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.