July Shop Update

Spent yesterday photographing pottery, then processing the photos & creating the online listings. This is the first shop update since May, due to one damn thing after another interfering with my firing schedule! But it's up now. 🙂

A few listings I was particularly pleased with: 

• This bowl! I didn't love this bowl when I first unloaded it. I thought the gray was too dark & the contrast too harsh. Over the last few days of sanding, sorting, pricing, & packing, I kept coming back to this one. It's not harsh, I decided; it's dramatic. If I put it on a banding wheel & spin it (which I did, lol) it looks like, Sunrise, Sunset; Sunrise, Sunset. 
  
• I made a set of mugs! Not entirely on purpose; I just made a couple dozen of a similar design & 6 of them happened to match surprisingly well. I'm never trying for identical - that's a standard that we've absorbed through out machine-driven culture, & it doesn't interest me. But almost matching? That creates an interesting tension. I almost never make sets, & who knows when I'll be inspired to declare one again, so if you've been looking for a set of my mugs, now's your chance. 
  
  
  
• And, of course, the little sippers! I made so many of these. They were just too fun to stop! 
  
  
  If you are thinking of making a purchase today, you might want to become a paid subscriber to my Patreon - there's a coupon code for 10% off in the most recent post - and paid memberships start at just $1.50 a month. If you're purchasing something, that membership would pay for itself right out of the gate.

Thanks for being here & stay cool today! It's meant to be in the high 80s here in Maine with 74% humidity. It's 10 o'clock in the morning & I'm glowing like a horse! Hope it's cooler where you are. 

Pottery Stairs!

The Cony Street pottery Stairs are out! These have not made as many appearances as they do some summers - fewer class demos & the long delay in firing my own kiln mean there just weren't as many pots to sell here. I've got a good lot now, though! Local peeps can pop by, choose their pottery, & then eitehr mail me cash or a check in the provided envelope, or pay via CashApp ($FineMessPottery) or Venmo (@FineMessPottery.) 

Special Patreon perk: for subscribers at all paid levels, I will ship items from the pottery stairs! Unfortunately I do have to charge shipping, but otherwise it's the same great pricing that locals enjoy.

 

Lil Suppers are out!!

June rewards are out of the kiln & WOW are they nice ! I have more rewards than I have patrons at the Air ($25) tier, so the first 3 new patrons at that level will get an extra reward. Subscribe at this link to get yours! 

The firing overall was...good. More gray than I prefer, but nice enough, with a handful of amazing. (I feel like I say this every time! I've had maybe two firings from which the bare bmix came out that peachy-rosy-gold that I love so much but I keep trying to replicate it. Probably should start looking for a flashing slip that will give me the results I want. ) Anyway! A good firing is nothing to sneeze at. Here are some of the best pots: 

About 3/4s of the kiln already has a destination (YAY!) but expect a shop update soon. 

At Last! Image Transfer Success

 I've been trying intermittently to figure out this underglaze image transfer technique. My transferred image has always degraded badly - large sections not transferring at all, or areas turning into blobs. Recently an artist I follow on instagram - Janna Dewan, a master of image transfer - shared a brief video depicting her process. This allowed me to see what I've been doing wrong! In short: I was either trying to transfer too dry or too wet. 
The line drawing - the first layer - must get bone dry. The color layer must get bone dry. The white slip layer - the background - must dry to a leatherhard sheen. No additional water added to the newspaper, please! (I was SURE that I was supposed to saturate the newspaper with a wet sponge. Nope!) I had been missing the pony roller step. 

You can see more pics of my efforts in this post for paid subscribers at my Patreon, but tbh (lol I told you I suck at sales!) you can probably get what you need to know from Janna's video. Try it out & let me know how it goes! 

Crazy Old Life Gets in the Way

I need an uninterrupted full day - day & a half, really, counting the candle - to fire the kiln. This doesn't sound like a big ask but you'd be surprised! In addition to my scheduled classes, life often places obstacles to finding an 36 hour stretch of time. Sometimes in a good way, as when my husband has a birthday to celebrate! Sometimes in a tedious way, like auto repairs or vet visits. Sometimes it's neither good nor bad, it just is - but still makes it hard to get the firing done.

I am struggling with this right now. I have enough ware to fill the kiln. I will have enough of it glazed by tomorrow. But I can't fire the kiln on Wednesday, because I'm subbing for a class Wednesday morning. I can't do it Thursday, because I have my own class Thursday evening. (Wednesdays used to be my go-to day, but I now when I am not subbing a class I spend Wednesday mornings with my mom, who is 91, helping her with errands & tasks that are hard for her now.)  I can't do it Friday, because that is Doug's birthday, & we make a point to spend our birthdays & anniversaries doing something fun together. I might be able to do it Saturday, but I have dinner guests coming - a plan I made when I thought the firing would have been done last week, before I had the burner troubles. Sunday is open, but I hate to put it off that long. This firing was supposed to happen in June! Just seems like there is always something that takes precedence.

I suppose the answer is to give the firings a higher priority, but it's hard to choose what should go. Mom needs help, that's carved in stone. My own classes are carved in stone for now, but I suppose I could stop subbing classes - I hate to do that, though, because everybody needs help sometimes, including me. I am considering dropping my Thursday class, but I hate to do that, too - they are a fun group & an easy class to teach, and of course fewer classes means smaller paychecks, & we're struggling enough as it is. My efforts to replace that income with more flexible work have been - well, not amazing. 

I always thought things would get easier as I got older, and tbf some things have. There's no drama in my life now. I am grateful for that. But time & money? Apparently that struggle never ends. 

There's no real point to this post, just putting my frustration to words. Thanks for listening. XO

ETA: Off topic but what the hell?? Where did my blog list go

MY Ongoing Burner Adventure

Some potters are equipment enthusiasts. Like George Costanza, who always wanted to be a Civil War buff, I always wanted to be a burner nerd. But UGH. In reality, I want a burner that will just quietly keep doing its thing without any attention from me. Note to readers, if you want this kind of burner, use Venturis! These power burners are for the birds. Can't complain about the results, and they are for sure more efficient, but something goes wrong with these friggin' things a couple times a year, which is way more than I want to think about burners. I'm trying to look on the bright side - "I'm learning so much!" - but learning about stuff that bores you is just a slog. 

But slog I must. 

When I went to light the burner for Sunday's bisque, the baso valve failed. This seemd very odd to me because in my experience, basos can go for decades. This one is barely four years old. With the help of my friend Dennis Chouinard, who takes apart burners for fun, we opened up the valve & discovered one of the wires was interfering with the action if the spring inside - pretty simple fix with a pair of needle nose pliers. It also explained why the button on that valve had always been slow to pop up. Did that fix work? WELL I DON'T KNOW, DO I?? Because in all the transport & handling, we somehow effed up the function of the solenoid valve. If the baso valve is a dandelion, the solenoid is an orchid or a hybrid tea rose - look at it wrong & it gives up the ghost.

I know potters who modify their burners not to need a solenoid for this exact reason. I'm not going to do that, because it's a safety feature - its job is to sense if the power goes out, because if the blowers aren't working, the propane could ignite in the plumbing, potentially causing an explosion. If you are the sort of person who hangs out right beside the kiln for the entire firing, this is probably a reasonable thing to do! I am not: I candle overnight, when I'm obviously asleep, and sometimes I take a nap during the long climbing period between ^05 & ^6. So, while I fucking hate the solenoid (pretty sure that feeling is mutual), I wouldn't fire without it. 

Luckily I have a spare solenoid handy. Repairs are less intimidating to me once the money is already spent! My plan today is to separate the electronic part of the solenoid from the mechanical part, see if I can observe any obvious problems (lol but you never know! See baso valve, above.) If I can see & fix what's wrong, awesome! If I can't, I will replace the old electronic part with the new one. If that doesn't fix it, well, that's why I've got Dennis on speed dial. 

It's been kind of a trying couple of weeks. No pressure but if you want to make me smile (for free!) you could subscribe to my patreon page. (Seriously, though, no pressure. I post a lot there so if getting notices in your email is going to annoy you, maybe you shouldn't. Yes I suck at sales.)

ETA: Astonishingly, there actually WAS a visible cause! The timing of the failure was more or less coincidental, because when I opened it up & found a very corroded surface. I made some effort to scrub it & then thought, why? I have a brand-new one right here. I replaced the valve (well, only the electrical parts - the mechanical parts were still good), tested out the burner, and lo & behold: FIRE 

I'm not on to fire the kiln tomorrow, because I still have a lot of glazing to do. My schedule is a little more complicated than it used to be, because now in addition to teaching I spend most Tuesdays with my mom, who's 91 & needs a little more help than she used to - so I'll probably fire on a weird schedule like, a 4 hour candle Weds night into Thurs, burners on at, like midnight? and firing off around 3 pm, plenty of time to get to my Thursday night class. That means unloading a week from today! 

Pre-Columbian Peruvian Penguin Pot

Due to its durability, ceramic pieces can sometimes survive for centuries or even millenia. They can give us a peek into the lives of people who lived in those times. Sometimes these peeks show us that ancient people were a lot like us! For instance, who doesn't love penguins? The Nazca people of ancient Peru did, it seems.

"A remarkable artifact has surfaced in the world of archaeology: a 1,600-year-old ceramic vessel in the shape of a Humboldt penguin. This unique piece of Nazca culture, which once thrived on the southwestern coast of Peru, provides an extraordinary glimpse into how ancient civilizations engaged with and represented the natural world. The vessel, now housed in the Art Institute of Chicago, was crafted by the Nazca people between A.D. 350 and 500. Known for their intricate pottery and vast geoglyphs, the Nazca people left behind a rich record of their environment and mythology. However, the depiction of a penguin—a species not typically associated with tropical Peru—raises intriguing questions about their knowledge of far-flung wildlife and their artistic innovation."

In other news, I'm still dealing with my burner troubles! I've got an extra class to teach today, so won't get to it today - hopefully tomorrow morning, so there's still a slim hope that I can fire on Sunday.

Just Like the One-Winged Dove

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she's singin'
"Ooh, baby, ooh, said, ooh"

And the days go by like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own, I begin again

That song - The Edge of Seventeen - came out in 1981, when I was on the edge of seventeen myself. For years - like, until last year - I thought the lyric went, "Just like the one-winged dove...." I imagined the one-winged dove struggling mightily to do what seemed easy for everyone else, and felt seen. I was wrong, of course, but that's the lyric I still hear. I sang it today, while firing my bisque.

Wait, what? What, you may ask, does all this have to do with firing?...[read more]