On Monday I registered for a two week long workshop at Penland School of Craft. Going to Penland has been a dream for a while now and I've been saving for years. I am so excited!!
This is the time of year that the summer starts taking shape. Our family settles on a date and location for our family beach trip. It's normally this week that invitations to the Advanced Placement Reading go out. We make beach plans usually before I know if I'm going to be grading AP Exams, but I always plan with the hope that I'll get to go to what my friends and I have come to refer to as "Math Camp". This year, the family beach trip got pushed to late July instead of the third week of June (immediately after the Reading) due to some other family obligations.
When the Penland catalog came to the house last weekend, I found the workshop that I thought I wanted to try to get into. Checked the dates - June 21 to July 3. Hmmmm, it doesn't conflict with vacation and would work even if I got an invitation to grade AP. Perfect! The next hurdle would be to actually get IN the workshop. Registration opened at noon on Jan 13. I was right there at my computer at noon working on registering. As were a bunch of other people...the website was SLOW. After about 45 minutes, I had confirmation emails regarding my registration and payment of my deposit! It turns out that I was doubly lucky. The website crashed twice and the Penland folks suspended workshop registrations until Wed, Jan 15 while they tried to fix the issues. BUT I got in before all that. Wow.
Then on Wednesday, I received my invitation to grade AP Exams! So I'll leave on June 10 and will get back home on June 18. I'll switch gears from math geek to crafty artist person. Then I head up to Spruce Pine, NC for two weeks of pottery-ing. Cool.
In addition to all this excitement, I taught Nikki a lesson on Monday afternoon. She is doing great. Every week, I see improvement.
The kiln has been not acting quite right the last few firings, so the Kiln Doctor came to take a look on Wednesday afternoon. We easily have enough work ready for both a bisque fire and a glaze fire.
The verdict was that we need new elements. He said it was ok to bisque fire, but not to try a glaze fire. OK. I hope that it will work out for him to come back with the new parts next week. The sooner the better. I've got a show that opens the first week of February. Must fire pottery!
Meanwhile, I've been cranking out stuff. The first part of the week it rained. A LOT. It was a struggle to get things dry enough to finish them. I made 4 cake plates on Tuesday.
They sat on the shelf uncovered until Thursday before I could trim them. I expected them to be dry enough to trim on Wednesday.
Wednesday, I made the parts to a set of canisters.
I was able to put on handles Thursday afternoon, but the lids weren't dry enough to work on until Friday morning.
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