Looking for spring

I think I am ready for some green.
Usually we can  enjoy the Camellia bushes around the house to give us some color with their white, reds and this one a favorite, pink. This year they have not even bloomed like like they usually do. There was a winter years back in the early 80's where the temps were so low that we lost a few to the cold weather. They seemed to have wintered through but no spots of color to enjoy.
We are doing our usual weather watching for the right time to light up the kiln.
Tomorrow is the day.We are heading out for the marathon loading this morning.

It usually takes about 5 hours to load.
Tomorrow fire, two days cool and a day to unload. I think that will take care of most of next week.










I would love to have a week of calm spring like weather, but they are taking winter mix mid-week.
This winter, like the economy, is the winter which will never end.
Best get off to it.
I have lower fired tiles to finish up and hope to get those through a fire this week as well.
With good weather and a bit of luck we should have some pots out!

Glazing away

We are just about finished glazing all the pots for the next gas kiln.
Small happy dance going on here.
Now if we can get the wind to die down and the sun to come out it will make loading the kiln a bit more pleasent.

Back in the 1980's we made a lot of production pottery, which I hand decorated. Lots of little flowers in pinks and blues.
Just before Christmas  a customer came in and ask if I would make her a set of mugs and match them to one she had bought years ago.
I said yes.
In fact I thought it might be fun to go back to that place and sit and decorate some mugs.
So I did.

We still make production pots, just not as many as we use to.
But I still find it hard to believe we use to thrown, base glaze and then I would decorate board after board of plates, bowls, mugs, cream and sugar sets. spoon rest and just about everything we made.
Then one day my back and neck just said, "No." I was having so much trouble with my back by sitting for hours painting pots.
We were also ready to make some changes in the glazes we were working with. We slowly started introducing the wood ash glazes while slowly removing one pattern and then another until one day I was no longer painting anything.
Now I find myself working on the tiles and other things and moving away some from what I am doing now.
Is it time to make another change?
The one thing consitent with pottery is change.
And I do believe you have to allow yourself some time to change.

Weather permitted we plan to finish up our small gas kiln ans see where that kiln takes us.
Smaller kiln, different work different glazes.
Well just have to see.

tag, you're it!

Laurie my good friend, we are due for a glass of wine, and favorite soap maker has tagged me so give me a minute  while I think about the things that make me happy.
Just what I need as it is starting to snow.
And you all know how much I love snow.
Really I do like snow, but I like it in early January when I don't have to get out in in.
10 things that make me happy:

1. My better half
2.  Our children and our families.
3.  Friends
4. Sunshine
5. spring flowers
6.  hot baths.
7. good food and good wine.
8. belly laughing babies 
9. random acts of kindness
10. being wrapped up in love 

How about you:
Linda
Cindy
Julia
Tracey
Lee
Jim
Hollis
Ron
Tom
Gary-
Will the guys come play with us as well?
What makes you happy?
Give it up we all need a little sunshine.



.

The bucket brigade

 We spent yesterday waxing up the many boards of pots to go into the kiln.
Today starts the week long glazing process.
I think I have 21-22 boards all wax and ready for glaze.
The kiln on a good day will eat about 21 shelves of pots.
It will all depend on how tall the crown pots are.
In this load Mark has made some tall bottles.
That gives me two tall crowns. One will be about 22 inches, making another about 18 inches and the third crown will come in at 14 inches.
That means a little less stacking space, but it will still take anywhere from 20- 22 shelves of pots to fill the kiln.


We put all our glazes on wheels. It just makes it easier to roll them where you want them rather then have them in one spot. Plus we both glaze so I can work in a bucket and then mark can come (steal) get the bucket when he needs the glaze.

Here is a long shot of the room.

I am working off the blue cart while Mark is working off another cart with just crown pots on it.
We are both enjoying this rebuilt space, but there are a few little adjustments that we need to make.
Better lights on the end Mark is working on would help.He puts a floor lamp on the table which helps some.We always think of the lights after we start glazing. Oh yea- this is where those lights need to go.

I am pretty pleased with the lights on my end..
I also like the cabinet that Mark put in for me back in December.
It is a great height to work on and it have a counter top which wipes up nicely.


I'll post more as we move along.
The weather man is singing his winter song again about snow tomorrow.
I plan to plug up my ears and not listen.
LALALALALA! I can't hear you!

NO SNOW-----NO SNOW!

70 degrees and a walk to see a tree.

Today was one of those ah days.

 It promised to be at least 60 degrees with blue skies.

Lucky us it turned out to be 70 degrees.

We used the morning to work a bit and then jumped in the car and went off to eat Thai food down in the Pines.

After lunch the plan was to find a pine tree we had read about.

 Last year someone went out and took core samples of some of the pines in Weymouth Woods in Southern Pines. They found when taking the samples that one of the pines was 462 years old.

We went over and started walking the trail with no luck.

Mark thought there should be a billboard announcing this tree or at least a big sign pointing to it.

No luck.

We did find some nice trails and just as we were heading back to the car a ranger walks up.

Perfect! Mark asked him about the tree and he told us he would be happy to take us out there.
We were not quite in the right area.
We  walked back to our car and then followed him several miles down the road, down a dirt road, parked and walked in to see the tree.

Four hundred and sixty two years old.

Pretty amazing.

A little bed of moss....

a few red berries.....

the tree, the bottom third....

Look close for holes of core samples.

Ranger Scott Hartley

Turned out to be a great day to soak up some sun before the glazing begins.

Welcome we have ham.

Last night we went over to the new welcome centers which were built just down the road a piece from the Seagrove Exit.
 There are two; one on the north bound before you get to the exit and one south bound after you leave Seagrove and in case you are heading down to the beach a great place to stop in.
They are really quite nice.
I may have to go there just to use the "facilities".
These welcome centers are not like the usual welcome centers in that they are private run.
 Meaning ,we all have to pay to have them display our work.
At first I was not thrilled, but after touring the welcome centers, meeting the staff and giving it some thought we decided we would buy some space.
I will post up the after picture later but we are going right where the plant is now.

A window with a view.
 We went last night for the business after hours unveiling.
At the end of the evening they pull your business card out for a drawing for door prizes.
One of the prizes was local county ham
I had just told someone I hope they don't pull me I am not a fan of ham.
So guess who won some ham.
I had to laugh and now I have to figure out if I am going to cook with this or give it away.
I have tried county ham in the past and I find it very salty.
My parents and grandparents loved the stuff!
My mother use to worry about me because I am not a ham fan and I never liked sweet tea.
Oh, well I guess I had better stop before they throw me out of the south.

We have one more bisque kiln to fire before we glaze for the big kiln.
That gave me some time today to start glazing some tiles.

Some from the nightgown series.....

And of course oak leaves.......






Besides being a bit dopey headed today I hope I am well on my way past the root canal.

Southern Artistry

Meredith

Last week I received a letter in the mail from the North Carolina Arts Council letting me know I had been nominated to the Southern Artistry website.
At first I did not give this much thought and set the letter aside.
When I did go online and take a look at the site I thought this might be a bit bigger then my first thought.
I spent today working on a bio and up loading some pictures.
What I found was that it is hard to do a bio and not include my better half.
We are a team around here and there are things we just could not get done without the support of one another.
I know many of you work alone and there are times I wonder what that would be like.
I don't wonder that because I want to work alone.
I just wonder how you all get it all done.

After a tour of the website I thought to myself really they want me up here, no kidding.
It is nice to have someone reconize you for the work you have done in clay.
With the exception of a part time job here or there we make our living from clay.
So with that said, I am surprised, humbled and honored to have been nominated.

I also want to say thank you to those clay workers  and others who are out there sharing and supporting  each other with their blogs and blog post comments.
I don't know how I/we would have made it through the fire and the past year plus without the encouragement of others.
No one gets to where they are alone.

I am much better today then yesterday.
My tooth was fixed up very well by my dentist and life goes on.
Tomorrow we are fixing to glaze, it is time to get back on the horse and ride.
M

The Ocean to the mountains and no pots today

I went and had my root canal.
If you have never had one it is not a walk on the beach.
It is more like climbing a tall mountain and wondering when and if you will get to the top.
I was holding my own this morning thinking happy thoughts and ready for the show down.
The ( look away if you need to) needles had all been punched in and my face was numb from my chin to my left eye.
Let's get this over was all I could think.
 Then as the nurse went to band the back molar something slipped and whacked me right in a front tooth.
Well, you guessed it, she broke off a piece of my tooth.
This was not helping me to maintain my composer.
I was ready to bolt and run.
The head man came in and took a look and went off to call my regular dentist.
He was trying to convince me and him that maybe it was part of a filling.
No go mister, I knew it was part of my pearly whites.
( or use to be pearly whites.....)

So I am leaving here in 10 minutes to go see my dentist.
Geez louise, what a day.
Tomorrow I hope to post about pots.
Let's get these teeth taken care of so we can get back to what needs to be done.
You see on drugs and with the dentist 30 minutes away, Mark has to take me.

After this trip I think I will open the bottle of pain pills and have my own little party.
Join me?
Cheers!
M

 

Dream with me a little

Hi,
This is from the Ocean View area of Norfolk , Va.
Both Mark and I spent a  number of years in Norfolk.
I grew up there and mark moved there when he was in his teens.
It is where we met and lived before we moved to the center of North Carolina.
This is one of the things I miss most about the Tidewater area.
Water, water every where.

So dream with me a little.

I have been making some fillers for the kiln while Mark is mixing glazes.
We have been piling up the bisque ware and now it is time to get serious about firing.

But first a little delay for me while I spend tomorrow having some fun with the dentist.
I'll  think about this picture while they are playing with my tooth.

And if you would like to keep up with us and receive our newsletter take a minute to sign up.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day.

By, Lee Lewis.
For more visit her web site.

and Happy Birthday to Katie Heywood!

Oh, yes it did.

Have a seat!


A view out the back window and the path from the studio to the house.

Yes- more snow in the sunny south.

Bottles- his and mine.

Mark and I both had bottles on the brain this week,
But it seems his are bigger than mine.
Here they are all hanging out to dry.
I put some stamping and a bit of carving to mine.
This was one of those long work days.
Long day =short post.
Time to fix dinner or supper or what ever you call it.
Here they call lunch dinner and dinner supper.
Does not matter to me, but if you invite me over for dinner just tell me if that is noon or seven.

Ginger Beer Bottles

Years ago a potter friend bought us a ginger beer bottle.
These bottles were made  to hold anything from vinegar to beer.
The one he gave us held ginger beer.
This bottle is brown not real discriptive, but a useful pot.
It stuck with me.
There was something about the shape that I feel in love with.
Since then I have acquired a few buddies to keep the first one company.
One favorite one is out of a white clay body, slat glazed it is just simply a sweet and beautiful pot.
Every once in a while I get the shape in my head and have to make these straight up bottles.

Mine never have quite the shape I want.....but I find them fun to play with.

I also like that I can make them all a bit different and then play with some stamps and carving on the upper part, giving the  wood ash glazes a place to settle in or run. 

How about you? Is there a shape that you are "drawn" to? 

For me it is bottles. There is something about their quiet presents or elegance that  draws me in.

Monday! Monday! Monday!

And here comes yet another week.
One full of hope, pots and dare I say it, weather!
Yes, we are bracing for the next round of winter mix.
I'll take mine with a side of gin.

The sun was shinning and called us out to at least take a ride away from our county place.
As nice as it is to live here and as much as we love being here we need a change in order to get our heads back to work.
So a little time out in the city with a nice Thai lunch helps.
Also a side trip to visit with some good friends.

 I left a kiln half loaded and pots drying.
I am heading out there to see what I can start and hope for cold rain and no mixed bag tomorrow.

 

And I was wondering do 6 jars plus 6 lids count as 12 pots?

Tom Gray and Tom Starland

As I was saying.... this week has been full of fits and starts and yesterday was no exception.
We were lucky and just had rain yesterday, no ice and no snow.
But I tell you me- it is soggy wet out there.
A bit like walking on pudding.

It has made our trips across the yard an adventure.
First the snow, then the ice/snow followed by the mud and slush and now the soggy mess of just wet oversaturated ground.

Red pudding.

But we did get some work done.
I did not get anything posted up for Mr. Kline's challenge.
I though I would but yesterday I did not even make it down to the basement where my computer lives.

After lunch yesterday we had a nice surprise visit with Tom Starland from Carolina Arts Unleashed.
Tom writes about the arts in the Carolinas and has done a great job of keeping us all up on what is going on in the art scene.
Tom also has a great way of speaking his mind.
Yesterday was a treat to just take some time and chat.
He one of those people you wished lived closer.

The day before that Tom Gray stopped over to pick up potatoes.
We have a veggie delivery here once a week and we are down to the last of the stored potatoes, Yukon gold, that were dug last spring.
Eat them up or lose them so our farmer friends were here to distribute.

Tom stayed and we chatted away before they came.
It is always fun to talk to Tom.
He spent time in the area Mark and I grew up.
Nothing short of parallel lives because we are very close to the same age.
So we were playing the name game- what was the name of the drive-in on...
Where was ... located?
Did you ever go to?

Before Tom left I asked him how long he has been writing on his blog.
He wasn't quite sure and I thought it was at least 6-7 years.
Turns out, after he looked it up, he started his blog in May 2001.

That is quite a while in the blog world.
I had asked his about his thoughts on blogging and he sent me this response.


"When the graphical World Wide Web began, the only people who knew their way around it were the geeks and the prop heads. If you wanted a Web presence you had to be one of the former, or hire them to build and upload your Web site for you. Within a couple of years tools were developed that allowed anyone with enough time and curiosity the ability to build their own sites. When the graphic artists became involved, the “look” became much more slick, more professional, and even began to compete with print. Today, with programs like blogger, wordpress and typepad, anyone with a computer, digital camera, and the desire to share their lives with others can do so very easily and very quickly. A blog page, blog being short for Web log, can be set up in a matter of minutes, and you can be publishing immediately."

I know there are so many different stories out there.
The community of potters who are out there writting all blog for different reasons.
What's yours?

PS- above is one of those tools we use all the time.
Not for throwing but for clean up- simple, yet, useful.
The handle is about 5'9".

Just working, because that is what we do.

Thank  you to all the folks who posted advice about buying a new kiln.

We have made the decision to buy a new kiln this year, just not right away.
We put it on the high priority list of things that need to happen.
Mark did tighten up some connections on the kiln and it just worked like a charm today.
In fact we had to hold it back it was going too fast.

But an 8- 10 hour bisque is better than the 18 hour one.

We were cooking today.

Good thing since we are hearing news about more weather coming our direction.

This week has been a lot of start and go, interruptions to our flow.

I always get up on Mondays with my list of goals for the week.
I think this week I will reach a small part of those.

With the bisque chugging along and an unexpected trip to the doctor, that I am happy to report was nothing major, we did get back to turning some pots.

I have mugs made and covered for handles tomorrow.

Plates, one batch trimmed and more made.

Then I started a round of small jars.

Mark has vases in the works and bowls.

Some days the slap of the clay on the wheel head sounds like music to the ears.

I hope tomorrow’s weather comes and goes quickly.

I could you a whole hunk of sunshine!

Thoughts about electric kilns

In case you were wondering what we look like.

Yesterday we did make it out to the studio.
 There were pots to be made and that pesky electric kiln to fix.
It turned out to be two lose connections.
Mark had lent our kiln repair box of connectors and such to a fellow potter up the raod.

With ice on both ends of the quarter mile driveway it was to tricky to have him drive in or Mark drive out.
So Mark walked out to meet him while I finished up some plates.

Later, we both spent some time looking over new electric kilns on line.
Wishful thinking.
They are not that expensive when you look at the whole picture.
Yet, in February it is not wise to spend 2 to 3 thousand dollars.
I was happy to have the fix it guy fix this one yet again.
We have bought 4 electric kilns since 1982.
We sold the first one off years ago.
The second one has been running like a top with only one change of elements, but it is 7 cubic feet and runs a bit slow now.We figure this kiln to be at least 25 years old.

The other two, one of which is the one with age problems, has been a good sound reliable kiln.
No computers, just a kiln sitter, which we now bypass.
We have replaced the kiln sitter 3 times on this kiln.
It has issues on when it likes to pop off.
So one day I thought I would just use the pyrometer and forgo any cones.
We have done that ever since.
But this does mean a lot of back and forth checking the kiln as it gets close to target temperture.

We did buy a short round electric computer kiln for the tiles.
Punch in the numbers and leave it alone.
So here is the thoughts and weight in on this.
Keep in mind we are only useing these kilns for bisque .

Do we buy, sometime this year, a programmable kiln?
Or just stick with a cone sitter style?
Any thoughts?
Any pros and cons?
Some better then others?
What about repair cost if something goes wrong.


And Tracey- there might be an old kiln in your future to turn into a Raku kiln after we get this all figured out.