It has been a hard day's month

Clay Fest. A solid week's glazing. Loading the kiln, firing the kiln, unloading the kiln, all while being filmed for a Journalism project. Sorting the pots and packing the van for Clayfolk, coming up next week. Ten and twelve hour days, with no brain cells left at the end. Something had to give, and I'm afraid the blog was it.

I have a few days grace before we head out to Medford, after which it's studio-or-bust again for Holiday Market. Will try to post a few updates before I sink beneath the waves again.

Once upon a show

It's been two weeks since Clay Fest; I can barely remember the show at this point.

Sales were good, down ever-so-slightly from last year, maybe $200? Saw lots of familiar faces, talked shop with a bunch of junior potters, did a brushmaking demo. Traded a paintbrush for a really lovely painted plate from another potter.

Didn't see the eclipse. Overcast and fogbound on River Road, less foggy but still cloud-ridden at the fairgrounds. Guess that 99¢ for glasses was wasted.

Got to see Michael Fromme making her delightful small animal sculptures; drew a couple of them for my Inktober book.

Heck, let's just look at pictures, shall we?



It was nice having Demo and Kid's Clay back again, after last year's Covid restrictions. We also had centralized checkout back, with a new twist: each potter got a unique barcode printed on labels, that they then added price and stickered the pot. It was kind of a pain having to re-price everything, but made checkout run amazingly smoothly. Looks like Clayfolk may adopt the system next year, and collaborate on barcodes so we can use the same stickers from show to show.

A slightly glazed look

I didn't get any break at all after Clay Fest; Monday morning, I was back in the studio glazing. I had only six days to glaze the whole kiln load; had to load the kiln on Sunday because of a dental appointment Tuesday. Wound up doing a couple of marathon sessions, packing lunch and supper and glazing straight through till late, but managed to get everything finished by Saturday afternoon.

So I didn't get many pictures in process, just a few pet-centric special orders:


Loading the kiln on Sunday was an adventure. Not only was my Journalism grad student back for more video footage, but I had to Zoom two meetings, the Clayfolk chairs meeting and the general/booth pick. Zoom app on my phone was wonky, lying to me. Said my mike was muted when it wasn't, so people who didn't pin the chair pic kept flipping to me setting shelves. Very embarrassing.

Loading the kiln got a little easier. Jon somehow managed to fire the last load with a carpenter's level still inside, so the bottom shelves were fused glass and aluminum. Karen had scored some one-inch mullite shelves at BRING, so we replaced them all. Hadn't realized how pitted and saggy the old ones were until I was able to stack a load without having to shim and level random low spots. So even with all the distractions, we still managed to close up by 4 pm, our usual time.


Firing went long on Monday. I'm still trying to figure out a firing cycle that doesn't over-reduce the top while not allowing oxidation spots elsewhere. As you can see, I wasn't entirely successful, but it was still generally a good firing. And I spent the extra time waiting for temperature by getting a head start on glazing for my next kiln.

Inka dinka do

It's October--well, it's been October. Practically November, at this point. But I'm once again doing an October drawing challenge, my fifth. Hence the Roman numeral V on my title page.

Because I've hardly gotten out to go anywhere except Clay Fest and the studio, most of my drawings are from online pictures of birds and animals. Good practice, I suppose, for my pottery decorating. As before, I made my own sketchbook, this time using a faux-leather effect cover from a technique Denise learned last spring at Newport. It's actually brown kraft paper, crumpled and stained black on the back side, then colored with successive washes of acrylic on the front. The spine is an old silk tie converted to bookcloth that I picked up at a materials exchange some years back and wanted to put to use.

Here's week one and two:








More to come!

Seeing red

Fall colors on our new--as of last spring--dogwood tree.