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Picture of the Day
Sunday
January 27, 2019

 
         did you know you can build a city with the dirt under your feet?
       well, a city might take a while, so maybe start with an earth oven?
      we began yesterday with soil assessment and simple testing techniques
    for getting useful mixes of sand, clay, and fibrous binders for various
   applications of cob, brick, and mortar. today we got a feel for firing by
  feeding the flames in this outdoor dome oven, heated it gradually and then
 baked pizzas with sauce, sourdough crust, and toppings prepared by sarah.

after lunch, we mixed
cob in a tarp, balled it
up, and laid it in course by course
around the damp sand domes we'd
shaped. we were only making scale
models so it was ok to cheat a little, as
our work would later be undone, dust
to dust
; we and everything around us
has already been recycled endlessly.

we posed for class pictures (1 & 2),
then with time left over were free to
goof. deanne defaults to spritely energy,
but this might have been the first time we
really saw her bust loose as she tore into a
little freestyle sculpting with unmitigated joy,
 putting a smile on a clay face--and mine, too.
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