The Dark Time

 I once read a theory that sometime in our evolutionary history, humans (or pre-humans) were a hibernating species. In late December, this theory rings true to me.

At this time of year I am reminded that I am a mammal, safe in its den; warm, with plenty of food, surrounded by other soft, warm mammals. The ancient lemur in my brain insists that there's nothing to be gained by moving from this space, until the return of the light. Unlike our evolutionary ancestors, I even have streaming video!
Every year I have a long list of things I hope to accomplish...(read more)

Christmas COokies 2024

Some folks are really into Christmas. Some of this year's Christmas cookies. The bottom photo - the birch trees - is the "official" design of 2024, the one I made a couple dozen of & will send to a few far-away friends. 

I enjoy royal icing decorating, and I always think I will make designs for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, but honestly it's a production! It takes several hours over at least two days. Usually when those events come around I find I am too busy with my classes & studio work. I do have an ideas for a Mother's Day design, inspired by Renoir. We'll see if that happens of if it stays safely in my brain where I can't make a mess of it. 

Anyway! I haven't been doing much work in the studio, as while my classes are on holiday break I catch up on all the stuff I put off the rest of the year: cookies, soap, home improvement projects. I also work on my annual aspiration list for the upcoming year; this year it's 25 for 2025. Funny, but last year I had a hard time coming up with 24; this time I am having to edit & whittle & prioritize to keep the list to 25. 
You'll hear more about my list during the Week of Reflection, between Christmas & New Year's, when I have time to slow down enough to think. 

Happy holidays, my friends! I foresee some bumpy road ahead but we'll do our best. 

Three Days in the Studio

 Yesterday, today, & tomorrow

• Yesterday: I unloaded the kiln, discovered that the ware, while still quite saleable, was oxidized & pale. Spent most of the day ruminating on how that came to be, and I think I figured it out! I lit the burners to start the candle extra-early on Wednesday night. By the time I swung the door shut, I'd worked two 12-hour days, I was exhausted, & I just wanted to take a hot bath & get into my jammies. Normally I'd light the candle around 10 or 11 pm. 
  Also different: I turned on the burners proper later than usual! Normally I'd set an alarm for like 3 am, so the smoke generated by the burning wax would be cleared by the time the sun rose, so as not to alarm my neighbors. This time there wasn't much wax in the kiln, and no one wants to get up at 3 am if they don't have to, so I didn't. I slept til 6-ish. 
  All that means that the propane tanks were open for 6 or 7 hours longer than usual. I think this caused the propane to lose pressure as ^10 was falling, which accounts for the stall. I don't know why there was still back pressure, but I did notice it was much more transparent than I'd expect. I think there was just not enough gas coming through the line to keep the kiln in reduction, or to let it climb in temperature. 
  I feel much better about all this now! It's an unsettling feeling, to have something so crucial go wrong, and no explanation for it. 
• Today: Today is grinding & sanding; sorting, pricing, & packing. Some ware will fill orders, some will be delivered to consignment accounts, and some will be held back for the Portland Pottery Holiday show that opens this weekend. 
• Tomorrow: tomorrow I get to make the pretty drive to Wilton, in the mountains of Maine, to deliver mugs to a new account: Chaos Coffee! I'm excited about this, as I have a soft spot for small-town independent coffee shops. They are often hubs for local community. Also a fan of good coffee! Then Monday night is my last class of the session.

After the opening of the Portland Pottery event, then I can start getting in the holiday spirit! Until then it's gonna be work work work. I've got plans, tho! I'm already working on this year's cookie design, and I ordered some new soap scents. 😊

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Well, I unloaded the firing at zero-dark-thirty this morning! Just when you think you know what you're doing, the kiln will surprise you - or at least, me. 

I knew this firing was different than the most recent firings before it. The back-pressure flame was very transparent, even once the sun had set, which usually makes the flame more visible. Even if I pushed the damper all the way in, the flame didn't get any longer, although I did get back pressure out the burner ports, which would indicate a very heavy reduction. So, weird mixed signals all around. The kiln also stalled for nearly two hours with ^11 bending on top & ^10 just barely tipping on bottom. Nothing I did would move those cones! Eventually I had to turn the kiln off, mostly out of concern that a long hold at 10/11 would cause warping. 

Small blessing: that didn't happen. In fact I had only one second in the entire kiln, and that a very minor flaw: one mug got a piece of wadding stuck inside, but it was a very small piece and I can make the resulting flaw almost invisible with my trusty Dremel tool. 

But the pots are very pale, obviously oxidized. I am always hoping for that golden tan that is a common soda-fired surface on b-mix, and which I got quite successfully in the last two firings. I'm not too disappointed - they aren't what I hoped for, but they have a delicate prettiness of their own - but I am a bit worried because I don't know why this firing was different. It may be that in my efforts to tip those cones during the stall I inadvertently slipped the fire into an oxidizing state? I feel like I would have noticed that! But I don't have a better explanation.  

Anyway, that's clay life for ya! I've never been one to hide my errors or pretend to perfection. I think it's important for students & early-career potters to know, they aren't screw-ups! Clay is just like that; there are so many variables that we all get unexpected results sometimes. 

If you want to see the pieces in real life, many will be at the Portland Pottery Holiday Show, December 13th - 24th, from 9 am - 7 pm. Also, you are my invited guests to the opening night party, Thursday December 12th from 5 - 9 pm. I'll be tending bar in my festive finery! 

By The Hum of the Burners

 

When the kiln is firing, I usually don't make pottery. I don't want to start a new making cycle before the old one is finished, and I know that tin a couple of days I will need the studio clear to start the sorting, pricing, and packing process. I find other tasks to occupy my time, like making soap. 

I don't make soap as much as I used to; at one time I thought I would have a secondary business. The decision not to monetize - to let soaping remain a hobby - meant I would only be making a few batches a year. Yesterday was one of those times! This is an old favorite: After The Storm. It has a fresh, ozone-y scent with a hint of violet. 

I also used up the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers in a turkey pot pie! I love pot pie but don't have the knack for crust, so I rarely make it - store-bought crust puts it outside my usual per-meal budget. In this case the crust was the extra in a packet I bought for a pear-Gorgonzola tart I made for the holiday meal, so it counts as a leftover, too! 

Up next: the Portland Pottery Holiday show, the delivery of various orders & inventory, and, by tradition, the Week of Reflection. 

New Tool! The Bat System

 I've been enjoying a new (to me) decorating technique: a heavy slip applications textured by hand. For some shapes this means throwing on a bat, even for small things, because there's nowhere to touch the pot that wouldn't mar the slippy surface. Bats take up a lot of space on my limited shelving, and I only have maybe 12? I needed a different solution. 
Enter the Bat System! The small, pop-out bat in the center allows me to use shelf space more efficiently while still not touching the pot when I remove it from the wheel. Here's a little video I made, or the slip technique & using the bat system to get the pot off the wheel:

Cat Dish Update! FOUR kitties

 The cat dish fundraiser was the most successful yet! We raised enough to sponsor four adoptable cats from the Kennebec Valley Humane Society, all of whom have been at the shelter for quite some time! Here are the sponsored cats:

 

Kaiyro is 13 years old & FIV positive, which means he has to either be an only cat or share a home with other FIV positive kitties.

 

Minow is 14 years old & a shy, independent guy!

 

Scribe is only 3 but also has FIV. I know that distrustful look, as I have had kitties with that expression...it's so rewarding when they finally trust you.

 

Annie is 11, sweet & timid. She would prefer to be the only pet in the home.

All of these babies are now free to adopt, which we hope will get them into forever homes sooner, and it's all thanks to you!

In other news, I have been working hard in the studio this week - the holiday season is coming up! Thanks for bearing with me as I get new content created.

At Last, The Cat Dishes!

ETA: In just  few short hours, these sold out! We're going to be sponsoring THREE adoptable kitties. I'll share next week once I have visited KVHS to see who most needs help. Thank you!!  

Longtime readers know, I am a cat lady! (I'll never understand why that is an insult. What, I'm too loving? Too content? I don't get it.) I can't adopt them all, but I can help shelter cats find homes. To that end, I occasionally hold a little fundraiser: I make a bunch of cat dishes & offer them online. If I can sell 10, I can sponsor a cat's adoption fee at Kennebec Valley Humane Society. This year I have my eye on Minow, a 14-yr-old male cat, and Heidi, an 10-yr-old female with FiV. 

If you want to help me help the kitties, you can shop at this link. Thanks for looking !

The Week of Tools

 

I didn't mean for this to be the week of tools; it just shook out that way.

It started in one of my classes, when a student brought in a piece that had run badly in the kiln, with the bottom ground & smoothed beautifully. She had achieved this minor miracle using Diamondcore's grinding bats. I started musing about possibly getting a set myself - although, the way I fire, glaze runs and sharp bottoms are uncommon - when another student took me aside & offered to pay for half of the set if I would grind a bunch of bowls of hers that ran, that she was especially disappointed with. I took the deal & BOOM! there's tool number one.

Except.
Using those grinding bats is LOUD. And slow. And about a thousand times harder than just using a bench grinder, which I own.  I still think of it as my Dad's bench grinder...READ MORE

More fun with slip!

 

I've been doing demos for my class of a fun & spontaneous way to work with trailing slip, by applying it directly by hand. The vase above was decorated using a hand-application method. I've been having so much fun with it that I decided to created a limited line: mugs, bowls, plates, tumblers...maybe a sugar jar & butter dish. I want to keep it limited, because it sometimes happens that I get fascinated with a technique for a few months and then suddenly, abruptly lose interest in it - so I don't want to offer this to my accounts only to discover in idk March that I'm painfully bored of it! 

I've started working on how the mugs & plates will look, and I need to think about an interior glaze...maybe a periwinkle color I've gotten in the past by adding Mason stain to my basic white.

 I posted a video for paid subscribers at my Patreon page on the slip application technique. 

In other news, the firing I unloaded last Tuesday was very good! The draw rings have really evened out my game; no more over-glazed, pitted work & no more dry, gritty pots. Most of those will go to stores - I just packed up inventory for the Maine Potters Market & the gallery at Portland Pottery - but I expect to have an update to the online store this weekend.

We've been having a stretch of amazing weather this autumn here in Maine, so I'll probably take Wednesday to enjoy it with Doug. Photography Thursday, shop update maybe Friday. 

Notes from the firing

I unloaded the soda kiln this morning. (live on youtube! in a slightly less disastrous event than the first time I tried that. If you watch at the link, skip ahead six minutes. ) Good firing, with maybe six or eight flawed pieces. 

I want to jot down a couple of notes, before I forget:

• The soda glaze is almost perfect, but it was a little light in the bottom front & a little heavy in the bottom back.
• I laid ^11 down up top, halfway on the bottom, as I usually do. This may be been responsible for some warping of two slightly-thin plates. Or maybe just because they were slightly thin. 
• I had some crawling inside two pots where glaze was applied over flashing slip. It was pretty minimal, but might be a good idea to wipe any flashing slip on the inside away. 

The rest of today is grinding, pricing, sorting, and packing; tomorrow I'll photograph the pieces to list on the website. 

By the Hum of the Burners

I loaded the glaze kiln last night, placing the last cone pack around 9 pm. The firing is humming along; the kiln was in reduction by 9 am. 

I always think I am going to get so much done during the firing! Today my list looks like this:

• Taxes! I got an extension to file my taxes, because April 15th landed right in the middle of the most intense part of planning the pottery tour. I had all summer to do em but, well, you know...
• Clean studio & set up for making. Yeah, this one is not going to happen.
• Harvest herb garden & start processing. Probably not this one, either.
• Clean turtle tank! My little guy, Red, is inside until spring now. He deserves clean water. I already did this one. 

Looking at that list, I guess I better get going - especially item #1, since today is the last day I will have a chance to do it! Here are a couple more shots from the kiln. Soda spray is maybe 2 hours out.