The rains are here. That deep, thick and warm heavy rain arrived tonight. I was outside loading my bike trailer with pottery and display elements when it started lightly and then began to really roar. An invisible flock of Canada Geese hooted and honked over our neighbourhood. The darkness swallowed their bird outlines but the noise made me stop loading the kiln and strain in the dark rain to see them.
The small kiln named Sputnik II, put in another fine firing and I was there just in time to watch the kiln sitter trip. I unloaded her and was stunned at how little work actually fits inside now that I am used to the new big kiln. I unloaded the big (yet unnamed) kiln of a bisque load on Wednesday, and counted up the pots to find that it was the largest firing yet topping out at 100 pots. The extra top shelf covered in lids and tiny bowls brought the number to a new record.
I actually have a log book of every firing and the number of pots in each, running back through the past a few years! Now that's organized....or anal but I hate that term as Freud was a cocaine drinking moron who I was forced to study during my BSc in Psychology. I also hated the statistics course that I had to take.....it seemed that the take home message was that a good number cruncher could fornicate any numerical data into whatever the people paying for the results wanted to see..... but I digress.
The shelves are starting to feel a little better. I lost a mug to the kiln a couple of nights ago but it will end up with a pretty little strawberry geranium in it and find a new life that way at my SOLO SHOW that is a month away!!!!!!!!!
The wet shelving is full with a new group of huge bowls that were thrown from 5 kilograms (about 11pounds for you yankees, haha) and they are really tricky to dry out because at some point they must be inverted once the lip is able to withstand the weight of the whole bowl. It works best to have a board ready and then hold the board and bowl together against your belly, then you hug the huge bowl towards yourself until the board can be taken out from under it and the bottom of the bowl ends up right against your belly. Then you carefully get the board ready and lay it on the lip of the bowl and holding the bowl against your body and then switch both hands to the top board. Bend your body forward until the weight comes into the board.
You might be trying to imagine this odd manoeuvre and wonder why it needs to be done this way.
A few reasons pop to mind, when I ask the amazing Dave to help with those huge bowls he starts to sweat and run away as he imagines the bowl hitting the floor and me going bananas. Also, the other reason relates to the wet weight of the bowl is too much for one hand to be under the board.
In closing, I will just say that I flip huge bowls like this all the time and if you see me walking around with a huge dried clay circle on my shirt you will now know what I have been working on.
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