Thursday, October 18, 2012

Red skies in the morning........

or just duck and cover.


out the back door at 6:45 a.m.   Whoa!  
This should have been yesterdays sunrise.



by the time I got back to the door for coffee...... but still red.

Monday was shipping day:  pots off to Mobilia Gallery
and 100#'s of old Foote Spod to Blue Iris Studio in Canada
Giving me more space in the shed and making 2 potters very happy. 

At ACE in Evanston, the end of August, I realized I was weary of my glazes.  NO and Shush, shush, shush!!  These are the beginnings of little rumblings that usually send me to big changes.  Sure enough I could not stop the grumblies and was in a funk in the studio.  Talk about uninspired! 

Had a kiln go down and a really bad firing so I ran to the garden like any ostrich would do, thinking Oh this will stop as you have shows and need to get in that studio.  Alas, I stayed in the garden.  A few weeks ago I stayed up to the wee hours making porcelain bowls and mugs.  And I was happy!  

Most of the glazes used on decorative pots cannot be used on functional ware so Wednesday I blew the dust of my scales and threw together 11 tests.  All the little containers were lined up and meticulously recorded; most 500 gram batches and three 1,000 batches.  If I get one good glaze out of this batch, it will be a success.  The alchemy got me fired up to attack the kiln yesterday.

 #1.  TURN THE POWER OFF!  
#2. Wrangle together the tools needed.
#3.  Go to the hardware store to replace stripped bolts....
#4.  Walk to the hardware store as truck is dead.... grrrrr..... 
#5.  Pull old elements out and wonder where all the blood was coming from.
#6.  Back to the house to wash knuckles and find bandaids.
#7.  No bandaids, duct tape knuckles; works way better than wimpy bandaids! 
#8.  Make coffee and look for great used kilns on the internet.  
#9.  Buck up, finish the coffee and dive back into that kiln. 
#10.  Stand back and flip the power the switch.  
#11.  Happy Dance around the studio and scare the pants off the dog!           

 High Studio satisfaction!

Spaghetti...... 

new elements in....

and OMG it works!   
Loaded with three shelves of tests, now I wait.

Inspired by the spaghetti in the kiln, guess what's for dinner :) 

Gotta say I am going to miss the garden.  Long days in the studio usually leave me uninspired for dinner.  I have to walk through the garden to get to the house.  Grabbed end of the year tomatoes, a handful of basil, oregano and an onion from the braid in the studio.  A bit of feta cheese and presto, dinner, good dinner. 

Now to fix the truck........ dead battery and every idiot light on the dash board is glowing.  You can only put so much tape over those blaring lights until the whole thing is taped over.   This will keep me from cracking the lid on that kiln! 

3 comments:

  1. It is a good thing you are handy!

    That kiln would have intimidated me - I'm glad you got it back together and running! Hopefully the blood loss was not too great!

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  2. First time was intimidating, second time not so much. Every step I take pictures. Hate those leftover parts at the end of the project :)

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  3. Magnificent! (As usual. :-P )

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