Musing about future choices

We finally reached the handyman who again, promises to show up this morning. It was raining earlier, so that ends the possibility of him finishing up the decking area near one corner of the pool so I can set up my container garden. So, instead, if and when he shows, I'm going to have him put together all the garage and studio metal shelving units which the movers took apart but didn't re-assemble. Once that's done I'll be able to start organizing the garage and studio.

Even though I still haven't unpacked the studio and still have my office to unpack, I'm starting to think about the direction my work is going to go, since my only viable choice which this huge, recent change of location and lifestyle that fate has forced upon us, is electric firing.

Living in a community with codes and covenants means no smelly gas firing and no working at home, even part time! So now, I will be a hobby potter, still working hard at whatever choice I make once I can get my hands on clay again. What that clay will be is still up in the air; but at this point, I'm thinking it might be fun to go in a totally different direction from the cone 10-11 soda/salt work I've been doing for the past ten years or more. The idea of earthenware and playing with all those colorful under glazes ware is appealing; and I must say that the thought of just setting the kiln on automatic instead of dealing with 30 hour soda/salt firing is a big plus at the age of 72!

I'm going to get some earthenware samples when the time comes and see if I can fire them  up to cone 3 for a stronger finished product. I've been thinking about this for a while but I still have a lot of unpacking and gardening to do so it will be another six weeks or so before I can even re-supply the studio (gave 90% of my raw materials away) and get it organized. Before we left North Carolina I had started a notebook with collected information on earthenware slips and glazes. Most of those are in the traditional earthenware temperatures, so I'll be spending some evenings playing with my glaze software to tweak some of those up to cone 3 limits.

Life has hit us with some lemons in the past few months and it's time to make some lemonade!

Well, we've been in Oregon since April 23rd, and in our new home a week and I just got Internet yesterday! We've been surrounded by hundreds of moving boxes and our life for the past week has been a tiring, but focused journey of activity.

Let me first, just say, that I NEVER want to move again! The dog and cat are still showing signs of being traumatized - first from their first plane flight, then by living in our son and daughter in laws home for a week, then into their new home filled with moving boxes and dealing with a never ending stream of strangers coming in and out. Poor Bonnie kitty is finally coming out of hiding a couple of times a day, and Bodhi has finally decided it's okay to go in our back yard with that dangerous looking pool. Hearing a dog next door probably helped him overcome his fear of the "pool monster".

Our daughter Erin arrives from Munich late tomorrow night and she's here for about two weeks to help us while we try to get all our household stuff put away. Going from five thousand square feet of home and studio two thousand four hundred presents some challenges. We gave away so much before we left, replaced some things like our living room TV, with a new plasma one which sits proudly on our living room mantle after having a electrician squirm through out very narrow attic crawl space to wire it through the walls.  Between unpacking we've been shopping for new outdoor furniture, washer and dryer (they normally don't come with the house purchase here in Southern Oregon), new fans, chandelier (which won't be here for another couple of weeks),pots for the new container gardening I'll be doing since our back yard is 99.9% concrete, pool and a Jacuzzi, and food shopping to restock the larder. 

I can't even begin to think about organizing the studio. The movers took all my shelving apart and didn't put it back together (United Van lines policy), so yesterday we hired a handyman to put those things together, as well as the new outdoor furniture together, fix the leaks in the sprinklers, install the new laundry tub sink in garage (half of which will be my new studio), and a long list of other things that he will be doing next week. 

We should have purchased stock in Lowes hardware and Home Depot and Best Buy before this move! Most of our non unpacking time seems to be spent at those places as well as a couple of local nurseries. Two days ago I finally gave myself some planting time and got a couple of veggies planted in some new plastic, nursery growing bags which I had ordered on the Internet. We have a wood fence closing in the back yard, so I'm hoping to do a lot of vertical planting in the future and getting the existing drip system that the previous owners had for their potter plants back work and add to it.

One of the great perks of living close to a small city (Medford) is all the nearby shopping and dining choices. Within 5 minutes of our house we have good local Mexican, Italian and Chinese restaurants, as well as a new found, very good breakfast place, a super Walmart and large hardware store. Within 15 minutes there's Costo, Lowe's, Best Buy, Michael's, Pet Smart, large supermarkets (Safeway, Fred Meyers), etc. etc., and about 400 other restaurants and other great shopping choices.

It feels good to be able to touch base on the blog again; but now it's time for me to have my first cup of tea. I've been up since 3 am, got one big box unpacked, put away some other things, read some of the approximately 1700 emails that need attention, sent out some change of address emails and made my day's "to do" list.  The day's plan is to head back to Home Depot for extra studio shelving, after the Direct TV man leaves, and make a couple of nursery stops for some more big pots, some perennials for the pots I've already placed and filled with potting soil, and maybe an outdoor bench for our atrium. There's an Olive Garden in town, so we might try it out for lunch (haven't been to one in years).

We've arrived

The movers worked like mad men to get the house and studio loaded. It was 9 pm when the last shuttle truck left to take the last load to the giant moving truck that had to park about ten minutes away from our house at our friends property Because of the late hour, they drove both the shuttle and the van back to Arden and planned to unload the shuttle truck this morning. Just when we thought the biggest present from our son's friend (the loan of his private jet to take us and our dog nd cat to Oregon), we got a call from our son telling us that he had planned another surprise for us, but was afraid we'd have a heart attack with the surprise, so he decided to tell us. The surprise was two fold. First, he was going to fy out to Charlotte Monday and meet us at the airport and fly back to Oregon with us; but the other part of the surprise,was that he had arranged for our best friends, Jim and Laura to fly back with us and stay with us a week, at Seans house in Oregon. So here we all are after a wonderful flight of being wined and dined in a private 10 seater jet (I originally thought it was 8 seats. I took a little video and we all took pictures; but I have no idea how to get those here on the blog using an ipad. The computers are no longer connected to modems and my router which are packed and on the truck, so all my email and blogging are going to have to be done on this ipad. The animals fared very well on the trip. Bonnie kitty did especially well, but Bodhi fussed a bit and probably more than he would have had I not been talking to him and feeding him cheese and some of the other goodies we were served. Laura and I decided we were going to start buying lottery tickets and if either one of us wins one of those half a billion dollar lotteries, we're going to buy one of those thirty five million dollar private jets to share with friends and family. It's the least we could do. :-) Well, Sean and our friend Jim have arrived with the ribs and other goodies. Time to leave the quiet of this bedroom, plug in the ipad for recharging and join the rest of the crew. It's been a tiring but great day so far.

Busy post going away party day

Lisa Clague gave us this fabulous going away party last night. It was so hard to say goodbye, yet so wonderful to see everyone. Everyone brought great food and Jim brought lots of wine. Needless to say I didn't have much trouble sleeping last night.

Today has been another frenzy of packing and purging. I thought it was going to be a slow day and then realized I still had some kiln furniture and shelves in the Olympic gas kiln and Skutt electric kiln which had to be packed. I also decided to insulate the lids of both kilns with about at least 8 layers of packing paper to keep the bricks from rubbing together during moving. There were also a lot of boxes and studio racks, etc. to number, and two last advancers to wrap heavily. I managed to slide two of them into two big clothing boxes which would give them extra  protection from the clothes.

There were a few more unexpected boxes to pack and as soon as I get through this little break, I have a few boxes to top off and close. The rest of the packing (mainly last minute mugs, Jim's coffee pot and my desktop computer) will wait till morning. My wi-fi is tied to that computer and I'm not sure if it will work if I just plug it into my big laptop, so I'm leaving it to the very last.

The movers will be arriving between 8:30 and 9, and since I'm such an early riser, I should be able to get the last bit of packing done before they arrive - I hope!

Checking in

All the boxes are packed with a few still open for the last minute items. We actually have a little breathing time in between the last pre-moving chores in the next 3 days.

One freezer/fridge is empty and cleaned yesterday and the house fridge has been pretty cleared except for the few items we need for the next 3 days.

Yesterday I packed the last of our dishes and most cutlery and we are now down to paper plates, cups, bowls and plastic cutlery.

We actually had time for a lovely dinner out at the Knife and Fork last night with our friend Kelly, so my mad packing and purging pace is paying off these last 3 days with a more relaxed pace.  Time now to make my last minute to do lists and packing list for the plane ride to Oregon.

We are very fortunate to have been loaned a private jet from a dear friend of our son's, so our dog won't have to fit into one of those tiny carriers and be shoved under a seat. The jet sits 8 very comfortably, from what I can see by the photos, and we're the only passengers so there will be plenty of room for our carry on luggage, and animals. The stewardesses husband is a gourmet chef and will send along a lovely lunch. The universe has definitely been giving us many blessings with this move and we are so very grateful!

Rainy day in the mountains

We got a good, much needed rain this afternoon. With a couple of warm days and nights, there may be some morels showing up by the weekend. I doubt if I'll have time, nor will my aching hip allow me much looking, but I may just try to do, at least, a bit of foraging around the house proper.

Today was something of a rest day after doing way too much yesterday; but I did pack a few things and get things like cable and other services set up for the new house.

The studio and garage are now filled with just the things I'm taking to Oregon. Will Baker got the rest loaded and out today. Thanks Will and Joy for such a great job over the past couple of weeks!

The new house

Here are a couple of photos of our new, suburban house in a golf course community.The size of the house and the small lot is perfect for our time in life and the fact that it is time for us to play and not tax these ailing bodies.

Since the entire backyard is pool and concrete I will be embarking on the world of container gardening.

Just when I thought that other than the very last minute things to pack, I only had a few boxes to close up, I realized I still have the remaining gallery pots to pack. Many have been given away to family and friends and I have to keep some out for Jim's sister and husband who are coming this weekend. So this morning I'll number, catalog and close up the last of the studio boxes after I top them off with some small pots. Then I need put a couple that I think Jim's sister and brother in law might like.

Yesterday, the last of the household and most of the studio things I was giving away left, so now I can concentrate on packing the remainder. Even though I've been giving a lot of food away, throwing some out every day, here's still a lot to go through but most of that my friend Betty is going to clean out after we leave, take what she wants and throw out the rest.

Doing all this without Jim's help, and even with the amazing amount of help our son and daughter have given me, has been monumental;but when the moving truck arrives Monday morning I think I will be ready for them - pretty wiped out, but ready!

Down to the wire

There are only a couple more boxes to pack;but I'm at #211 boxes and machinery packed. All the big, heavy equipment is sold, and most of the raw materials and garden tools and machinery have been gifted. The next big thing to do is clean out the freezers and fridge; but I'll wait till early next week to do that, after I've finished packing the last couple of boxes.

Our closing here has been pushed up and the movers are arriving on the 23rd and we fly out on the 24th.

A friend of our son's is generously having his flight crew fly us and our dog and cat to California in his private jet and the following day our son has arranged for a smaller private jet to fly us up to Oregon. It's a very luxurious miracle since I was concerned about them letting our dog on the plane in such a small container.

The planes keep shrinking the seat space and the height and width under the seats and the poor dog would have a 6 hour flight all scrunched up; and that's even if they allowed him! He's in the weight category they allow (11lbs), but the box size they allow would make a super tight and uncomfortable space for that long a flight. Even our cat, although she's not very big, is quite long thanks to some of her Siamese genes.

Our daughter left for the airport two hours ago,after almost ten days of non stop work - not only packing and purging, but also cooking delicious and healthy meals for us. So tonight I'm back to cooking but after an exhausting day it's just going to be a simple steak and potato dinner.

Aftermath of a very busy day

We are all a bit wiped after such intense packing and purging. At one point yesterday we had 7 cars/trucks in the driveway. The place was abuzz with activity of people picking up some very heavy purchases from us like a 500 lb or so clay mixer and about a 400 lb de-airing pug mill. And a huge thank you to friends Will, Chet, Jim, Aaron and Bill who made themselves available to get that machinery loaded!

Friday the advancers sold (I'm keeping the other half to cut down for my electric kiln). It feels good to seeing these things peel away from my "have to pack or move" list, especially since I either won't have room or need for them in the new, much smaller studio space.

In between all that activity my friend Betty, daughter Erin and I were packing and purging fools. My packing starting as soon as I got up, around 6am, and we all quit at 4:30. Erin kept going in the kitchen making us a lovely dinner of Caesar salad with chicken. She even made home made croutons which I skipped since I'm off yeast for a month due to a recently diagnosed food allergy.

But the best part of the day was a huge, delightful surprise from Jim's sister Pat, who surprised us by driving up from central Florida. She's only staying for today to help with packing and join us for our traditional Easter breakfast of hard boiled eggs, a German form of Easter bread that our daughter brought from Munich, and kielbasa and horseradish. And since we're trying to empty the freezer, Erin is making shrimp scampi over linguini for dinner, instead of our usual Easter roast lamb.

At the rate the packing is going, I think we are going to be in good shape for the move without needing movers to pack anything other than some large paintings and mirrors. So far we have 84 packed boxes and from just a quick perusal of the things still left to pack, like books, clothes and last minutes items, I think we will have well over 100 boxes by the time we're finished.

kiln shelves for sale

I have some very little used advancers (some have only been in 1 or 2 firings and the rest only 6 firings). They're 12" X 24", and $75 a piece which is less than half of what they were. I can't check current prices because several sites I checked won't list them. Instead they say to call and I'm assuming they have gone up again! These are amazing, light weight, kiln shelves which I no longer have need for since I will only be firing in an electric kiln in the future.

Also for sale, is set of the kiln shelves from my 9 cu ft Skutt electric kiln for sale. They're over $600 new not counting shipping. These were only used in about 8 bisque firings and I'm selling the set, which is in perfect condition, for $300.

These are only for pickup, since our movers arrive on the 25th and I have to have the entire studio and house packed up and ready to go. If you're interested, please email me at: Shambhalapottery@frontier.com

The soda kiln has been totally dismantled and on its way to a new home with Will Baker and Joy Tanner. This whole move is going so fast, it's downright dizzying. Our daughter Erin flew in from Munich a few days ago and she's been a dynamo with helping me purge and pack. We've already packed #64 boxes and still have about another 25 or more to go, even with all the purging we've been doing.

I'm a packing fool.

Taking a wee break after packing all morning. I didn't realize how big my pottery collection was. So far I've filled one dish pack and there's at least two more to go not counting my own pots that will have to get packed.

Fortunately, our daughter arrives from Germany tonight to help me pack and do other help out chores for the next ten days.

The "take down the kiln crew(Will Baker,Joy Tanner and Teresa Piesch)", were here this morning and headed out to have some lunch and unload the bricks and will be back later. They also took a lot of the garden tools that I won't be needing at the new house. Once the kiln is down, they'll start on removing all the bagged raw materials. Our moving quote was pricy enough without hauling a thousand pounds or so of easily replaced raw materials.

The garden is holding it's own and some of the strawberries are already flowering. I picked the first asparagus the other day, but it was a loner. I told Jim they must have sent out a scout to check the weather. :-)

The weathers been conducive for morels but I just don't have the time nor the energy to spare to do that right now. The packing must continue and I just have three weeks to get it all done. Yikes!

Extruder, clay mixer and pug mill are sold.

A couple of people have emailed me and committed to buying the extruder, clay mixer and pug mill. Thank you guys! It's a great deal for you and saves me the cost of shipping them 3,000 miles! It will also enable me to have a bit more space in my new, much smaller studio!

I've been up since 2am and am running on pure adrenalin; but I got most of my meditation room packed up. I would have finished but I ran out of the right sized boxes. Earlier, I packed and closed a few more boxes of studio tools and some kiln posts. I'm giving away all my heavy brick posts and since interstate moves are based on weight, I'm just taking enough kiln furniture for the electric kiln and the very small Olympic gas kiln.

I'm purging as I go and got a few big garbage bags full of stuff for the dump and the charity shop. Some items are being set aside on the slab roller as freebies for visitors. New items are added daily. Today I added a 20" or so, bat, since I don't see me throwing those huge platters anymore. There are some raku and other videos, plaster slump and drape molds and some more plaster bats.

It's going to be interesting to see how much the truck weight when it pulls out of here in a few weeks.

Baileys sytem 3 pneumatic extruder and other equipment for sale

Our house has been sold and we've bought a new one in Southern Oregon so that we could be closer to our son and his family, and we'll be moving within the next four weeks. I don't have room for some of my larger equipment, so I'm looking to sell some pieces. Here's a photo of the Bailey System 3 Extruder pneumatic extruder. I've been carting this around for years and used once when I first got it, just to test it. I recently just bought a big compressor hoping to finally start putting it to work, but family illness has necessitated this move, and I'd have a hard time using it in my next space. I'm also throwing in the brand new, large compressor. The Bailey system alone costs over $1500, and I'm selling it for $1000 and including free, the big, new compressor. The extruder comes with the expansion box as well as the smaller box, and the cut off stand. Dies are not included, since I'm hoping to replace this unit with a manual one.
If someone has a manual Bailey, I would take that in trade, plus the difference from the two.

I'm also selling a Soldner studio clay mixer. It's in great shape. New it sells for $4,485 (Axners price)and I'm selling it for $2,000. I'm also selling my Bluebird Powerstar De-airing pug mill for $2000.(it's $5207). I'd also be willing to trade this for a smaller one like Peter Pugger, with a little cash compensation to even it out a bit. I don't have a need for a pug mill with this much output.

This equipment is all in great shape and if you're interested you can email me at:
ShambhalaPottery@frontier.com

Royal Albert Museum Exeter in Devon England

Here's a lovely little video of a visit to the Royal Albert Museum in Devon England - lots of wonderful early slipware and other antique pots to see.

Jim's been very ill, so there has been no time for the studio. My life these days is just a being cook, nursemaid, and chief bottle washer. When Jim regains his strength, I may be able to get in some studio time; but it doesn't look like that is going to be any time soon.

Hope everyone is enjoying this spring like weather and getting lots of beautiful pots made!

A day at the hospital

I did get some early studio time yesterday to throw more tests tiles, mark others and batch and dip a couple of flashing slip revisions. I expected a full studio day, but Jim reminded me that we had 3 family birthdays this week, so it wound up being only a half day in the studio and the other half card and grocery shopping and dinner out.

This morning Jim had to go to the hospital for an MRI for the severe back pain he's been experiencing for over a month. He told me to stay home since he was feeling a bit better after 3 days of flu symptoms, so I got busy with charting these flashing slip tests, before planning on a day in the studio. Our phone was out and the repair man showed up and he was still working on the problem when my friend Laura was at the door. Jim had called her from the hospital and asked her to come get me. The MRI wasn't working. They tried twice, but his back kept going into severe spasms, so they had to put him on muscle relaxing medication for a while before they could try again, and they said he wouldn't be safe to drive afterwards.

When I got there they had him on oxygen and iv's. After sitting with him about an hour, it was clear that he would be there at least another hour, so I drove home, stopped to pick up a few groceries, got the cat in, walked the dog, put the groceries away and drove the half hour back to the hospital.

I arrived at the radiology deparment just as they were wheeling Jim back out. He was awake and they were able to complete the MRI. Halleluijah! I had stopped to get him a sandwich just in case he wanted to eat. Miraculously his appetite was back and he ate the whole sandwich. After about a half an hour they determined he was stable enough and they wheeled him out, helped him in the car, and we headed home.

He's napping now and looking forward to some wine and cheese and cookies later (his menu choice for the evening). A Netflix movie arrived "A Day in the Park with George" - a wonderful musical that we haven't seen for years, so we'll watch that while we munch.

It will be an early night, since we have to be back at the hospital in morning to go over the results of the MRI. Pots and studio work will just have to wait. There are much more important things to tend to right at the moment.

Back to blogging

Studio time has been almost nil while I try to get rid of the latest bout of this viral bug. So, other than throwing and trimming test tiles and doing a huge amount of studio paper work, (mainly getting all my glaze and slips notes updated and getting a gathering the next batch of recipes to try for this cone 6 soda project,) the only thing that's occupied my time has been cooking and cleaning up a lot of old email.

Our friend Shane gifted us with 2 lbs of shrimp the other day, so I pretty much spent the day prepping and cooking shrimp and grits and pot de creme for dessert. Yesterday was Mexican night - a chicken, tomato, serrano chile, onion stir fry with re-fried beans.

I'm heading to the studio now with my pile of recipes in hand, and will be weighing out and mixing Cone 6 flashing slips and liner glazes all day. The forecast is for another couple of high 60's days Sunday and Monday, so I'm going to try to fire these cone 6 soda tests one of those days if I get all these new tiles completed.

I have some soups in the freezer, so tonights' dinner will be soup and salad or soup and tuna sandwiches - Jim's choice.

Cone 6 soda project continues

Managed to fire some of the cone 6 soda test tiles in one of my tiny electric kilns yesterday, hoping that taking some of them up to a full cone 6 -7 might mature those flashing slips a bit more and it just didn't work. I had cone 6 touching and cone 7 at 2 o'clock and those flashing slips are all, still dry.

So it's back to square one. I decided to not fire the gas kiln as is, unloaded it, and picked out the new, unfired tiles and threw some new test tiles - more to do tomorrow. Right now I need to head back out and cut those tiles off the bats and tomorrow, finish them as well as throw some more.

From what I've seen of photos of cone 6 soda pots, the flashing slips look drier than what I'm used to at cone 10 and higher. When the flashing slip is more of a background base for a lot of glaze and colored slip over, I guess it seems to work well; but my hope is to find a way to get these slips a bit more mature at that temperature. It may be a futile attempt, but I'll keep at it a bit longer

From the various flashing slips I tried, Bauer, Blair Red and Randy's show the most promised Of maturing at these lower temperatures with a bit of tweaking.

In the meantime, I have more glazes to batch and new tiles to dip. Fortunately, most of the flashing slip revisions are batched; but it will still take me a week or two to get it all done. Stay tuned.

Snow and icy conditions

It's looks like it may be another woman/man plans and God laughs day!

Went to the studio at 7am to get cones for the little electric test kiln, and when I went into the kiln room/aka garage, it was like an ice box. Seems that Jim didn't quite close the door yesterday and it flew open overnight. It was around 20 degrees outside and in!

With the light snow cover over an icy driveway, and snow continuing, Jim doesn't want to take the car out of there today, so I'm hoping it will have warmed up enough in another half hour or so I can get some of those tiles out out of the test gas kiln and into the electric kiln.

The kiln is up against one of my large industrial shelving units and the car is too close to the kiln to allow me to fully open the lid. This may be an exercise in futility today. Oh well, there are always plenty of things for me to do both in the house and the studio.

After our buckwheat pancake breakfast I'll head out to the kiln room and see if I move the kiln out enough to open the lid and access those tiles. If not, I'll weigh out a few cone 6 soda liner glazes that which I'll have room for once I remove some of the flashing slip re-fires in the gas kiln.

Pizza night

Today was a "stay in" day wrapping up a lot of my "to do" list, like getting on line and ordering vitamins, email mail, snail mail, paper work and then getting an early dinner of pizza made.

Yesterday was a day for osteo treatments and food shopping, so full studio days will have to wait until this latest re-run of the flu bug wanes a bit more.Our doctor said this viral bug is a bad one and many people are winding up with viral pneumonia when it comes around for the fourth time, so I'm not pushing myself until I feel that this current bout is well under control. But saying that, I will be out early tomorrow morning to load and re-fire some soda test tiles which didn't reach temperature in the last firing. Since they had plenty of soda mix in the firing, the plan is to just load some of them in my tiny electric test kiln.

Since I tested each flashing slip on 3-4 different clay bodies, I'll probably just
pick two of each for the electric re-fires and have the rest in the gas kiln firing some time next week.

A couple of other Cone 6 potters (who read my block, generously sent me some Cone 6 soda recipes. So I'm hoping to get some time over the weekend to weigh out a few. Thank you Mark and Rebekkah!

Good day to make glazes

Where the day went. Yesterday was a piddly day in the studio, doing lots of little things - wet the towels that keep the clay in the pug mill workable, loaded a few more test tiles in the small gas kiln, moved the kiln and tanks so Jim could get the car in the garage, put away a lot of things, moved all those cone 6 test containers off my wedging table and got them in numerical order, and a tiny bit of the never ending paperwork among other things. I quit early to make a big dinner and after dinner did a bit more paper work before calling it a day.

Today's plan is to weigh out a couple of color versions of one of my revised cone 6 glazes which I revamped to be more of a gloss. I also need to make a couple of small batches of my cone 10 liner glazes so I can finish these cone 10 soda pots. I'm optimistic about the possibility of switching to cone 6 soda in the future, so I'm not going to make any big batches of any of those cone liner 10 glazes any more.

It's easy pot stickers for dinner, so I'll get a full studio day for a change.

Firing postponed

It took longer to get the little kiln loaded, mainly because I decided to batch a couple of new tests earlier. The firing was planned for today, but I'm putting it off till Tuesday, the next warm day, because there's a bit more room in the kiln for more tests and Mark Knott will be sending me his cone 6 recipes and I'd like to hold off the firing to include them.

I need to find a way to set up this little gas kiln indoors so I'm not at the mercy of the weather with the firings.

Time to get to work. Studio time today is going to be tidying and paperwork. I'll quit early to start the dinner I had planned yesterday. Because I didn't finish loading the kiln till it was our usual dinner time, Jim suggested that I close up the studio and relax and he went into town and brought home two prime rib dinners. Love that man!

Almost a spring day on the way

Two days of relative, post holiday rest, and continuing an herbal liver cleanse, have perked me up almost enough to want to hit the studio today. A bit of the sniffles is no excuse - I know, I know, so after breakfast I will March out the mudroom door and walk to my lovely studio and sort the tiles to be re-fired and load that small Olympic, gas, test kiln. Since Jim has doctors orders not to do any remotely, heavy lifting, I'll have to load the empty propane tanks and he can get them filled in town and I'll unload them.

When you have a titanium hip, you're warned to not lift more than 25 lbs, so my trick is to lean and put the weight on the not so good hip. Aging and dealing with a very well used body, force you into some interesting life changes!

We're in for two days of sun and a forecast high of 60 both days, so if I can't fire that small kiln tomorrow, I doubt if I'll get another chance for such warmish, sunny weather this time of year.

Yesterday was a day to do more email catch up, play some computer word games, watch TV, computer filing and some glaze chemistry - sometimes juggling all around the same time.

Dinner was easy last night - spaghetti with bolognese sauce which I had frozen. Tonight's dinner is broiled chicken breasts coated with kosher salt and slathered with a mixture of creamed butter, soy sauce, garlic, mustard, cayenne and lemon. Sides are rice and baked butternut squash with a filling of butter, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate and a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg all mixed together (the only way I could get my family to eat squash years go and it still remains one of Jim's favorites.)

178 cone 6 test tiles

Winter has arrived in force. Late morning, it was still only 14 degrees F, and it only rose to 17F, which is what it is now. So I decided to just sit tight and try to catch up with all the email that backed up the past few days when I had house guests. Our lovely house guests (Jim's sister, husband and daughter)left yesterday and I had the afternoon to relax and just vegg out with some reading,computer word games and movies.

With the snow, wind and cold temperatures this morning, I knew the water in the studio was probably going to be frozen because I forget to leave it on an overnight drip, so I opted to continue to go through some of the 300 plus emails and get some things filed and some read and deleted.

After a hot chocolate lunch I headed for the studio, watered the plants and transplanted a very small Kaffir lime tree which I'm growing mainly for the leaves, which I'll use in Thai recipes. I also made a list of the glazes and slips I batched for the cone 6 firing last week; and now I have to make a cleaner list and match it against the tiles. There are a couple of missing and unmarked tiles; and there's a really great looking oribe which is unmarked and that's the main one I want to track down. Fortunately I made a chart when I was dipping the glazes, and noted which glazes were on which clay bodies, so finding the skipped ones should be easy - just a bit time consuming - a good after dinner project.

After all the holiday eating and merry making, I started a one week liver cleanse yesterday - no wine and lots of liver cleanse herbs. Tonight I'm just making a simple bratwurst on crunchy hard rolls with sauteed green peppers and onions. This is the meal I had planned for yesterday, but instead we opted for just some easy and comforting chicken soup.

Happy New Year

Our company has arrived and settled in and they're all taking naps; and since dinner is made (did the gumbo yesterday and started the cornbread for dinner and tomorrows breakfast bread before dawn today), I actually have a few minutes to relax.

We had a great 5 course dinner at the Knife and Fork last night. And Jim's opening another bottle of wine when we got home made for a very, "making merry" New Years eve. Tomorrow I go on a liver cleanse to undo all this holiday eating and drinking!

I'm eager to get back to the studio. The weather isn't going to be good enough to re-fire some of those cone 6 soda tests outdoors, in my little gas test kiln till this coming Friday; and I'm not sure I'll even want to do it then if it's too cold. More cone 6 test tiles need to be thrown and the studio needs some tidying before I get on with batching some liner glazes for these cone 10 soda pots.

Happy New Year

Well,another year, filled with productivity, challenges, and world changing events has passed. Jim and I continued our current solitary celebration, early, with a lovely 5 course dinner at our favorite local restaurant "The Knife and Fork", followed by a relaxed evening in bed, with a great bottle of Frank Family Winstone Cabernet single vintage, red wine, while listening to a the wonderful PBS concert of Leonard Bernstein's score of West Side Story, with those amazing counter melodies - what a score in it's time and it still stirs the soul! And now, they've switched to Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. What would life be without music that takes you to such heights!

While Jim takes our little furry, Jack Russel terrier, Bodhi, on his last walk of the evening, I'm taking a bit of time for this blog.

Today was a busy kitchen day, spending lots of time chopping and cooking, but a delicious, spicy, shrimp and chicken gumbo is cooked and ready for tomorrows house guests. In the morning I'll be baking corn bread and a breakfast nutty fruity, sourdough bread which I had hoped to make today; but that job had to be put off because i forgot that it needed sourdough and my sourdough needed feeding. The sourdough's been fed and the bread will get made in the morning. Then it will be time to tidy up the papers which seems to shroud my sitting area of the living room, which has become my other office. When am I going to slow down and just enjoy retirement! Busynesss is a lifelong thing for me and even at 72 is one that is hard to release. So rather than fight it, I just stay productive and let it take me where it takes me. If this body fails me totally, I guess that will be the time to just contemplate my navel.

House guests arrive tomorrow, for just a day, so it will be a lovely start of the New Year with family, belly warming, spicy seafood and chicken gumbo for dinner along with home made fudge and some other, lovely, store bought candies, and Jim, our in house sommelier, sharing one of his lovely white wines for the gumbo.

Hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration with loved ones, and/or dear friends, with good food and quality liquor if that's your choice! And I hope you all have the most productive, healthy, joyous and prosperous New Year, filled with joy, challenging and rewarding experiences and live well lived!

Mish mash sort of day

The only remotely studio related things I did today were copy and print out the four pages of the charted notes on the cone 6 soda firing and driving them over to John's studio. I also compiled all the information I've been gathering on earthenware clay bodies, slips and glazes and will print those out tomorrow. Exploring earthenware is one of my 2012 projects.

The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping for company dinner Sunday (shrimp and chicken gumbo), having lunch out, then back home to put away groceries, tend to house plants,email, make dinner, then after dinner, make a batch of fudge.

It was then time to give Bonnie kitty some mom play time. She loves this crazy laser light. Fortunately, she chases it with such vigor that she tires herself out in about 5 minutes. Time for the adults and a Netflix Midsomer mystery before meditation and sleep. It's been a busy, smorgasbord kind of good day; but a good one.

Chicken soup and test tiles

I'm bleary eyed, and waiting for these back spasms to ease after getting over 7 dozen test tiles lined up in numerical order on my slab roller and making followup notes; but the job is done! In the morning I'll photo copy these 4 pages of notes for John, my testing partner in this venture and drop them off at his studio.

Next step will be for me to re-fire some of these tiles, and make new tiles for another firing; but that will have to wait after this weekends company leaves, and the weather is mild and dry enough for two consecutive days, to wheel my little gas test kiln outdoors to fire. The weather forecast for next week is pretty gruesome (cold, wet, snowy), so it looks like I'll be focusing on getting the cone 10 pots finished before I can re-fire these cone 6 tests.

Meantime, there's the house to tidy, and food shopping and cooking to do before house guests arrive early Sunday, as well as a studio to tidy if I can squeeze in some time after I get back from shopping and other chores tomorrow. I'd like to start the New Year with the studio a bit more organized; but it looks like I may not have the time to complete that goal, with all the other things I have to do between now and the New Year.

Tonight was a good night for chicken soup and fortunately I have leftovers for tomorrow. If we get home early enough and I'm not too wiped, I may just get an hour before dinner to do some of the studio tidying. That would be nice!

Cone 6 soda test tile results

The cone 6 soda test tile firing looks very promising. I will need to re-fire tiles because we only reached cone 6 just starting to soften. Cone 7 looked like it was at 3 o'clock; but it turned out that it was just in the process of toppling over. Guess I didn't seat it well enough in it's little house. With only one cone pack visible I asked John to just shut it down, rather than risk over-firing, which was a good call, since I was more interested in getting a true picture of the flashing slip at cone 6, not cone 7.

These tiles look more promising than the tiles from the Energy Exchange's wood/soda firing. They're brighter, and with the new soda mix, it looks like they will flux more at a full cone 6. They also showed more flashing potential in this firing with this new soda mix. As I suspected, the wood in the Energy Exchange firing made the tiles drier. The yellow slip was a great example to show the difference. It was buttery on all 3 tiles but dry at higher temperature in the Energy Exchange firing.

The draw rings were very good and some of the glazes are good at cone 5. One oribe is a beautiful, rich, dark green and the turquoise oribe also looks promising. A matt white was under fired at cone 5 as was Reeves green, and another oribe.

I'll make new tiles for the shinos and a few others and start body reduction a bit earlier next time and do it a bit heavier,reduction next time. Two of the of the shinos were mature at cone 5 and look good as potential liners. They just need more and earlier reduction to shine. The one temmoku in the firing was brown; but re-firing might help. I think I'll also do another version. I have to check which Iron I used, but I thought I used a very high purity iron and was expecting black, not dark brown. John has one C 6 temmoku that I'll try as well. I forgot to put my celadon liner in this firing, so that will go in with the re-fires along with another one from John.

My new gloss base looked good, but some of the tiles got hit with too much soda - difficult to avoid in a small kiln with only test tiles. My yellow slip (Linda's yellow with my revisions) turned out great on all bodies tested. Another really nice surprise was 2 versions of a known glaze called Juicy fruit - better at cone 5 in soda and light reduction than in my full cone 6 oxidation firing using Steven Hills firing schedule.

I'll be spending another day or two making some charts, cataloging these with follow up notes, then it will take another couple of weeks after the holidays to make, bisque and dip new tiles and then wait for two days of consecutive good weather to fire them; but I'm very happy with all the information and more potential good results with some tweaking and re-firing.

I also want to batch some new revisions of a couple of flashing slips using Ronans excellent suggestion of replacing Grolleg with EPK and Newman red with Redart.

Time now, to get a cup of herbal tea and start cataloging the other two shelves of tests.

Cone 6 soda test firing cooling

The firing went well and I was home before 7pm. Love it! I think we may have gotten a bit hotter than our goal. Cone 6 in the only cone pack that was visible didn't seem to be moving although the pyrometer showed it should be. So I opened the burner shutter more and adjusted the damper for light reduction and we went off for a few minutes and when we came back cone 7 was at 3 o'clock, even though cone 6 hadn't shown any sign of movement a couple of minutes before! With soda you never know if that's a true reading; but I had the cones inside a little open hut of sorts to protect it somewhat from the soda in an attempt to get a truer reading. The tiles should tell the story.

The last draw ring showed good gloss from the new soda mixture (which Dan Hill uses for cone 6) which was 4 parts sodium bicarb, 2 parts soda ash and 1 part borax. This soda test kiln is small - maybe 4 cubic feet of setting space, and I didn't even finish the 1 gallon of solution which had 1 1/2 lbs of the soda mixture. In fact, I may have gotten a bit more in there than ideal. We'll see.

John thinks we may be able to open it this morning. I'd be thrilled to have one workable flashing slip from all those tiles! If not, we should have enough information to explore it further.

The high grolleg flashing slips tend to be dryer than some others unless fluxed a lot or have some clay substitutions. Ronan Kyle Peterson said that his experience has shown that replacing the grolleg with EPK was an improvement. So I can try that in future tests if needed.

In our first soda firing, using the Gail Nichols method, straight cone 10 flashing slips were all dry or very dry; but there were some that had more possibilities - Randy's, one of my Avery clones, and two others. I didn't put those originals in this firing with the newer soda mixture; but I did have several variations of those in the firing. Looking back, it might have been a good idea to put at least one tile of those 4 original ones in the firing with the new soda mix as a good comparison.

Another very good suggestion from Ronan was to sub Redart for some of the more refractory clays. Randy's uses Newman red which is classified as a fire clay, so that is another possible, future test.

Day after making merry and firing day

Moving slowly after all the holiday merry making and too much rich food. Friend John Britt said he'd be lighting the kiln around 8am this morning, so at some point I'll be heading over to his studio with this soda mix and my fancy, battery charged sprayer.

I dragged myself into the studio to weigh out the soda mixture, and make sure both battery packs for the sprayer were plugged in, before my first cup of tea. Until I hear from John about when my presence is needed, I'm going to just vegg out and catch up on a lot of correspondence and get my own battery recharged.

Hope all who celebrate had a great Christmas and a great Hanukkah!

From our house to yours

From our house to yours - wishing you a very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and a joyous, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

June and Jim Perry