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:)

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

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.