Building Momentum

This was kind of a busy week.  For the first time all summer, I felt like I accomplished some things in the studio.  Better late than never, right?

Here are some pictures of things that came out of the last glaze fire.

I am really happy with these cups.

There were 2 of these planters.  I've sold one, but the other is in the gallery at A Griffin Pottery Associates.

The yarn bowls turned out nice I think.

The blue glaze sagged a little more than I expected where it overlapped the red, but I think it is OK.

On Tuesday, I made a trip to Carolina Clay Connection in Charlotte.  It was past time to get a new supply of clay and a few of our glazes were starting to get low too.  I forget how wonderful it is to work with fresh boxes of clay!  It happens so gradually that I don't really notice it, but clay that has been sitting around for a few months is so much harder than a new box.  

I made 3 bacon cookers

and 3 big casseroles in no time at all.

After that, I made myself stop.  It is not a good thing to have too much that needs finishing before the end of the week.  When things are going well, it is easy to bite off more than I can chew.

This is a picture of my water bucket at the end of all that throwing.  There's more slip in there than water.  The sponge is sitting on the top of the slip in the bottom of the bucket.

The last thing I did before I left for the day was load up a bisque fire.  I should have some glazing to do this week and a glaze fire to follow soon. More pots to show off soon I hope.  

One last thing.  

Most of the time, I can ignore the stupid parking that happens in my parking lot on a regular basis.  This is just too much.  There are no other cars in the lot and this is where this person decided to park. I can almost understand if one were just running in and out real quick, but he was there for the duration.  When I needed to leave, I had to go next door and ask if he would please move so I could get out.  His response to being asked to move was classic, "I didn't mean to block you in."  I couldn't think of a single thing to say to that that wasn't snarky and sarcastic, so I just kept quiet. 

Slowly But Surely Back to Normal

It's been about 3 weeks since I last posted here.  What an amazing 3 weeks!  I'll share a little of that later on.

I've not done much pottery-wise lately, but I managed to have some studio time every day this week.  Six days in a row.  It might be a record. I made very few pots though.  I had a ton of bisque ware that needed glazing, and I got all of that done.  I scraped kiln shelves and applied more kiln wash.  Then I loaded up a glaze fire on Thursday afternoon.  As hot as it is right now, I waited until I knew that no one was planning to come in for a day before I turned the kiln on.  I always fire at night, but it gets HOT in the studio when I'm firing.  I fired last night and went in to check it this morning.  Things look normal and the studio was a balmy 95 degrees - also normal. I really can't wait to unload the kiln tomorrow.  There are some things in there that I am anxious to see.

This yarn bowl is one of those things.  Fingers crossed that it turns out as cool as it looks in my head right now.

I also worked up some reclaimed clay, dusted 3/4 of the shelves in the gallery, and did some other general cleaning and straightening up.  It is amazing how I can ignore the dust and dirt for a long time and then suddenly, IT MUST BE CLEANED.  This is more or less my approach to house work too.

So what I have I been doing for the last 3 weeks?  Jeff and I spent 10 days in Hawaii. It was amazing.  We hiked through rain forests, rode bikes down a dormant volcano, kayaked up a river, and played in waterfalls.  Well, I played in the waterfalls.  Jeff doesn't do water.  We took a helicopter tour over the rain forest and the erupting volcano on the big island.  We took pictures of scenery that is more beautiful than anything that I could imagine.  I would love to go back, but it will probably be 25 more years before we can save up enough to do another trip like this one.

Now that I am finally over the jet lag, I can think about what I'm doing.  I need to make a run to Charlotte since I am completely out of clay. I need to get the air conditioning unit looked at since there is water leaking out of a place that there shouldn't be any.  I hope to get parking spaces lined off in the parking lot sometime this week.  Much to be excited about here.