bowl-a-rama

BEFORE WE LEFT TO go down to the site and finish staining the clapboard siding today, we were gifted with the perfect timing of a delivery we've been waiting for. We had asked M's mom some time ago to make a bowl that we could use for a hand sink for the second floor toilet. Last month when we visited M's parents in Nagano, we went by the ceramic workshop and kiln where she makes her pieces and she showed us a number of different works, all done in different glazes, so that we could chose the tone and color of the bowl. (Of course, she let us know that we'd be at the mercy of the firing, since even the same glaze has all kinds of permutations depending on the winds, tides and number of fairies present at the time.) But we picked a glaze that we liked very much for its blue-gray ocean tinge, and gave her the measurements that the small toilet could handle.

And this is what the courier delivered. 

When we got down to the site, we unpacked it and placed it on the wood shelf that has been waiting for it the last few weeks, and saw immediately that it is a beauty! The carpenter will carve a hole  and set it just slightly into the wood, the plumber will attach the fitting for the drain and the faucet. And we'll have a very unique basin to wash our hands in. Guests, of course, will have to use the very pedestrian Toto sink downstairs. (I'm not being unkind, there's just no room in the narrow toilet on the first floor.)