It's feeling apocalyptic around here today ....

We live in southwestern BC, Canada ... a temperate rain forest area ... blessed with large forests of Douglas Fir, Western Cedars, Hemlock and Spruce, fed and sustained by plenty of rain. We see the the occasional snow down below but we always have ski hills full of snow in our beautiful mountains. This year there was hardly any ... our ski hill across the pond which often has record snowfalls had to close half way thru the season due to NO snow! Our rivers, normally fed by melting snow packs into June at least, don't have that extra cushion to see them thru the summer season. I so, so hope this year is an anomaly and not a glimpse into the future. Really, can anyone still be a climate change deny-er? Yes, we can debate the man-made versus natural course of events aspects of it but regardless, it is here and it is more than a little scary.

In an area that normally sees 77 mm (3 in) of precip in May and 68 mm (2.7 in) in June, this year we've only had 12 mm in May and 18 mm in June. The sun has been blazing down for several weeks with no end in sight. We are tinder dry with several forest fires in areas around us. This morning we awoke to this ...

along with ash falling around like a grey snow flurries ...

 ... And this pic of the sun was taken later in the morning .... It's the little orange dot at the top of the photo.  .. It's just plain eerie! I feel like I'm wearing those sunglasses that turn everything yellow!

It is barely July .... we have two and a half months to go before perhaps the Fall season will bring us rain. Not sure what's going to happen with the annual salmon returns (low river, no rain means they won't be able make it up), the forests, the wildlife and our beautiful piece of paradise .... just feeling a little discouraged about it all .... and the mellow yellow sky isn't helping ...

Losing Time

What took me so long?? .... It was only last week I finally glaze fired the pots I talked about in my last post and that post was from a long while ago. Between then and now, in between studio time, there was Christmas, an adventure with the grandsons to Victoria, tax time, getting our guest cottage up and running and in March hubby put his back out. I did get to the studio as much as I could .... enough to fill a bisque kiln but I am vowing to do better, especially since I also made the decision to go back to selling my pots from my own little gallery in the studio. The shelves need pots! But having said that studio time will be taking a backseat again in a week. I am pretty excited to say I am heading out on my first trip to New York City with my friend Sue ... it's in celebration of turning 60. My kids spoiled me silly with show tickets and a helicopter tour .... woohoo!

So it was a bit of an experiment .... both using porcelain and trying a new glaze approach. I am ok with the porcelain, (other than the cost of the clay) but I wasn't so thrilled with the results of the soft matte black exteriors and jewelled transparent interiors ... looked much better in my mind :))

The glaze went on a bit thick on some pots which didn't help ...

Happy I gave it a try ..... but I'll be putting the works of them on the seconds shelf ... 

On the other hand,  I really did like the reaction of some of my standard glazes on the porcelain .... I'll be doing more of that combo .... 

First Date

I've decided trying a new clay with significant property differences must be a bit like dating (it's a guess as I have little or no expertise in dating as I met my hubby at age 16, was married to him by 19 and 40+ years later, am still married to him ;)). 

Why do we potters do it?! .... that is, decide to change what's worked for us for so long .... ie. clay, glazes, approach to work? I've been asking myself that a lot this past few weeks ... especially when I discarded 50% of the pots I threw the first couple of days I was back in the studio, using my new Frost/B-Mix combo. Yikes! I felt like a beginner ... talk about sticky clay and slumpy pots. However, as the discarded clay set back up on the drying bat to a state a fair bit drier than I usually throw with, I had an uh-huh moment .... smack my head! remember!? .... porcelain does not like a lot of water. I was finally able to get my groove back with the stiffer clay. Once I moved onto trimming the pots I realized that this clay also dries faster, be it innate properties or the fact I started with drier clay. Yikes again! .... a trimming frenzy ensued! I did love it's response to texture stamps and carving. The one porcelain gotcha I've seen repeated in my research is joining parts so I am relieved to see so far the handles are staying on the on mugs and the goblet cups haven't fallen off their stems. Today I finished up with the last of the greenware and I'm kinda liking the new beau ;). I can't wait til I get to firing and glazing. I am sure there will be a whole other set of issues to deal with. 

On a whole other topic ... (arachnaphobes stop here) ... we live in a wonderful naturally diverse rural area ... plenty of wildlife and nature just outside the door. In the fall and winter spiders join me in the basement studio. I quite like them as they take care of the ugly bugs that also like to encroach on my territory. I saw an entomologist on the tube a few weeks back who said spiders go indoors looking for love. Well, my spiders have found love again. As often happens this time of year, as I sit at the wheel, I get little tiny visitors rappelling down from the ceiling to check out what I am doing. I feel sad for them when they accidentally ditch into the clay water or mistakenly try to climb the still wet pots.

I most likely won't get to another post for a bit so want to give a Happy Thanksgiving shout out to all my US potter blogger and reader friends. Our Thanksgiving celebration (in Canada it's in October) took place the day after my Dad's funeral. For us this year, it truly was a special Family time. Hope your day is as blessed!

Sad Endings, Fresh Beginnings

My Dad passed away the beginning of Oct. The past few months have been somewhat surreal ... life is so complicated at times. 

I am slowly working my way back to the studio. As usual, my procrastination gene has me going back in fits and spurts. But on the positive side, given I have missed all my Fall deadlines for Craft Fairs, Christmas and such, I am taking advantage of the more leisurely approach to my return to do a bit of exploration. I've had 3 boxes of Laguna Frost in my clay cupboard for while now. My research tells me it can be finicky to work with and since translucency is not my aim but whiteness is, I've decided to try a Frost/B-Mix combo (25% B-Mix) to see if that is a viable option. I am envisioning shining jewelled transparent interiors with soft semi matte black exteriors. 

The clay is wedged and waiting .... 

Bye for now

With a great deal of sadness, I find myself at a stage in life where elder care has become a reality. My father and his partner, who have been increasingly showing signs of dementia over the past many months, both ended up in hospital in July. For the past several weeks, we have traversed the many paths of the medical, financial and legal systems, that one must travel when someone you love ends up with this horrid disease,

I write this to let you know I am here, still loving the little bit of studio time I get in once in a while, but unfortunately blogging, both reading and writing, is barely on my radar. 

Take care, my friends. It's been great hanging out with you all this past year or so. Hope to talk to you all again someday .... Brenda

My new Clay Trap

Just putting the finishing touches on my new outdoor clay trap.

It's a biggie! 

It's a design based on the Pottery Making Illustrated magazine article - How to Build a Better Home Made Sink for Your Pottery Studio. I had this type of sink and trap in my old studio in the city which was connected to city sewer. Hubby balked at installing a similar setup when we built the new studio six years ago. Here we are on a septic system and also because the basement (where the studio is) is below grade, we have a sump pump that pushes waste up to the septic system. Both the sump and the septic tank are points where escaping and settling clay sediment could cause us grief. As a result a I end up with a collection of smelly muck buckets here, there, and everywhere in the studio - mostly because I am terribly lazy about hoisting them and taking them out to the back forty to dump.

Gardener hubby has several rain barrels hanging about his veggie garden. I was on the back deck having an afternoon beverage a few weeks back when I locked in on one of the rain barrels, went 'hmmmm' and a clay trap plan was hatched ..... why not put a 5 gal bucket, with holes drilled near the top, inside a rain barrel. I ran it by hubby, and in his wonderful way, he made it happen. The hardest part was getting him to give up the rain barrel ;)

Now I can step out the door, dump my clay water into the barrel (using my handy dandy milk jug funnel) and be done with it. As the water filters off the pail and into the barrel, we will use the barrel tap to water the deck plants ... brilliant!

Do you want fries with that?

Good Morning! ... I've been hanging about the studio water cooler, coffee in hand, with my fellow potter bloggers, as I do most mornings. It's so good to have you all out there. I sure appreciate the company!

I haven't posted in ages ... mostly because this blog is intended to be a potters blog, not a Mom blog, a Gramma blog, or an old lady blog ;) and in spite of my best efforts to be in the studio as much as possible, life does get in the way ... and thank goodness for that!

This week I am continuing to work on 'orders' .... or as I tell my customers - "I don't do 'orders' but I do take 'requests'" - maybe 'cause the name change takes the pressure off when I don't deliver as I should ;). Me and Ms Request have a love/hate relationship. I love it when my customers like my pots so much they ask for more. I'm not so fond of the trying to replicate either something I've made before or something new as seen thru someone else's eyes. And of course, Mr Murphy (and his Law) hangs out with Ms Request and together they are a pain in the ass! Here's the havoc they've wreaked in the last couple of months (with my help of course ;)):

.... why do I always run out of a glaze just as a customer asks me can you make a few more of X. Inevitably, the new batch of glaze does not match the colour of the old .... ingredients differ slightly depending on supplier and/or age, and old buckets of glaze diminish in quantity and quality of ingredients over time. I now have plates that do not match bowls. I guess I am making new bowls to match the plates.

.... Ms R & Mr D hanging with the kiln god(s) .... I put three perfectly good garden lanterns in a bisque fire and only one lived to tell the tale

.... in a post many moons ago I moaned about a request for named mugs that I ended up doing 3 times before I got it right. Yeah, well, the customer has come back asking for 4 more - go figure, she's a patient lady. I was being very careful with every step. When it came time to put the handles on, I checked a previous pic (below) to see what side the name went on. Yup, it goes there ... . I was cleaning the handle joins the next day and realized ... you idiot! ... NOT there! (as in opposite the 'name tag') I am not going to do these again. I, (and hopefully, the customer), will consider these four to be the ambidextrous version!

First order (3rd Attempt)

.... time .... the bane of my existence. I always figure I have way more of it than I actually have or I way underestimate how long it will take to do something and as a result never deliver on time (and I also drive my very time conscious hubby, nuts!). But, apparently there's a name for that .... Last week, Lori Watts, from Fine Mess Pottery, posted a reference to Hofstadters Law. Whew! .... good to know ... not that it fixes my problem but now, at least, I have something to blame ;))

This is the last week of throwing my most pressing orders ... er .. requests. I am leaning towards making this a short run, firing and glazing them all right away, so I can deliver and then get back to the fun of making whatever the heck I want!