I met Leola, my pottery teacher, when we started purchasing her products. She throws each blue moose mug on the wheel and hand paints the moose design. And her moose head brown sugar savers work great!
Leola "hand builds" each of her spoon rest/soap dishes. She uses shells she collected on the beach for texturing, like the sea otter's paws. The wonderful soaps shown here are from Denali Dreams -- they make the soaps just a few blocks from our main office.
Enjoy scenic Alaska all year with this beautiful 2009 calendar with photos by Fred Hirschmann.
These crystal moose remind you of ice sculptures! They come in a festive red box like the bears below.
Date 12/12/08
Anchorage Temperature
Low 0 °F, High 18°F
Daylight 5 hrs 38 mins
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Life in Alaska
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It's almost 9:00 pm when I leave Girdwood to drive home to Anchorage, about 35 miles away. My headlights light up the falling snow while the wind drifts sinuous bands of snow across the road in front of me. I dial down the dash lights to improve my night vision. With studded snow tires all around and my Yukon shifted into 4-wheel drive, I'm too not worried about the weather. |
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For the last three winters, I've been taking pottery lessons in Girdwood from one of our suppliers, Leola Rutherford. Girdwood nestles at the foot of Mt. Alyeska, home to a world-class ski resort. The picture on the left was earlier this winter when it was still light out at 6pm. The one on the right I took two days ago. In the center, Leola holds up a bowl we glazed in preparation for the Bean's Cafe Bowl-a-thon, a fundraiser to which Leola donates hundreds of of bowls. |
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| People are often amazed that I would make the drive every week. What they don't know is that I love the Seward Highway as it winds between mountains and sea along Turnagain Arm. One of the most beautiful drives on earth, it's a National Scenic Byway. When I was five years old the road was gravel, narrow and winding, and it took a couple of hours to get to Girdwood. I've driven it hundreds of times since then but the ever-changing scenery never gets old. |
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| There is always so much to see. Eagles, dall sheep, beluga whales. Waterfalls in the autumn that freeze like sculptures on the cliffs. The extreme tidal action, second only to the Bay of Fundy area in Canada. The middle shot above shows a bore tide, a 6-foot wall of water ripping up Turnagain Arm at about 15 mph. (Capt. Cook thought he'd found the elusive Northwest Passage here, but he had to turn-again.) The weather is often violent, as Girdwood sits on a narrow neck of land connecting the Kenai Peninsula to the mainland. To the east is Prince William Sound. This is the place weather systems collide. I am sometimes late to pottery because I've stopped so often to take pictures. I even love the views when I am driving in the dark. On clear nights, the snow-covered mountains glow whitely. |
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| I always look forward to de-stressing on pottery nights. Leola is a wonderful teacher. I revel in the feel of the clay spinning beneath my hands and the satisfaction of seeing the finished piece emerge. Most people understand this. Not everyone gets that the drive is part of it. Just me and the Yukon and my iPod, the cliffs looming to one side, the restless sea on the other, the mountains all around. It's our secret. --Carmen |
