The New Plan

After trying to have another baby for the last few years, since realizing that our first was such an amazing little person, we are finally pregnant. I spent the first three months very sick to my stomach and with a powerful case of narcolepsy. 

The studio had slowed down to a crawl as I fell asleep at the lunch table, while patting totty's back for his nap, stirring soup, knitting and of course immediately after dinner if I was magically able to make or eat a meal. Now I am back to a bit more of my old pottery self. 

(not my car, haha)

I have let a small stack of custom orders pile up and really get stale before I threw them and it was such a delight to finally glaze and fire a whole batch yesterday. It was our 12 year wedding anniversary and hubby spent several hours on his bike in the glorious weather with his pals and then spent the afternoon with tot so I could finish the orders and load the kiln. We are so lucky to be still negotiating well and happily married despite the statistics (technically i am gen X and he is gen Y so the numbers for wedded bliss are pretty dismal for our cohort). 

A lot of time has been spent training other volounteers to take over all the jobs that I have been doing at the HUB Studio for the last year. When we opened to doors, it was just Franziska and I and there was a lot to do with class registrations, accounting, website, forms and actually teaching. I have tried to seek out people who are really happy doing certain chores that suit them in some way. We have a clay reclaiming voloutneer who is happy for the heavy work in exchange for free access to the studio, she is also perfectly wary of the dangers of clay dust and wears a mask to protect herself.

We found someone that used to do all the books for her own business and was more than happy to take over the money flow and tracking from my rather rudimentary system. I trust her completely with every penny and at our first deadline meeting when we all had to have our receipts in and she would write the cheques, she was prepared and things went smoothly. I have also found someone who will plan and coordinate all the open studio volounteers, someone to do the website and promotions and have a team to keep the glazes in order (don't get me started on the complexities of a glaze committee in a community setting :(

As for the new plan, I am at the Farmers' Market on Saturdays, 9-2. I am doing Arts on the Avenue in Ladysmith next Sunday 10-4. I will be at Christmas Chaos in November here in Duncan and will likely have my Solo Show at the HUB as the Rec Room is just a perfect space to hold a pottery show. I moved the show around a bit over the last few years and I think that if I set the date and print out 

 and hand out post card invites early on so folks can plan to attend it should be okay even though it's out of town a few minutes. We shall see. Of course, hubby will have to do ALL the work for my show as I can barely lift much now and we are just halfway through so I will need to make the plan with him first. 

**on a random miserable note, some asshat stole my handmade chiminea from my front steps, i made it years ago and fired it in the tozan kiln costing over $100 plus an entire night of loading wood into the kiln, i coil built it and then beat it round and built the stand and flange, needless to say i am still very mad that it's gone**

Bad Firing JuJu

Over the holidays, my sister was here from Edmonton and we were out around the valley biking and hiking and kicking butt for ten days. She has a little studio in her basement that she would love to spend more time in and needed a little mud under her fingernails to get her going again.

I thought it was a good idea to fire up my little kiln with a bisque load to see if the repair in the element would work or not. The kindly gentleman, who came to help figure out what the reason was for the kiln not reaching temperature, pulled the broken element pieces out and put in a patch. Now the reason I knew that the kiln wasn't working was because I keep exact firing records so it was super obvious when the firing time went from the consistant 12 hours to 14 or 16 plus! 

The bisque fired up well and my sister was in charge of loading the whole thing while I guided and corrected and made suggestions. It kept to the ideal range of timing and the bisqueware we unloaded the next day was mature and clean looking in colour. The element patch looked unchanged at 1945ºF.

So, based on our little experiment, we waxed and glazed those pots (that were almost all made specially for customer orders) and reloaded the kiln for a glaze fire. I set the dials to 5 and left the lid and holes open to let the steam out for the first few hundred degrees. 

I turned the controller up and closed her up for the top end of the firing cycle. Later that night, I came down to see how the firing was going by looking at the heat colour leaking out. I was not impressed with the heat colour so I added another 2 hours to the overall timer to give a bit more total time to reach 2232ºF. 

It did not shut off in the 14 hours I had put as the max time, adusted up by 2. I added more time. Then I started to get a little freaked out as the heat colour looked right but it hadn't shut off. I knew that if I touched the kiln sitter it would be ruined as the delicate metal rod that reaches into the inferno bends if you look too closely at it when it's that hot. I didn't want to shut of the kiln with the timer because I have come to fundamentally trust the kiln sitter system. Heat melts a little block and as the block deforms the little rod moves which releases the trip mechanism. Pretty neat and simple technology from a few hundred years ago. 

I did a few chores around the studio and came back. The kiln sitter was starting to move so I sat down on the dirty outdoor rug in the carport, and watched like I used to in the old days before I purchased and learned to trust the new bigger kiln that is computer controlled. It did finally trip and I stood up, stretched and went to bed. 

The first shot from the top showed a very dark version of my regular water glaze, this is a bit ominous and I was a bit realieved to see that the child's work was okay.

Shot two revealed the section of the kiln that is missing elements, by design, so it is going to be the cool level. The glazes in this level were closest to how my kiln normally fires.

This shot is a close up of the kiln element section that was replaced. Clearly the element patch that was able to handle 1945º was not able to withstand 2232ºF and burned out like a shooting star. 

the photo above is what they are supposed to look like

these pots were over fired, dead sexy

lower shelf, over fired and still dead sexy

These were the hottest, and super dead freaky sexy.

None of them are for sale as I have kept them for my own kitchen and I don't sell flawed bowls (they have little volcanoes with sharp edges that i will smooth off by hand). 

The next time I blog about this kiln it will be another photo stream including how I changed the elements, where I got them from, how much they cost, how long it took to complete the refit and I promise to leave out all the curse words:)

December

Hello Everyone,

The studio is still open and stocked up for great presents! Call ahead if you want to be sure there is someone here to let you in or just pop by and ring the doorbell and if we are home we can let you in the tiny gallery:) 

call for address and directions or google trial by fire pottery

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the photo is of sunlight bouncing onto the wall from my beautiful pottery jug

Day to Day

this studio pottery life has seen such changes in the past year. our little giant baby has found a way to be covered in clay for the first time today as he was crawling around and got stuck in the shelving beside my wheel. his squeal brought swift action from potter momma and i rescued and reassured him without thought of my muddy hands. daddy noticed right away when he got home from his ride that giant totty was showing signs of getting a little too close to the mud. 

we negotiate about everything. i can 'buy' some blocks of time from parental duty during naps and by trading time with race-training-hubby. i buy small blocks of time from totty by doing chores in the garden and yard later in the day so he sleeps a bit earlier, that way i can spend some time later in the evening down in the studio.

today i threw a huge bowl (5 kilos) in two stages-- one while he was amusing himself on the floor with the spatula--and two while totty and daddy were having special play time just before he went to work---the clay was centred in the first sitting and then thrown a few hours later and even later yet i went back down and took it off the wheel and trimmed the bowls from yesterday.

such a sweet life

Where do pots come from?

A conversation with a dear friend the other day has stuck in my head. They asked if I was quitting work to go on a maternity leave or if my husband was "making" me go back to work in the studio. Now, as a feminist, my husband has never tried to be 'in charge' of me or of our marriage. As a feminist, I do what I need and/or want to do and always have.
When I decided to become single with house payments in my early twenties, I realized that my crappy job wasn't going to cover my expenses. So I asked everyone who came into the gas station if they knew of a better job that I could apply for. It was the start of my oil-patch working life which paid very well and made me eligible for the loan that I needed to take over complete ownership of my house.
When I realized, in university, that my awful mark (B-) in statistics meant that I would likely not be able to get into medical school, I reassessed my life with hubby's help and decided to try to become a firefighter instead. This lead to years of physical fitness demands that would make an average person quake in their boots!
When Dave and I figured out that we would starve to death long before he finished his nursing degree, I decided to get a job driving a school bus which provided my class two license and was a paying job which left lots of time for working on my fitness in preparation for the CFD entrance exams. It also had the added bonus of paying for food!
On the other hand, when my soul fell out of my body, hubby was completely willing to scrape me up off the pavement, pack up the house, sell it, find a new one on the island, move us in, find a job here, and love me back to life. This re-finding my soul took at least a year, surely a year of hell for mr. who had to leave for work everyday and hope I would still exist when he got home.

This is the long way around to saying that pots flow out of me. I think about them and work through ideas all the time. I am also very aware of how the world works and I have agreed to pay for a certain portion of the costs of living that I consume. Pottery is both a calling and a job, it exists from passion and out of a need to provide for myself and my new family.

Full Swing Summer Solstice

Last night was the summer solstice which was a chance for me to spend some quality time in the garden working on building up the rows for this planting season. I threw the bowls that I had prepared the clay for and then escaped the studio for the garden at 6pm.

The most glorious evening started with such a lather that the black jogging visor I was wearing slurped up enough sweat to create a white salt accumulation!! I worked up soil until 10pm and wouldn't quit until the rows were finished. I put some plastic sheets over the peas that are always a very tasty snack for the apparently ravenous local birds and used unbreakable clumps of clay (i mean that i wailed away on them with the sharp end of my hoe for a while and then gave up) to stabilize the sides of the built up rows. The clay (very funny i know) clumps hold water well and help the soil from being washed away into the walking lane.

At 10pm when I finally couldn't see to walk around any more, I sat down and listened to the neighbourhood. When evening shift dave came home, I was scraping and scrubbing my soil blackened feet and feeling very happy at my effort.

Today brought a warm wind and sunny skies to greet the new season and such a combination tends to dry my fresh pots quickly so I am off to trim them now.
The Markets (Duncan Farmers' Market & Sidney Evening Market) are running along well and we had yet another new vendor adjudication monday that went really smoothly with a lot of quality vendors wanting in.

As a conclusion of sorts, the two spare rooms (race dave's dirty room and my guest/knitting/sewing room) were completed on time as the folks were walking through the door who had to then help with the construction mess and cutting dust that blanketed everything. I will put up a photo or two of the new rooms once I catch up with some chores that have piled up.

Any local potters who might read this blog, I am going to the supply shop early next week and could take someone or bring something back for you, email me if you'd like to partake.

Kurt Knock Photography

I am applying to the Ladysmith Arts on the Avenue Show, that will happen August 28th, 2011 and I needed to put together a very nice, professional portfolio for the jury process that is happening this coming weekend. So I called Kurt.

We had chatted a few weeks ago, and looked through some photos of pottery from books and magazines and there were very few that I liked. The graded background and lack of shadow or light makes the pots seems to be from some other planet where the basic laws of earth are not in effect. My simple, honest work needs to be in some sort of context in the pictures because when you buy a casserole dish, it is used to make a bubbling brie with ginger, apricot jam and roasted garlic, so you need to hold and interact with the pots. All my mugs go to new homes where they are embraced every day and usually washed out while they are still warm and put in the drying rack so they are ready for the afternoon tea or coffee!

Kurt showed up on time (an excellent starting point amongst us artists) and was very professional about setting up the living room into foreground and background. I was unable to see how the photos would reflect their surroundings but he was careful to look through the camera and then make adjustments to the room.

I, of course, was wearing the usual clay clothes which includes at this time of year, a long sleeved shirt that I cut the sleeves of so that they are just the right length and don't get messy while I throw and wedge clay. Perhaps not very photogenic. The pants have built in grub as they are worn until they disintegrate and the over shirt I was wearing is a worn out, sun bleached colour of red and proclaims loudly in 2 inch letters that I am a "VEGGIE VALET".

I went and got a few fabrics from my closet and asked if they would look nice through the view finder. We decided on a dark long sweater that I had made (knit with 2.5mm needles and took me a year to knit up) and some nice blue jeans that fashionable (great taste in clothes) dave had picked out for me.

It was the fastest morning I had spent in a while and I brought upstairs all sorts of pots that I really loved for him to shoot. I was so excited that Kurt was able to see the glazes and shapes AND capture them in the camera. I see the beauty but when I take a picture there are so many mistakes that no one even sees the pots.

He was working on the shot with me in it for a while and I'm sure he is very used to people being self conscious when the camera is out, but I had no intention of being in any of the shots. There are some really great shots that include parts of me and I felt very respected and actually had some fun (so many women are afraid of having a picture of them taken that looks really bad). There was one shot of me looking down that I balked at and he hit delete instantly which made me feel safe! (oops my ego is showing, haha)

He let me know when he had taken all the shots he could in the time and I started to put the price stickers back on them and take them all back down into the gallery. When I was done running up and down the stairs he had put all his camera equipment away, packed it into the van, and left to go home and work on the editing. I wrote him a cheque and prepared to wait until the last possible minute to get a copy of them so I could run down to the photo print place and run some off for the jury next week.

Kurt worked on them right away and emailed me a few that day then stopped by the next day with a CD of his favorites! He also explained a lot of options for processing and empowered me to try my hand at building my own photo book online, which I did (it took 4 hours) and now I am just waiting for the printing to be done.

I can't say enough about how comfortable I was with Kurt in our home, how beautiful the photos of my artwork are, how professional and respectful the process was and how much I am looking forward to using his images as the public face of my art in the years to come. I have ideas of all kinds from business cards to postcards inviting people to my Annual Solo Show, that I want to make with the new pictures.

I am currently waiting for the photo book but you don't have to. I will post a shot or two a week over time and credit his with his name. You'll be amazed and see what I see (but can't capture) when I look at my own work. Thank you Kurt.

The last few days before santa

Today was a great day with a few groups of people calling and making a time to come and see the gallery for a few gifts and gift certificates for lessons. It is always nice to have people come to the studio as it means that all of my work is on display with the new lights that I finished installing and the customers can take their time to pick up each pot and find the perfect one for themselves or a friend.

(the photo is of some flowers sweet dave brought for me, put in a vase that i made and put them on the wheel for me to find when i got home)((ps YES my studio floor is almost always THAT clean, i love my lungs!!!))

It is always nice to give the customer a little break on the price as I am also not paying to attend a Show or Market and of course I don't have to haul my work around town and the Valley. The one light that is in the gallery is poor despite any bulb that I can find (of course the one I have is very efficient but the sconce seems to contain most of it) so I was moaning about it to a friend and she suggested that I string a plain set of white xmas lights around the shelves and turn them on as needed.

I bought a box of lights and gave it a try! What a difference the lights make to the pots, now they sparkle with little points of light and it was worth the hours of nailing those tiny nails into the shelf supports and then bending them all over to hold the lights away from sight. The strings of lights are all tucked away and only a few bulbs are showing which look nice too.

I wanted to update today to let people know that they can call me (([746-6893]))to make an appointment to view the TINY gallery or just stop by Hawkes Blvd (off Somenos Road) as I only leave the studio a few times a week.

See you soon, thanks for all the local purchases this year and I can't wait to start making my new work for 2011, onward and pot-ward! The mud kind not the combustible stuff, hahaha.

The Week of my Solo Show

Amazingly the rain has changed to a bright, sharp crunchy state that sticks to everything!! It is making the roads quite challenging and a lot of confused people are driving around faster than usual and more aggressively as this reduces collisions and deaths, but it puts my cycling a little higher on the insurance rating. (hahaha)

I am putting up the Show Posters all over town at Coffee on the Moon and Black Coffee at Whippletree where they graciously babysit a small family of mugs until the public decides to adopt one of them, then they babysit my money until I ride down there on my bike to pick it up! It doesn't get better than that!!!!

I am looking for paper bags for the show this weekend and am madly packing up EVERYTHING in the gallery. There is a gorgeous huge jug that I have never taken out of the house that will be packed up and be taken to my Solo Show for the public to see.

I have already been working on different pots for next year. I threw a slab on the wedging table and slumped it over a 9X13 glass pan and then built a box into a slab/slump mould and then built up another baking pan over that. They flip over off the form by holding a ware board on top then flipping them over quickly while considering the weight carefully with the hand that holds the top board.

I will take lots of photos of the Show and put them up right away!! I hope to see you all at the Show this weekend and I don't expect everyone to buy something as it means a lot to me for people to attend the event as you would any other art show.

Philanthropy, Cobble Hill Cross Country Mountain Bike Race 2010

First, I would like to reference the photo here from a local mountain bike race that we held this weekend on Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island. I have been involved with this group of cyclists for as many years as I have been on this glorious rock/island. They have encouraged me up the mountains and laughed when I ride off into the bushes and fall over from my own uncontrollable laughter. They have also straightened my handle bars and checked for broken bones when I have really crashed hard and stayed down for a while!
I am honoured to create the four, first prize beer steins for this race, which I volounteer and really enjoy making. I also have had a few really cute comments about trying to win a stein during the rest of the year when I have met up with people who were at the race and will be returning. The reactions that I got from both the race organizers and the racers was uplifting and humbling, I can't wait to make some more work for the next race we hold.
Donating pottery, in this case, warms my heart and makes me smile in the studio on a sunny afternoon, as I am trying to use a syringe full of runny slip clay to turn a line and blob of clay into a bicycle shape that will still look like a bike after it is covered in glaze and fired twice.
Now that is a donation! It starts in my soul and I actually laughed out loud (yes, as always, I was alone in the studio at the time) making the steins and remembering the precious afternoons I have spent on the mountains: riding, watching Dave race, cleaning up after the races and leaning on the car after a good ride hashing over how I finally rode that bridge or log that I have been scared of for--ever!
This year's Cobble Hill Cross Country Mountain Bike Race drew out an elite crowd, some pictured above, the likes of Melanie McQuaid and Drew McKenzie and other famous racers including Wendy Simms and Norm Thibault who showed the adoring crowd what real mountain cyclists look like in action, not the bumping into logs and bouncing back and "oooofffffff" noises that we normally see (looking down, that is, hahahahahhaa).
The little bike club that I happily support is not only a non profit but allowed Dave and I to take the cheque for their donation to the food bank here in Duncan, and give it to the manager there and get a little sunshine in return from her, she must be 80 years old (oh to be so involved when I'm 80!!).

Fresh Teapot with slip clay decoration

Photo was taken by Sarah Hall. Her photostream is availlable at: (lots more pottery pictures there along with her wonderful pics!!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31044915@N05/

The teapots continue. This teapot was just out of my "damp shelving" that is completely sealed up in plastic to slow the drying time of the fresh work. In the summer it is like a desert around here and then in the winter the rains keep the ambient humidity between 70 and 100 percent. The teappots are a lot of work with the thrown bodies and lids on day one with the spouts thrown and handles pulled on day two for them to be trimmed and built up on day three. They are very popular at the Market and I pack them very carefully to get there. The big teapots get an extra, small handle to help the wrists of my customers with more friends than forearm muscle! (hahaha)

Saturday Market Rant

I spent 2 hours pricing my gallery full of pottery in prep for the start of my market season, with this injustice working around and around in my mind. Generally, I have a good grasp of my thought processes and can keep a lid on the things that bother me by writing about them and then going for a run or a bike ride. It almost always works but when things happen that aren't fair (shame on my parents for telling me things should be fair or even that such a thing exists, hahaa) it sticks in my head. Well this is one of those things and as the leader of the Market I was powerless to negotiate any reduction in fees at all or convincing anyone to justify their price.



It is amazing to me how many hours we have put in to get the Market ready to start up at new season tomorrow. More meetings than I can count with all sorts of people from the City and the DBIAS to the committee level within the Board of the Market to the newspaper reporter on Wednesday after our landmark deal to pay rent for using the Square downtown and Ingram Street. I watched my hair turned grey as we tried to negotiate with the board of the 'bia'. It's never a good time to give the meaning of a word in a rant but negotiating doesn't include standing on a tiny soap box and repeating 'give us all the money we want' over and over.



The market group wanted to reduce the rent that we pay for the time we use the Square on Saturdays as it is pretty high so we looked at the rent that other Markets around BC pay and collected the numbers. Whistler closes their beautiful shopping area to cars and hosts the lovely Market and they don't charge anything!! The reasons they gave were that they really appreciate all the public attention and attendance that the market brings into their midst that would otherwise go elsewhere if the Market weren't working hard to draw people in. The Moss Street Market closes a city street and also pays nothing in rent to anyone for doing so, again the idea is that it is a way to create urban culture and an interface between the people who grow food locally and make art and crafts with the general public, in that case city dwellers. Cedar Market also pays nothing and the Crow and Gate Pub, that allows the market to use the land in front of their pub for free, has tracked a 21% increase in sales since the Market joined them, mostly, I would imagine, due to word of mouth and advertising with the title of the business appears as the location for the Market on every publication.



We also found out that other markets around do pay rent and that ranged from 'less than $100 at the waterfront parkade in Nanaimo' to around $3000 for a Vancouver Market that shares signage costs and pays for a street closure application, like those for parades, to the City. The deal that I just signed as the president of the DFM was for thousands of dollars than that. Maybe one of the smallest cities in the world has incredibly high costs (?)or maybe we are being robbed at gun point. The Market is expecting to be around one hundred vendors strong this summer and there are very few places that we could physically go as we consume 100,000 square feet plus customer and vendor parking. This has us up against the wall for a minimally functional location and we have gone so far as to rent porta-potties in the past (ug!) So we agreed to pay.



The question of course is what are we paying for, which is a very hard question to answer. We are a completely independent body that has a half time employee to interact with anyone involved, from bookings and customers to insurance and website updates. We also have 8 dedicated board volounteers who do everything else from adjudicating new vendors to writing all the forms required to run a huge non profit group like ours. Back to the question though, and it is formally worded: 'provide via the city, power and water...ensure public washrooms are open....ensure garbage bins were delivered by city....allow use of signs....provide, from the city, parking authorization...provide access to electrical panel....not let other groups disturb the market while in session...'. Not to be an ass but, those things are mainly intangible and do not cost $400 to $500 dollars a day! No matter which form of accounting you might subscribe to. It breaks down into the physical unlocking of four doors; two washrooms, electrical room and storage room.



Having said all that, the average business that makes money using the downtown daily all year only pay around $5000 in taxes that would pay the people to water the trees, collect the garbage, sweep the streets and clean the washrooms. Again, how does the market pay 'zillions' more than that to use the Square and Ingram Street for ~40 days, again forty DAYS!?!?



There is one small part of this story that seems like even the slightest tiny ray of light and that is that the agreement includes a maximum amount of money after which we don't pay any more. This is new this year and although the cap is exorbitant, at least it exists. Like I said, a very small ray. Also, I have learned a lot about dealing with people. I used to have a job (yeah I know, you thought I was always a potter) where there was a evening poker night held in some places. The guys I worked with convinced me to play cards with them and quickly realized it simply wouldn't work. A few hands in, they saw that if I had really good cards I would bet (pennies) and if I had bad cards I wouldn't. If any of you have played poker, one honest person at the table kinda ruins it. This, as I have learned, is not the best way to negotiate with people who have you by the toe over an erupting volcano, however, I have not learned the right way to deal there. I still think that the threat and counter threat approach is not a good idea, as some people were thinking of having a protest with tractors and goats in the downtown if there was no agreement, see how much the street sweeper bill would be after that!!

Ride My Bicycle Up Haleakala

The photo on my profile might require a little explanation. That is the top of Haleakala, a volcano on Maui that I rode the bicycle shown, up! Dave and I went to Maui in February for a training camp for his triathlon season, I came along as the "water-girl" someone had to do it, so I graciously volounteered (and shed some unwanted volume to fit into a swimsuit). The deal was that he would rent me a bike and support me for the day (or days, hahahaa) it would take me to climb this, the third hardest road climb in the world.
I trained a lot, I started running (sore hip and knees) and cycling on the road more than my usual commute to Coffee on the Moon to drop off mugs, and riding my kona king kikapu up Mt. Prevost (behind our house) a couple times a week.
I started at the base of the climb (not at the ocean in Piai) and climbed for 32 km (20 miles) about 8,000 feet and all in under 4 hours. It really wasn't that bad (yeah yeah) and no one was around when I finally put in my ipod and sang and cried through the pain. I just took things at my own pace and spent an hour riding with a very nice man from Seattle, but that last stretch between the visitor parking lot and the top was HELL!! The road pitches up dramatically, keep in mind I had been climbing for three and a half hours at this point. Dave was dizzy at that elevation (10,000 feet) taking pictures. I must have looked and sounded really bad because I was hanging off my bars gasping for air! He encouraged me to sit up a little to fill my lungs better, sadly there is only so much oxygen at that elevation and I had to keep turning those pedals over!
The photo proves it though, and he drove me back down from the top as I was seeing stars and was hypoxic (he says I was yelling and riding around at the top but I don't remember it, must have been the lack of O2, haha) It was a great break from the endless days in the pottery studio and Dave got all the riding in that any human could do in 7 days, save the day he spent supporting me, and we definitely saw the sights at the beaches too!

Pottery at the Farmer's Market

Photo by Sarah Hall

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31044915@N05/

Trial By Fire Pottery is starting back up with the Farmer's Market in Duncan, BC on the 20th of March. I will be at the market on saturdays from 9-2 selling my functional stoneware pottery to the public and the gallery is still open if you want to call for an appointment. I am very excited to see what people think of my new oval baking dishes, they are a 'stretch' for me from the round form but I think they look great.

I might be away from the Market for a few days this July if I am accepted into the summer workshop that I have applied for on Saltspring Island but I will let people know if I will be away. I would also like to thank Sarah for putting my website together for me, my photos pale alongside her masterpieces! (see the link to her flickr account)

One change at the Farmer's Market (i know the apostrophe is wrong in the name) is that I am now the President of the Market with a Board of 8 and an employee, so if I look a little tired it's just because I've lost a little sleep over things. Details will follow, trust me!