weekly retro #51: wheel throwin' and storm postin'

i'm writing this in the middle of that big snow storm the news has been talking about all week. i'm also watching and hearing the little rice-sized sleet bouncing off the window sill, avoiding thinking about what conditions are going to be like tomorrow when we're all expected to go about our mondays.

photo of my black cat pumagreg laying on my side within my arm in bed, he's very cozy and belly-up comfortable

it was a very cold week, i spent a lot of time at home with the exception of yoga classes and ceramics. i love the winter, but it's so hard to get out of bed - pumagreg being a cuddle freak doesn't help. i'm really only a morning person if i have an actual thing to do that can only be done in the morning, i am working on truly accepting that and not feeling like a piece of garbage for not being up and at 'em at 8am.

photo of a rack with some of my lavender smoke periwinkle glass candles curing. other tools like my scale and laser thermometer are on the table too

this week i did a bunch of candle tests and made some scented candle inventory to cure for a couple weeks before i do the first official drop of the year. in case you didn't know, i made a bugsrock.online bluesky account where i share updates and process. i was giving myself mental whiplash from posting political and anti-ICE content one second and griping about candle curing woes in the next, so i've been trying this account separation and it's helped.

photo of my desk where i'm gluing book cover canvas onto some small notebook sized pieces of binding board. a rock is weighing down a glued piece

a few months ago i got high and made an order on talas of bookcloths, paper and glue and just never used it. so i finally brought out the tube and made myself a hardcover for my field notes notebook. i posted more photos on bluesky. i made so many mistakes but did a pretty good job from memory, so i'm going to make more covers this week to practice before i move on to binding actual sketchbooks.

photo of a ceramics wheel and i have a new mound of clay on it about to be turned into a cylinder. around the wheel is my mess of a crappy cylinder i already threw, another piece of clay waiting for its turn, some tools and a wet bucket. there's a very nicely thrown vase in the background but my classmate made that

i had my second wheel-throwing class - the third for everyone else in class, so i was way behind, but i stayed an extra couple of hours to practice and finally hit a breakthrough with centering the clay and made my first good cylinder. my right hip was very sore after, so that was a good lesson in being more mindful of the physicality of wheel-throwing and the necessity to warm up and stretch after.

nighttime photo of a mantel at home showing my clay lemon pig next to some air dry clay and painted cigarettes. they are in front of a print of a painting of a cat smoking a cigarette, and behind some wooden coasters that are illustrations of pumagreg and jefrey (my late cat). you can also see a trophy and a cookie tin and incense

i was painting air dry clay cigarettes yesterday for some reason when i started getting notifications of people sharing an older post of mine calling out githubbers who defended an ICE contract they had years ago. it's very weird, both relieving and frustrating, to see people who called me dramatic years ago coming around on the fact that ICE needs to be abolished and everyone involved held accountable for their crimes.

the line for everyone should have been drawn LONG before "white people executed in broad daylight". will this finally be a real turning point for our nation, or just another bucket list item crossed out for our fascist administration? time and spineless politicians on social media will tell!

things i enjoyed this week

franz ferdinand covered amyl and the sniffers for like a version
this conversation and grilling of ashley st. clair was done real well. we don't often see someone from the right who has done so much harm make such a shift - especially one where they don't center themselves. it will be interesting to see if this impacts others on the right who have grown uncomfortable with the violence and transphobia of the right.
i haven't made this baked ziti yet but the tip about soaking the pasta instead of boiling before putting it in the casserole dish was really eye-opening and i cannot wait to try it.
this piece on gas town and vibecoding by maggie appleton is one of the best tech critiques i've read. maggie works in ai, so this is an accessible description of what gas town is and what it means for the future, while also being measured about the limitations of this kind of use of ai when coding.
this morning i made chef john's old-fashioned pancakes because the gluten-free mix we had has coconut ingredients in it (my diet is currently low-gluten), and the gluten-free flouer i had didn't have xantham gum in it - a binder is necessary for pancakes. i fucking love science.

stay warm, dry and safe - and be vocal about how angry you are about what's going on in the world, your voice is important and it helps others find theirs. i used to get asked often if i was afraid that my online presence - specifically the part where i'm vocal about my politics and values - would make me "unemployable" and honestly, i don't know, but i'm doing fine: i'm warm, dry and safe indoors, which is a lot better than many others are and what i used to be.

xoxo jenn

this was published January 25, 2026 under living art weekly-retro bugs-rock candles ceramics wheel-throwing pumagreg book-binding