Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Again? Yes, again.

We are back on the wheels today, back to planning the next load for the next firing.
Mark is back making lamps, while I am working on jars, bowls and small plates for the berry bowls.

I knocked out 38 pots this morning using some reclaimed clay that Mark put together earlier this week.
We have a stash of dry stoneware clay that needed to be made into wet. It worked out great in that it worked into several 100 pounds of some really nice throwing, fluffy clay.
You, or I, forget what clay is like when it is not pressed to its limits.
This just feels so nice and it is no struggle for me to center or throw.
It's nice....

The end of a firing always seems as if you should take off and do something spectacular.
Go hand gliding,jump out of an airplane, take a trip.
Or, do nothing at all.
Laze about and drink wine, sleep late, stay up well past your bedtime, jump on the bed.
Just something that say, we are done.

But, we are never done.
We spent a bit of time getting orders off to customers.
That means packing and shipping.
As a small business we are also the pack and ship department.
And, I must say after many years of shipping, we have got it down.
We use to go "find" boxes and packing material.
No more.
We keep a good supply of cubes from 6x6x6 to 18x18x18.
It pays to have good boxes.  
We have a friend who has a local restaurant keep all their egg flats for him.
He passes those on to us.They are wonderful and have changed our life in the packing department.
Another friend get packing peanuts that would be headed to the trash.
We get one or two bags of those to keep on hand.
This all adds up when we need to ship as a great time saver.
Shipped!
 We also take a lot of digital pictures to send to customers so that they can see what they are going to get in the mail.
Our policy is: we make it, you approve it, we collect payment and then ship it off.


shipped!
We try our best to give our best service to those customers.
They are very important to the way we work these days.
Not everyone lives an hour away, and, this makes it work for us and them.

shipped!
It brings it all full circle when I hear, the pottery is here, we love it and your packing was super!
Yep, we are here to get it to you.
This is what making pottery is about.
The use at the end.
I love when a plan comes together.
Shaving mugs- shipped by Laurie Abela for wedding gifts
 M

10 comments:

Claudia from Idiot's Kitchen said...

I can personally attest that Meredith is a fantastic "personal pottery shopper." I've ordered both over the phone and via the internet and it couldn't be easier. Actually, the hard part with good pottery is always deciding. So many good pots from which to choose. Good problem to have!

Love that tea pot!

Dennis Allen said...

Did you sell all that stuff you made last time already? It would take me 2months to fill that kiln. But then, I AM retired. No point in working too hard.

cookingwithgas said...

Thank you claudia, we aim to please.

cookingwithgas said...

Dennis, we are working on it.

Michèle Hastings said...

I agree with you about shipping materials. We do very little scrounging around these days. Time is money. Better to buy the right size boxes, order bubble wrap, and include it in he shipping cost. We still recycle whenever we can.

cookingwithgas said...

Hey MH pack me in a lobster, that would be really good recycling!

Linda Starr said...

thirty eight pots, wow, amazing, hey a fish tank in the back of a car and some of those lobster could be transported fresh to the carolinas. Ha.

Gail said...

Love those first mugs (roundy w/ the blue and green). Too bad they are already shipped. sigh

Gary's third pottery blog said...

mmmm lovely glazing and shapes!

smartcat said...

It's always such a joy to see what you are doing. Those are some cool shaving mugs!