then quietly mentioned that she had been taught in Stoke that the technique of cutting and slapping the clay together, called wedging was proven to be a superior technique to spiral kneading. As this was not what I had learnt, I was surprised to hear this. Gillian assured me that this was what had been demonstrated to her during her studies in Stoke.

Gillian spoke quietly, but carried a big stick of knowledge, experience and skills, so I listened, but I was very confident that I had good skills, perhaps too full of hubris and youthful inexperience though? We set about providing an experiment for the class. We divided a bag of porcelain clay between us and set about preparing it by our own methods. After 5 minutes of this we cut our block of clay in half and swapped half our clay with each other. We then proceeded to throw a pot out of each ball of clay. I had to admit that Gillian’s clay was noticeably much better than mine. Tighter and more workable. I learnt something that day and it’s stuck with me. Thank you Gillian! We were like chalk and cheese, she so full of fine, natural talent, acquired knowledge and hard won experience, while I was a young ceramic kelpie with too much energy and not enough knowledge or experience.

To this day I finish my preparation of these milled rock paste bodies with a session of cut and slap wedging. This new batch of bai tunze is much better for it. It’s a little tricky to get the moisture content just right, but once it is, it throws on the wheel with the plasticity of a soft-ripened cheese – double brie perhaps? After it’s been resting out of the fridge for a while!

When I am preparing the minerals for this body, I carefully choose to use the tannin stained black water from the water tank below the pottery that collects the most eucalypt leaves. This water comes from the tank a dark slate grey to black/brown colour like over brewed black tea. I choose this water because the tannin helps to create good plasticity. It reduces the pH of the batch as it is being made and neutralises the alkali that is released from the stone during milling, as the combination of alkalinity and fine non-plastic particles produce thixotropic effects. i.e. it turns into warm brie on the potters wheel.

Throwing this clay is an exercise in coaxing a stiff non-plastic paste up into a simple form and leaving it thick at the base to support the rim. It’s not a pretty sight, but if the form is well planned it can be coaxed into something by judicious turning later. When the pot is dried to leather hard it can be turned roughly to reduce weight and create a more even thickness, but this kind of non-clay material just isn’t sufficiently plastic to allow conventional turning. It tears and rips apart into torn chunks like cutting through Tasmanian Mersey Vally cheddar cheese. Very crumbly with no real internal cohesion. Roughing out is all that is possible at this stage. This clay turns from brie to cheddar, then to chalk over time while drying. The pot is left to dry to almost bone dry before it can be turned to a smooth, fine, finish. Turning bone dry requires very sharp turning tools that need to be re-sharpened regularly, as the stone fragments wear away the metal and blunten it very quickly.

I have seen some potters in Japan using tungsten carbide tipped turning tools that hold an edge very well for a long time and I got to try using one in Tatsuya San’s workshop last year. I bought one after that, but I find it a bit heavy and cumbersome, as I’m used to making my own tools out of high carbon steel, re-cycled, packing case strapping. They are quick and easy to make and easy to keep sharp with a few strokes of a file. I like that they are so light and flexible. I guess that it’s just what you get used too. Perhaps I like them because I can make them myself from re-cycled material, forestalling waste and re-purposing industrial discards. It is one small part that adds to the bigger picture of self reliance.

Turning pots bone dry is just a little tricky also, as you need to use a specially designed leather-hard clay ‘chuck’ to hold the pot perfectly and intimately with exquisite contact detailing, such that the bone dry and very fragile rock dust bowl form won’t crack due to the stress and pressure of the turning and trimming. This process can also be quite dusty as well, so measures have to be taken to minimise the dust. I tend to turn while there is still just a small fraction of moisture still in the pot. In workshops where they turn like this day-in and day-out, they install exhaust fans to collect the dust in a dust extractor where it is collected for recycling. Turning dry clay like this is like cutting through chalk. Actually, it’s more like grinding away at a chalk surface and reducing it to powder to reveal a form encased or hidden within. I’ve come to like turning, it’s the other thing that I’m OK at.

From the Journeyman on the remarkable journey from Cheese to Chalk and then on to the Pig’s Ear. (porcellana). Porcelain was named for its similarity the Italian sea shell (cowrie shell), ‘porcellana’. Named for its pale white, translucent quality. However, the shell porcellana was named for it’s similarity to the pale white translucent nature of a pigs ear. Hence Porca – lain. I wonder if I can make a ceramic purse out of it?

Best wishes from the potter with the cheesy grin, who’s bringing home the bacon.

Much ado about netting

Posted on 26/01/2015 by hotnsticky

We have netted all the stone-fruit trees in the orchard that still have fruit on them. We move the nets from the early trees that have finished fruiting and relocate them to the late season trees that are turning colour and ripening. Once all the early fruiting varieties are done, they no-longer need the netting. Some of these trees are getting quite old now and have gained some size. Our oldest trees are over 40 years old, however most are now 2nd generation plantings, still they need a support system that can cover trees up to 4 metres high. This means that we need to use the bigger nets that are 9 metres square.

We have figured out a way to build a frame simply out of 2 pieces of left-over polypipe tubing, tied together in the middle and spread out at right angles to form an arched support. We hammer in tomato stakes to secure the pipe to the ground and it become quite stable. The difficulty is in getting the netting over the frame. Janine ‘bowline’ King attaches a rope to one side and throws it over, then with me voicing encouragement, she hauls the netting over the frame. The polythene piping is quite smooth and slippery, so the netting travels freely over. We repeat the process for each tree with ripening fruit until we run out of nets.

The birds are so very resourceful. They have figured out that if they sit on the netting and bounce up and down on it , it will sag down until it touches some of the fruit. Then they peck at it through the netting.

This whole process of netting is fast and efficient, and we get it all done in an hour or so. There is still time in the afternoon to go to the garden and de-fuse the exploding zucchini crop. We lunch on steamed broccoli and cauliflower with a squeeze of lemon juice and a little fresh ground pepper.

As the garden is so prolific in this warm wet weather, we decide to make an egg plant parmigiana. We have lots of tomatoes and aubergines.

Tomatoes blanched and skinned, sliced and laid over the aubergines with a little olive oil, then sprinkled with torn basil leaves and crushed garlic, finally covered with a jar of our home made tomato, garlic, onion and capsicum sauce. Grate parmigiana on top and bake.

Another favourite at this time of year for a simple meal on a hot day is cold cucumber soup.

This isn’t really a recipe, more a way of thinking about using up cucumbers. It’s cooling and soothing and a little bit tangy, and you get to use up a lot of cucumbers.

Use half a dozen small, or 3 large cucumbers. Peeled and seeded if they are older and larger, but all in as they come if they are young.

Some mild onion like red or white, or even green spring onions finely chopped

A big bunch of cilantro or coriander leaves finely chopped.

A small bunch of mint leaves finely chopped.

A couple of cloves of garlic, smashed and de-papered.

Some finely chopped chilli to taste and although I don’t use salt, if you want it, add it to your our taste.

Juice of a lemon.

Put it all in the blender or food processor with half a tin of coconut milk and the same quantity of plain greek yoghurt, or just one of them, or some sour cream if that’s what you have in the fridge. You can use a blend of all three.

You can serve it with a little bit of olive oil on top and some paprika sprinkled on.

Janine mixes up the recipe each time she makes it to keep it lively and interesting, sometimes adding chopped dill, parsley or tarragon leaves. Sometimes with only yoghurt and other times with just coconut milk. It works just the same.

It’s always different and always delicious.

Half Baked

Posted on 13/01/2015 by hotnsticky

Welcome to mid-summer.

Without doing anything about it, we find ourselves now at the high point of mid-summer. It was effortless. How did we get here? Time is flying by, the days are getting shorter, but not that noticeably and the fruit is ripening on the trees, even through all this rain. This is probably the apogee of the summer heat, although it’s not that hot this year. Our maximums are in the low to mid thirties.

The Earth Mother Garden Girl has been out early, picking vegetables and returns with a wheel barrow full. She comes in with a couple of boxes full of tomatoes, capsicums, aubergines, zucchinis, and more.

I’ve spent the day cutting and folding stainless steel kiln parts. I see the bounty of summer right there in boxes on the kitchen floor and decide to make the obvious choice, ratatouille. It’s that time of year!

I start by selecting out all the bird-damaged, rain-split, sun-burnt and otherwise affected and just plain over-ripe or undersized tomatoes. Paring them down and cutting them in half. I rub them with olive oil and dress them with a sprinkling of salt, then pop them into a low oven to dry a little for a while.

For the past few days, The lovely has been thinking about doing our tax. It’s a job that we always do in Jan. Well, we try to. It has to be in by March, along with our company returns. It’s not as big a deal as it used to be. Since the introduction of the GST and quarterly BAS statements, most of it is already done. But it’s still a job that no-one likes. So My Beautiful Abacus has managed to put it off now for 2 days and as a result of this extended procrastination, she has sorted out the office, cleaned out the spare room, tidied under our bed, re-arranged the pantry and de-cluttered the kitchen table, work bench and side board. Tax time is great! The house has never looked so tidy. I think the next job on the tax-list may well turn out to be cleaning the shower grouting. Procrastination can be good!

In the kitchen the smell of the half baked tomatoes is wafting out and about the house now. I split the zucchinis, capsicums and aubergines. These are our first two aubergines of the season. I lay them all in a baking dish with some olive oil, cover them with the half baked tomatoes and dress it all with a big handful of torn basil leaves fresh from the garden, while The Lovely crushes a few cloves of garlic and spreads it about all over the mix. I tear up a few anchovies and place little bits evenly about the pan. It isn’t pretty. It’s a big jumbled mass of veggies, but it smells fantastic already and I haven’t even cooked it yet.

In the oven for half an hour to soften the veggies let it all meld in together. It fills the house with that smell of “only in summer”.

For me, ratatouille and its many variations has to be the apotheosis of summer. Good olive oil and fresh summer vegetables from the garden – beautiful! As we only eat what we grow. We can’t have this dish at any other time of the year. Aubergines are very slow to get going here. They don’t start producing until mid-summer and then fruit well into the autumn. Zucchinis on the other hand are just about past their zenith and starting their slow decline as they straggle and spread all over the place. The tomatoes haven’t reached their peak as yet, but are bearing very well for us just now. We are just starting to get enough to think about bottling them. Passata may well come before tax?

My Beautiful Abacus packs away the tax files from the kitchen table into their relevant boxes and spring folders, then transforms into a Beautiful Maitre’D and Sommelier as I plate-up the fragrant dish and grate a little parmigiana on top and some more fresh basil leaves. It’s really wonderful, if I do say so myself. It’s a great pity that I can’t convey the smell sensations to you in words. You just have to be there – or do it yourself. Half baking the tomatoes really helps to concentrate the flavour. It takes a little longer, but it’s really worth it. Once they are in the oven, you can go back to not doing the tax for a little longer. Actually, it’s a great way to extend the working day without realising it.

Best wishes from the Half Baked Steve and his Beautiful Actuary

Make Clay While the Sun Shines

Posted on 10/01/2015 by hotnsticky

Warning! This post could be very boring if you are not a potter – and maybe even if you are?

Contains technical terms and traces of nuts.

Making clay while the sun shines is a very good idea and ought to be possible in summer, but not this summer.

This has been the most amazing summer that we have had for many, many years. It’s hot, just like every year, but this year it has rained more than we can remember for a long time. We are having a great time. The rain combined with the warmth has made everything grow its head off. We have plenty of water in the dams and drinking water tanks, plus lots of food coming from the garden. We only have to water the garden every few days, as it usually rains in between at some point. Sometimes it rains hard enough to wet the soil sufficiently that we don’t need to water for a few days.

Earlier in the summer it was raining very hard and very often, but now that pattern has changed to occasional showers. So it is now dry enough under cover to get my milled porcelain stone slip to dry on the drying beds and in plaster basins. I’m aware that it is not wet like this everywhere. There are bush fires raging down south, while I’m clearing ditches to guide the excess water away from the pottery. When it is this wet, the humidity is so high that it is very hard to dry liquid clay slip. It just tends to sit there and go mouldy while rotting the fabric membrane underneath that separates the clay from the brick bed.

After 40 years of pursuing my project of self-reliance, I have decided to modify slightly my fundamentalist, hard-line approach of ‘total commitment to maximum achievable’ self reliance, to a more relaxed and flexible approach of ‘substantially committed to’ self-reliance.

In this regard I have recently decided to allow myself some slack and buy in more processed product to allow for an easier life as I age. For example, When I returned from my studies in Japan, late last spring, it was getting a bit late to put in seeds and start a summer garden from scratch, so I decided to compromise and buy some punnets of vegetable seedlings to get the garden up and growing, while I planted my seeds and waited for this second planting to come along as a second, follow-up crop. This worked well and I’m very pleased with the serried plantings and how they are growing and providing a steady flow of tomatoes, sweet corn and zucchini etc.

It’s a small compromise, but once compromised, why not go with it?

Blanched French beans served with fresh, home-made basil pesto.

I have decided now to addapt this freer approach to my ceramic materials and my creative work. I have previously only used the rocks, shales and clays of my own local shire and I am still completely committed to this ‘local’ concept. I had found during this long extended period of research that although I tried very hard to locate everything that I needed to make my ceramics from only the materials that I discovered around me. I could not find any pale plastic throwable clay in a quantity that was useable. However, what I did find, was plenty of hard igneous rocks to make glazes and in the end I managed to make two really special, unique and very interesting stoneware clay bodies from self-processed, local rock dusts. To achieve this, I realised that I would need to add some bentonite (a very sticky clay) to bind and slightly plasticise these powdered rock bodies to make them useable. These rocks are so hard, that they need to be crushed first in a large jaw crusher, then a small laboratory jaw crusher and following that I put the grit through a disc mill and finally in the ball mill for 16 hours to get it really fine. Using this rather slow, convoluted and old-fashioned technology, that I obtained as industrial cast-off, from auctions and junk yards, I can process my finds from large rocks down to 200# powder in about 24 hours. It’s the drying out of the liquid clay slip from the ball mill that is taking the longest time and slowing the process down. Not helped by the continuing wet weather.

I never thought that I’d find myself complaining about rain!

Warning, there are traces of nuts showing in this image!

I pass the thin liquid slip through 100# sieve before settling out the solids.

So, bentonite was my first compromise. It may not be local, but it is Australian. I have bought 3 x 25 kg bags of bentonite during my career. I also found that I needed to buy in alumina powder to use as shelf wash. This wasn’t absolutely essential, it was just very much better than all the alternatives, so another compromise. I’m still using this original 25 kg. bag of Al203. I use it sparingly, so It will last a very long time.

Recently, I decided to get some kaolin to add some slight increase in plasticity to my ground up local native porcelain stone bodies. This is not a local material either, as it comes from 300 kms away, but it’s closer than the bentonite. There must be something closer, I just haven’t found it yet. Proceeding on from my initial tests. I have decided to add 15% of this plastic kaolin to my ground porcelain stone body, it makes an enormous difference to it’s workability very quickly. I completed the first small batch tests of 5 kg each last year, before I went to Japan. So now I am making the larger 100 kg batches to see how they work on a larger scale. The tests were very promising, so I am eager to see them perform and feel them on the wheel. I was encouraged to follow on with this blending idea when I saw them making their porcelain body in Arita in Japan recently, using imported New Zealand kaolin. But I’m not prepared to go that far for some kaolin.

I have been told that the most famous porcelain body in Australia, which is exported all over the world, is made from Chinese kaolin, Indian felspar and American bentonite. At least the water is Australian!

To aid the drying process of my ball milled (bai tunze) porcelain stone slip, to a stiff plastic, usable porcelain body, I make two batches. One of 30 kg in the big ball mill as a liquid slip. This slip has to be thin enough to allow the grinding down of the very hard rock granules from the crushers. After milling I allow the thin liquid to sit and settle for a day or so, to allow the very fine ceramic fragments to flocculate. I drain off the free water from the top of the settled clay material. At the same time I make a second 5 kg. batch in the smaller ball mill which is dry milled. I then add this dry material to the wet batch and mix them together. This significantly stiffens up the slip. I can then put it out on the drying bed or plaster tubs to firm up.

I drag my finger through the stiff slip to make it dry into usable square plastic blocks that are easier to pick up and store for pugging.

However, because of the very wet summer continuing on like it has, I’m finding that the clay just won’t dry as usual. The humidity is just too high. I’m having to lift the very soft plastic mass off the sodden brick drying beds and place it in the open air to get a little air movement over it to finish it off to a stiff plastic condition. Perhaps the extra 15% of kaolin content is slowing the drying a little as well?

I have been using my new ‘VENCO’ stainless steel mini pug mill to pug the small batches of clay. It’s fantastic, quiet, fast for it’s size and ideal for small batches of porcelain body like the stuff that I’m making. And so much easier on my wrists than hand wedging.

As part of this sudden loss of intellectual rigour and convenient relaxation of my philosophical standards, I hope to make my life a little easier in my latter years. However, I can’t help somehow feeling a bit like the philosopher Bertie Russell reneging on his death-bed. I am fully aware that this is where the similarity ends. I am no philosopher, and hopefully I am not on my death-bed either – just yet. I just feel like I need to extend my range and have the ability to work with an extended palette of interesting materials for my creative work. 15% of non-local kaolin isn’t going to change the fabric of my work in any noticeable way, but it will make the act of throwing a lot more pleasurable for me and extend what I can make.

So I have decided to start using materials that I have discovered that are outside of my shire and my previous 50 km radius of interest. Over the last 20 years I have experimented with my immediately available local materials, non of which are mentioned in McMeekin’ s book. I have worked on them to the point that I couldn’t think of any more variations that I could make to gain any further insight into these materials. Only extreme ageing could improve their plasticity, I’m too old to wait for that solution to work for me. I’d taken these materials as far as I could imagine. Another potter would certainly find new things to do with these materials, but I feel that I have lived and worked on this restricted palette for long enough. I want to experiment with some ‘new’, and therefore interesting materials that I don’t know anything about.

To this end, I just went to collect some felspar from a site that I came across a few years ago, near my friend’s house, it’s 150 kms away. I only sampled it at that time, because it wasn’t within my target area, but it looked very interesting all the same and I can’t pass an interesting bit of soil by without at least looking at it and taking a preliminary sample. The initial testing proved that it was felspar and although quite weathered, it still has quite a bit of alkali, so it might turn out be very useful. I’m extending my range, making more flexible choices and hopefully making my life a little more interesting and a little easier.

I have a few different projects in mind for the future.

Best wishes

from the potter making many a slip twixt the mill and the lip

Of cabbages and King

Posted on 01/01/2015 by hotnsticky

“The time has come the walrus said to speak of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and Kings”

Well, I have both cabbages and a King here right now, so that’s what I’m going to speak about. We are finding ways to eat the flush of red cabbage that is coming on now. Our first idea was to make Japanese okonomiyaki-inspired cabbage pancakes, they are fabulous and a great way to get through a lot of cabbage.

We don’t have a recipe, we just use what we have at the time. The main ingredient is the cabbage, finely shredded, a small amount of pan-cake batter. i.e. one egg to one table spoon full of flour. We use organic wholemeal, but you will get a lighter result with white or corn flour. I usually add some of my marrow bone and veggie stock form the freezer, but you can use water or even milk to make the pancake batter mix. Sometimes I only add two eggs without using any flour, cracking them directly into the simmering cabbage mix. Some finely sliced spring onions or a few small shallots go well in the mix.

We cook the cabbage and onion in a little oil like a stir-fry, but sometimes with the lid on the frypan for a few minutes to get the whole thing to steam and then add the batter or eggs and stir it through. This binds it all together. When it firms up a little we flip it over and do the other side. Whenever I have had this in Japan it nearly always has some sort of bacon or cured pork added in rashes on one side or cubed chunks mixed through.

As bacon, or any other cured and preserved meat isn’t all that good for you, we keep it to a minimum. But it is a tasty addition when it’s added in there. The other things that we add as the fancy takes us are; a little bit of ginger pickled in cider vinegar with some salt and honey. Ginger turns slightly pink when pickled in vinegar. This is drained and finely chopped before adding it in, or some roughly chopped home-grown and dried tomatoes preserved in oil.

When the pancake is cooked through on both sides. We serve it with a few katsuobushi bonito flakes sprinkled on top. They shimmer and wobble around on top of the hot meal as if they are alive. It’s an uncanny feeling to see your food, there on the plate, moving about.

The first time that I saw bonito flakes on a pancake, when I bought my first okonomiyaki sitting on a train platform waiting for a train in the 80’s In Japan. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it before, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was used to eating food that didn’t move around on my plate. Okonomiyaki is just so delicious that I instantly got used to it and have bought bonito flakes occasionally, when I see them for sale, ever since.

I Japan, they have a special kind of Okonomiyaki sauce. It more or less tastes like a mix of 3 parts of BBQ sauce to 1 part of Worcestershire sauce, or something a bit close to that, if you can imagine it. They also use a lot of mayonnaise as well. In fact an okonomiyaki pancake is usually decorated with lots of squiggly lines of brown and white sauce in delicate cross-hatch patterns.

These two decorative and tasty sauces seem to be essential in Japan, I have never been served an okonomiyaki without them, but for us they are optional here at home. We don’t buy BBQ sauce and only very rarely have mayonnaise, so we’ve got used to our own version of okonomiyaki inspired cabbage pancake. I did once try adding some Worcestershire sauce to some of our reduced tomato salsa, but it wasn’t the same. Presumably because we didn’t add enough salt, sugar and MSG!

I’m pretty sure that anyone who had lived in Japan for any length of time and was used to okonomiyaki just wouldn’t recognise what we cook as okonomiyaki. It doesn’t matter. To us, it’s just a great way to eat cabbage.

The second way of using a lot of cabbage is in a fresh red cabbage salad. Something that we picked up in the SE Asian restaurants of Cabramatta. The base of the salad is finely shredded cabbage, with other salad green leaves torn and tossed in as available in the season. There is no real recipe, just a fresh idea. I know that both of these aren’t really recipes, more like serving suggestions, but you can imagine.

Shred lots of fresh cabbage. It doesn’t have to be red cabbage, Chinese cabbage or Savoy works just as well. Add whatever other green salad leaves that you have growing in the garden, Lettuce, Mizuma, rocket, radicchio, red mustard leaves, etc.

Add some finely sliced Shallot or any other mild onion and some intensely flavoursome Shiso leaves. The green variety seem to have more essential oils than the red and is more aromatic, but the red one looks so terrific in the mix, especially if you are using green cabbage. Next add in plenty of very finely shredded mint leaves and some grated ginger.

The whole lot is tossed to mix it all up and is seasoned with a sprinkling of white wine vinegar. This gives it a very lively hit when it combines with the shredded ginger and finely chopped mint.

We pick the leaves in the morning and after washing them we put them in the fridge for an hour or two until lunchtime. It makes a cool, crunchy, fresh salad with lots of zing. It’s so good that we have to have seconds.

The other thing that the walrus said was about yellow-matter custard, but he didn’t give a recipe either.

Only a serving suggestion.

Goo Goo Ga-Choo!

fond regards

from the King and her Walrus

A Shocking Xmas

Posted on 27/12/2014 by hotnsticky

We were having such a quiet and relaxing Xmas day, – until the storm broke.

We have been enjoying warm, wet weather recently. Everything has been growing so well in the garden and orchards.

On Xmas Day all was quiet and relaxed and we were expecting rain in the afternoon, more or less as has been usual for some weeks now. Just a few showers, we thought.

The sky grew dark, like evening was approaching early, but it was only afternoon. Then the thunder came rolling in like distant artillery. The rain started and the wind picked up. We weren’t too worried, we have a safe, dry home. It’s been here for one hundred and twenty-one years now. We’ve been comfortable in it here for 38 of those years.

The rain increased to the point that it as blowing in horizontally with strong gusty winds driving it up against the walls even under the verandah. We stand and gape out the window and watch the water cascade over the gutters as it gushes off the roof and splash back out of the downpipes. I go around the house and pull out all the electrical plugs and disconnect the internet. We are laughing and joking until it gets worse and I remember that I have two pairs of leather boots on the verandah. I rush out quickly to pick them up and bring them in.

Just as I bend down to pick them up, there is an astounding BANG and crack with triple hissing flash and shudder. I’m thrown back against the door and for a moment I think that I can see the bones in my hand illuminated like an Xray against the flash as I reach for my shoes. I leap back inside bouncing and hopping from one leg to another. I’m not hurt, only shocked and surprised. I can’t stand still. I have to keep bouncing around the room. I think that I’m in shock. I’m not too sure, but I’m certainly surprised and amazed.

I don’t know what was hit by the lightning strike, but it sure must have been very close. The Lovely was in the loo at the time and heard it, felt it, and saw the flash through the window. She knows that it was too close for comfort. It scarred the shit out of her! Luckily, she was in the right place. Not to be de-turd myself. I go back out and finish clearing up the shoes.

We hug each other and comfort ourselves with each others presence. It’s then that I feel the splash of water on my head and shoulder. I’m not outside any more. I shouldn’t be getting wet inside here. I look up and see that there is a stream of water coming in through the ceiling and dribbling down onto the library bookshelves. There are some very nice old books in there. I rush to get towels and a chair to stand on and a plastic bucket to place on top of the book-case to catch it all. I have to move some sculptures and pots to make space for the bucket. We get everything under control and sit and wait to sit-out the storm. We end up getting 82 mm. in one hour.

In the morning we stroll around to view the damage. Nothing too bad. The pottery and kiln shed are all OK, but the power had been knocked out. As I walk up to the garden. I can see the shredded bark all over the driveway and front garden. I look up to see where it has come from and it’s then that I see the damage that the lightning has done to this huge old tree. It’s thoroughly dead and blown apart by the force of the strike. There is not a leaf left on it. The lightning has collected it at the tip of the highest branch and then the electricity has followed the grain of the wood down and around the tree in a spiral, following the twisting grain. Blowing off the bark and exposing a strip of the cambian all the way to the ground. The tremendous energy has vaporized the sap and blown off the immensely dense, tough and thickly matted and interwoven stringy bark, shredding it and blowing the fragments all over the front garden, as far as the neighbour’s fence.

This tree is a metre across at the base. It’ll be a winters load of fire wood in a year or two. However, there is a saying around here often quoted to me by the old blokes that used to be here when I arrived as a young novice to country living. They insisted that a tree that has been hit by lightning won’t burn as fire wood. I really don’t know. I can’t see any reason for it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. I’m about to find out for real. I’m sceptical! Those old blokes also told me to go and buy a left-handed spanner and to ask the storeman for a long weight while I was there. I got the long weight alright, but not the spanner. Now I’ve got my own electrocuted tree. The truth is not too far away. All will be revealed!

As the sun begins to shine again. I get up on the roof and look for obvious holes, but there is no obvious gap in the roofing. What I can see are several places where the 120 year old roof screws are coming loose and allowing the overlapping sheets of corrugated iron to be slightly raised. That would be enough space to allow rain in, on a night like last night’s storm, with the pressure of the driving wind in behind it. I take out a lot of the old screws, any that seem to be at all loose. These are replaced by new, longer ’ Tek’ screws. I also finally get around to installing the last of the flashing at the edges where the two roofs more or less meet up, but don’t quite. This has been a difficult problem, that has been waiting for me to solve for some time. I make up some special galvanised steel flashing parts that are custom-made to close the tapered gap. I want to keep out possums, bush rats and also wind-blown embers from getting into the roof cavity and the eves during bush fires.

I get it all done in a couple of hours, before it rains again. I’m pleased. I feel good. It’s all done. This is a job that has been on my mind for a long time. I made up the sheets of special flashing two years ago, and they have been sitting in my workshop ever since then. Now the western side of the roof is finally finished. I must get back up there and do the more difficult and complicated Eastern side some time soon. But not until I unload and re-charge the ball mills again. Grinding media waits for no man.

I guess that this is what time off from normal work is all about. Allowing time for other things. All those other things that never got done during the past year (or two, or three…)

Yesterday I was glowing with electrical static, today with satisfaction.

fond regards

from Steve the Glowing Illuminated Manualscribe.

A Handmade Christmas

Posted on 25/12/2014 by hotnsticky

We have been busy making things for Xmas.

We have been making beer, making porcelain body and making kilns, cooking and sewing. I’d like to claim that I have been making music as well, but I’m so bad at playing my cello that I can’t claim that the noise I make is music, just noise — but with some sort of intent and structure.

I had a kiln ordered for before Xmas as well as one for after Xmas as well, while the first one was at the galvanisers, waiting to be dipped in molten zinc to permanently rustproof it. I spent the waiting-time, and there is always waiting time at the galvanisers, 3 weeks is usual and longer nearer to Xmas. I spent this time productively making a small re-locatable kiln on castors. This one is for a potter who only has the use of one arm, so everything had to be designed to be flexible and achievable one-handed. This kiln is designed to use 2 quite small and thin kiln shelves, so that it can be loaded with one hand. The kiln has a ceramic fibre-lined lid, which is light weight and hinged, using an adjustable hinge system, that I built, so that it can be lifted simply up into a safe position and held there with chains, just past the pivot point. As the ceramic fibre on the lid seal compresses the hinge can be adjusted to allow for the change in height, so as to maintain a perfect seal. The gas burners are self-igniting using a piezo-electric ignition system that can be operated along with the thermo-electric safety switch, all with one hand.

I’ve tried to think it all through so that it is as flexible and practical as possible as well as being safe. I have to make sure that it conforms to all of the Australian Standards as well.

Yesterday, we spent a day washing, cleaning and sterilising 60 of our 30 year old beer bottles. There are some real antiques in this collection. Labels from breweries that you can’t buy any more. The old Coopers long necks were so solid and reliable. It takes longer to clean, sterilise and dry them than it does to fill and cap them. It takes us most of a leisurely day to get it all done and then clean everything up again and put all the gear back in its place. It’s a once a year job.

60 bottles of beer will last us all year, because we also make cider from our apples in the autumn, as well as a small amount of wine from our shiraz grapes. Last year we didn’t get to make any cider, because after the bad bush fires that cleaned up all the forest around here. There was not very much for the birds to eat, so they came here and cleaned up every piece of fruit that wasn’t netted. The apples trees are just too big now in their 38th year to get nets over, so there was no crop, hence no cider. However, the year before was really good and we made 120 bottles of cider, so we still have plenty in the cellar, enough to last a few years. Once the bottles are crown sealed, the cider will last many years. We have drunk it up to 5 year old with no noticeable deterioration of flavour or head/mouse.

I try to make a years supply of porcelain clay body in the summer time while the weather is hot and the humidity is low. It is made from ball milled ‘bai-tunze’ porcelain stone in a liquid ‘slip’ form, so it needs to be dried out and firmed up on a drying bed in the sun after milling. These drying conditions have not been present up until now. We have had almost constant rain, thunderstorms and showers every day since I got back. It’s been wonderful for the garden and orchards. Now it is easing off a little I’m hopeful that I can get some porcelain made. I’ve started the process of crushing and ball milling and will store the body as slip to age until I can get it dry. I should have been doing this before today, but there just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything that I want to achieve. As well as make a living.

A wheel barrow load of porcelain stones in front of the big Jaw crusher

close-up of the stone fragments. They have the same black mould on the surface as the similar porcelain stone from Arita.

The small jaw crusher and buckets and sieves.

The big ball mill that holds 30 kgs of stone grit.

I got an unexpected Xmas gift yesterday. I went for a hearing test, because my doctor thought that I might be loosing some acuity in one ear in my old age. The Lovely often says that I don’t listen, but I think that that is another matter all together. I was concerned, because a life spent working with power tools, angle grinders, rock crushers, ball mills and chainsaws, must surely have taken its toll. Fortunately, the audiologist found that my hearing was normal for someone of my age, not perfect, but OK. I must admit that some times I don’t wear the ear-muffs on every single occasion that I ought to, but I wear them most of the time and the benefits of that cautious behaviour are now paying dividends.

A nice unexpected present.

We decide to cook one of the last pieces of lamb that our son Geordie bought in the middle of the year. As he is a chef at a very prestigious restaurant with a couple of ‘hats’ rating. He will be cooking Xmas dinner for everyone else today. We will have our Xmas lunch with him tomorrow. This last piece of his lamb is the saddle with the eye fillets. Saving the best till last. This will be this months red meat meal. I simmer it very gently in a bottle of our home made quince cider along with a couple of our sliced onions. Put half a bottle of quince puree in the mix and spread the remaining half bottle of puree over the top of the saddle as a paste. After 1 1/2 hrs I drain it off and add a little of our local EV olive oil. I add a few of our newly lifted new season potatoes, a couple more onions and half a bottle of preserved baked, quartered quinces from last autumn. I bake this combo slowly for another 1 1/2 hrs. It’s a triumph of melt-in-your-mouth flavours. The twice baked quinces are amazing and the quince puree that has covered the lamb has kept it succulent and moist and amazingly flavoursome. We are very lucky people to be able to enjoy what would otherwise be an unaffordable meal. Janine steams some of our diced zucchinis with mint leaves. I go under the floor and into the wine cellar and retrieve a bottle of 1994 Wynns Coonawarra, John Riddoch, Cab sav. At 20 years old, it is amazingly spritely and still just a little bit tannic. It still has plenty of life left in it. I open it when we start cooking and it is very mellow and smooth, rich and complex and by the time the meal is ready, it is well breathed and a very good match. I still have one bottle left in the box. We’ll try it again in another couple of years.

We spend the rest of the day relaxing. Janine reading the letters of John and Sunday Reed, while I get out my cello.

I am really grateful that we are able to live this indulgent, self-reliant life that we have chosen for ourselves. On this quiet day, when it isn’t possible to do much else, we do what we always do. I check out the garden, pull a few weeds, pick some food for dinner, do a bit of watering of those soft, tender young seedlings, I also unload the ball mill that was running for 16 hours over-night milling 30 kgs of porcelain stone. While The Lovely spends a relaxing morning cutting up some worn out cotton pants and making a couple of pairs of ‘gaiters’, ankle protectors to cover her socks and boot tops while gardening and mowing. Nothing is thrown out until it has been well and truly all used up. Re-used, re-purposed and finally re-cycled. I am also immensely grateful that we are fortunate enough to be living here, where there are no helicopter gunships, no land mines and no civil war. I am aware that we are very fortunate indeed!

I am grateful.

fond regards from a lucky bloke and his industrious captain of her own of industry

First and Last

Posted on 21/12/2014 by hotnsticky

Happy Solstice or Bah Humbug, take your pick.

Wishing you all a very Happy Solstice Greetings in traditional red and green colours.

The last string of last summers dried red chillies with the first picking of this summers fresh green chillies.

Janine suggests that these are also very good images with which to celebrate the solstice.

The King parrots come to visit us at this time of year, looking for seeds and seed pods. This one is sitting in the native sollya vine. Australian Native blue bell vine. It seems to grow quite well here, so we don’t mind if the parrots come and eat the seeds. After all, they are called King Parrots so Janine has quite an affinity for them. What with them both being regal, it’s like they’re family.

The other picture that she took recently, was in Japan. It is a bit of a weed over there. It grows along the rice paddies and drainage channels. Lycoris radiata. The red spider lily.

In times long gone the sap was used as a poison for stunning wild animals so that they could be caught – or so we were told.

It’s a pretty wild flower in the autumn around about rice harvest time.

Wishing you all a relaxing, peaceful and non-commercial Solstice holiday season.

Coming Clean

Posted on 14/12/2014 by hotnsticky

Coming Clean

One job that crops up 2 or 3 times a year is the making of liquid soap ‘gell’ for washing clothes. The Bright and Shiny King of Household Management is on to it and is well prepared. She has been doing this continuously since the early 80’s. Miss ‘Sunlight’ uses one cake of cheap generic brand laundry soap, which is still made in Australia surprisingly. The Soap Queen cuts the block of soap into thin slices. about 1/3 is used in each batch.

This amount of shredded soap ‘flakes’ is dissolved in a couple of litres of boiling water. We usually do it when the wood fired stove is lit, so as not to waste energy. The dissolved soap concentrate is then mixed with cold water up to about 7 or 8 litres in a bucket. If you want to add some fragrance, this is the time to do it. The diluted mixture is poured into flagons for long-term storage under the laundry sink. This is repeated, this is repeated, this is repeated, 3 times, until the whole block of soap is used up and all the available recycled plastic bottles and flagons are full, about 20 litres in all. This amount of soap ‘glug’ usually last us about 4 months for all our clothes washing needs.

She is my Sunlight, my only Sunlight, She makes me happy when clothes are grey – by washing them with home-made soap.

We have what is now, a very old, front loading washing machine that uses our own stored solar hot water, instead of electrically heating cold water. This saves energy. The front loading design also uses less water and energy all up. This machine was built in Europe and we have had it for well over 20 years. It’s been exceptionally reliable and paid for itself many times over in all the water and energy that it has saved us.

We used to add an equal amount of washing soda crystals to this clothes washing soap mix, but we read that the soda was bad for the soil and the water ways, where it inevitably ends up, so we cut it out from the recipe some years ago and haven’t noticed any difference in the outcome of our washing.

The reason that we started to make our own washing soap ‘glug’, was after we read a shocking report on the build-up of phosphates in the water system and the blooms of algae that occurred in some of our rivers during the summer ‘dry’ back then. We decided then that we ought to do something ourselves to take control of our part of the system. So we stopped buying phosphate detergents. We’ve rarely needed to use much detergent since then. We still buy the occasional bottle of ‘green’ detergent. It claims to very environmentally friendly, but all advertising does. It’s sodium Laurel sulphate based. a small compromise. We only use it for the very odd occasion when I need to wash my very dirty work clothes, especially if they have oil or grease on them. But this is fairly rare.

I always wash the dishes using the same laundry soap, which I scrub against a green dish scourer pad and then scrub the dirty dishes with that scourer. The soap cuts the oils from cooking with no trouble and because all our pots and pans are beautiful objects in their own right, it’s really good to get to handle each item as it gets washed, rinsed and placed in the drainer. Half of all the ceramic pots that we use are things that we have bought from other potters on our travels. Miss ‘Sunlight’, The Soap Queen, rotates the pots in the kitchen, so that it is always interesting to use newly recycled pots that we haven’t used for a while.

We don’t own a dish washer machine. I’m not too sure about the strong detergents that they use in those machines. Anything that can slowly dissolve plastic cups and strip the 24 carat gold lustre off ceramics, can’t be too good for the environment? As all our water is recycled through the soil on our own block of land here. I don’t want that kind of stuff in my orchard, growing my fruit. Best not to get involved. Leave it on the shelf, in the shop.

All the kitchen cookware has been collected over many years on our travels and most of it is tinned copper or stainless/copper combination. They are lovely things to handle and use. I wash these with the same soapy plastic scourer pad and after rinsing I give them and extra wash-over with a piece of used lemon rind with some salt on it. This keeps them always looking new and shiny. Soap is all that is needed to dissolve the grease and oils that we use in cooking. Mind you, we don’t tend to eat very many greasy things. Most of our cooking is by streaming with just a little use of olive oil to stop things sticking too much.

This week the zuchinis have started flowering in profusion, so we have begun eating those, stuffed with ricotta cheese and various diced condiments. Miss frugality saw two litre flagons of our local organic milk offered at $1 on it’s use-by date. The King of Curds brought it home and made ricotta out of it that afternoon – no time to loose, it might curdle 🙂

For stuffing zucchini flowers, the ricotta has to be well drained and pressed. The rubbish that is sold as ricotta in tubs the supermarket is all water. Artisanal ricotta may be a bit more expensive, but it’s got 50% more cheese solids in it and less water. If you try to use the cheaper commercial tub stuff it drains out of the flowers in a big wet watery mess. It still tastes OK, but it doesn’t fill me with joy to see my beautiful flowers all turn to ‘sog’ in a pool of cheesy water. No whey!

I’ve been using our own preserved nasturtium seed, masquerading as imitation capers, our own dried tomatoes and this season’s fresh, but small garlic, local olives and some anchovies. This time I used a few pickled green French beans instead of a gherkin and I’ve been adding a little bit of firm blue cheese in the recent mixes. It makes a lovely combination of flavours in the savoury cheese filling. I don’t use much of it, but just enough to give it a hint of spice to the otherwise rather bland curd filling. They don’t just taste good, but the flowers look lovely too.

All the seeds that I planted in the past few weeks are all up now and putting on some size with all this rain that we have been having combined with the warm weather, it has made for good growing conditions. On the other hand, it has been so wet that I haven’t bothered to mill any porcelain stones into slip as yet, as the slip wouldn’t have dried at all on the drying bed. I’m not set up for drying clay in the rain like they are at Onta in Kyushu. See earlier blog. I was able to make good use of all the indoor time by building 2 kilns for my customers and getting everything done right on schedule.

So I’m pleased. The garden looks good and is producing all our summer fruit and vegetable needs. We are already bottling our excesses. The bit of flat dirt that we laughingly call the ‘lawn’, is actually green in summer. That is something that we haven’t seen for quite a few years and we have plenty of work lined up.

from my Miss Sunlight and her Mr Bubbles

Portents and signs

Posted on 11/12/2014 by hotnsticky

This time last year we were fighting bush fires. This year it’s all different. There are no fires here now. It’s turned out to be a very wet start to the summer. It’s hot, but also wet. On the 3rd of December we picked our first ripe tomato of the season. That is so very early. We have never been able to do that before. We usually get our first tomatoes in January. If we are lucky and very industrious, we might get a very early plant to give as it’s first fruit in the week between Xmas and New Year. But this year it’s all different. Annabelle Sloujetté planted 3 advanced seedling tomatoes for us in the vegetable garden while she was house sitting, sometime while we were away in September or October. Apparently there were no sudden cold snaps or even very cold nights from that time on. So here we are in the first week of summer and eating our own red ripe tomatoes. It’s a miracle! Or is it just a sign of things to come? A Portent?

Tomatoes don’t ripen in the sunshine. They respond to the day length and average temperature. Certainly, If they get too much sun, they get sunburnt and develop bleached white leathery scars. Not nice. To help prevent this, we have developed a system of growing our tomatoes here, where we don’t stake them up, but just allow them to sprawl across the ground. The fruit hangs down and is shaded by it’s own foliage above. It’s a lot less work, the shady foliage discourages weed growth and retains soil moisture. We mulch the plants well and as long as the fruit doesn’t get attacked by slugs and snails, the system works quite well. Less work, less weeding, less watering, less bleaching.

We have lifted the garlic crop it was very poor this year. As there was virtually no rain for the whole time that we were away, the bulbs didn’t get a chance to swell up in their final months of growing. We have plenty of plants. They all survived, but the bulb size is very small. The smallest that I’ve seen in all the years that we’ve been here. It’s flavoursome and intense, just tiny. Is this a portent of a hot, dry future?

I lift them all and lay them out on the north facing verandah to dry in the sunshine for a week, then Miss industry herself, cleans and plaits them into bunches. I bring in the big 3 metre step-ladder and Miss Plait passes them up to me as I hang them up from the kitchen roof truss to dry further, ready for use as we need them. They are so small this year that Miss Plait gets about 20 to 30 knobs in a plait, instead of the usual dozen.

The smallest of the crop isn’t worth plaiting and hanging. It all goes into a basket on the kitchen work bench. They are so small that I don’t bother to try to peel them. I just bash the knob with the side of a large chef’s knife to separate the cloves and them place half a dozen of the tiny segments into the garlic press and mash them out of their papery skins straight into whatever dish I’m preparing. It’s a lot less effort than peeling them and works just as well. In fact, I read somewhere that garlic releases more of it’s flavour if it is crushed like this instead of just being cut and sliced.

The rain has now come in this first week of summer. We have 30oC days and then a big thunderstorm in the afternoon. We get 10 to 20 mm. most afternoons. Over the week, the system settles in to a rhythm of days in the high 20’s with rain and scattered showers throughout the day or overnight, with occasional heavy storms and hail. Fortunately, we have missed out on the really bad hail here, but up the road a bit, it was piled up to a foot thick and remained there for a day or two afterwards in frozen beds of ice in the shady places. Since we have netted our garden, the netting has helped dissipate some of the damage that we used to get from the hail. All this water is very welcome in the beginning of summer. It’s better than bush fires and everything is growing well in the combination of warm weather and lots of water. We haven’t had to water the garden for a couple of weeks now. Doesn’t the weather know that it’s supposed to be summer? It’s a miracle! Or is it a portent? We have a full dam and green grass in the lawn, instead of the burnt off crisps of brown and dry, parched, dusty gravel. If this is the new ’normal’ then I’m happy about that.

We have been continuously picking the youngberries every alternate day, all this time and Miss Plait has been bottling and preserving them each day. We are up to 20 jars now in the larder. It’s been a very good crop. Their season is almost over now, with only a couple of small pickings remaining on the canes. We have been getting 2 to 3 kilos each pick. Surprisingly, there is very little rot in the fruit, even though we have been getting all this rain. Young berries seem to be another one of those fruits that seem to ripen due to-day length and average temperature, without direct sunshine. The best fruit is to be found deep in and under the dense foliage on the shady side of the canes.

The early peaches are all picked and we have finished eating the last of the fresh fruit from those early trees. The freezer is full of punnets of stewed peaches, which we will start to eat soon, as we wait for the late peaches to come on. Each morning we breakfast on berries, peaches and strawberries with yoghurt.

We also started to pick our first zucchini, capsicum and chills in the same week. It’s a sign! These were all early plantings done as a gift by Annabelle Sloujetté in our absence. It’s a gift! A lovely gift. And one that is very gratefully and thankfully received.

I have been busy in the garden too, along with Miss Plait. I think that I’ll have to start calling her Sylvia, because she’s poetry in motion. Or maybe Ariel. That’s a sign!

I planted corn seeds the day before I left, at the end of August and they are flowering now. The first thing that I did in the garden when I returned was to buy some sweet corn seedlings in a punnet at the markets so that there would be some continuity. I also planted out some more seeds at the same time. These will take some time to germinate and guarantee a continuity of sweet corn over the summer. We pull out all the old tired left overs from the winter garden. I shred them along with all the other stuff for the compost, by laying it all out on the grass and driving over it with the mower. The shredded mulch is so much more compact and rots down quicker. It also shreds the snails hiding it’s midst.

While we are at it, and the rain is holding off. It’s a bright sunny patch in amongst all the rain. We rejoice in the sunshine and spend the rest of the day, weeding, pruning and mulching. I stake up some of the winter plants that have gone very leggy as they go to seed. So I stake them up to keep them tidy and out-of-the-way so that I can make room to plant other things in the row. I plant out a lot of seeds for later in the summer; lettuce, carrots, beetroot, rocket, radish, mesclun, mizuna, dwarf French & climbing beans, plus Lebanese cucumbers. Finally, we cut back a lot of the leggy herbs and Miss Sylvia Plait crops the Russian Tarragon. As the rain returns we head to the house and I trim the tarragon leaves and fill a white wine vinegar bottle with them, to steep for later use.

At the end of a long day we head for bed and dream of wonders, portents and signs.

fond regards from, the rhyming couplet of Silvia Plait and Her Man whose fingers smell of Garlic

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Tonight my Fingers Smell of Garlic

Steve Harrison and Janine King's other Hot and Sticky web site

Author Archives: hotnsticky

The Pig’s Ear, Chalk and Cheese

Much ado about netting

Half Baked

Make Clay While the Sun Shines

Of cabbages and King

A Shocking Xmas

A Handmade Christmas

First and Last

Coming Clean

Portents and signs