Hard day's night
Sep. 22nd, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrFortnight, actually. The last two weeks were a helluva thing.
Glazing and firing, of course. That's the time I find myself putting in ten and twelve hour days, stumbling home exhausted, rolling out the next morning and repeating the process. I take pictures when I think of it, always intending to post updates, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather flop on the bed with a book and read myself to sleep. In this case, it was complicated by the fact that I was also completing posters and flyers for Clay Fest, as well as print and online advertising, on a computer that was somewhere way below reliable. More on that tomorrow, maybe...
Meanwhile, a brief reprise of the last couple of weeks.
I started glazing a week before the Sunday I planned to load the kiln. The potter firing ahead of me was over two weeks late in loading (he'd signed up for Labor Day), so still had every shelf in the kiln room full of his stuff. I worked around it as best as I could, stacking shelves in the hallway by the grinder, carrying them back into my studio (less than ideal; I'm far from the kiln, and would have to bring it all back). He finally loaded up on Tuesday night, which is why I wound up putting in 12-hour days Wednesday and Thursday.
(He was also scheduled to fire right after me, but cancelled a day or so before my load-in. So I could have taken an extra day or two glazing, except I'd arranged for two of our potters to shadow my firing, helping me load and learning how to fire the big gas kiln. So I was kinda committed to loading on the day we'd agreed on a month earlier.)
Got everything glazed by Friday afternoon, as it happened, so we could do Saturday Market as usual. Denise usually helps me load kilns, but as Linda and Brian were helping instead, she got to take the afternoon off, going to open studio with her book arts group.
I forget how reliant I am on her help. She knows when to bring me something to load, when to wait while I figure out what I need. She's always half a step ahead picking out kiln posts, and she never picks up a pot by the painted side. (Lookin' at you, Brian). But still, we ended up finishing up only a little later than usual, Linda was there that evening to watch me light the burners, and Brian actually showed up at quarter-to-six the next morning to observe body reduction. They both were around much of the day, and the kiln behaved beautifully, dropping cone 10, top and bottom together, at around ten minutes 'til six.
I'm really liking the kiln these days--the last three firings have been really consistent, in time, gas used, and minimal amounts of oxidation. I made up a three-page crib-sheet, including notes on how I prep and load the kiln and a copy of my log for this firing, and emailed it to them both.
All right, some pictures.
The squeeze bottle next to the fawn creamer is my new favorite tool. My frequent neighbor at Market, Cherie Todd, does pots decorated with dozens of dots of glaze; when I was complaining about how hard it is to get consistent spots on a fawn with a brush, she gave me a spare glaze-trailing bottle to try. It works brilliantly, on fawns, woodpeckers, barn owls. Anybody who needs white dots over an oxide or stain wash now goes to the head of my glazing list.
I took a couple of interesting special orders this time; Denise's cousin Diana wanted some stealth wine cups, stemless and opaque so she can take the forbidden fruit to neighborhood picnics. She has feeders on her balcony, so her cups feature frequent visitors: hummingbird, flicker, chickadee and dark-eyed junco. I also got a request for smaller teapot: three cups, instead of my usual four (or occasional six. Denise drinks a lot of tea). I did two, as is my wont, and not only did both turn out beautifully, I actually sold both last Saturday.
But the best part of the glazing week happened Tuesday. Fellow potter MIchiyo and her husband Andrew brought visiting family in for a studio tour. Andrew's family is from Australia, so as I was glazing pie plates, I demo'd a koala in their honor. Which led Andrew to ask if I'd ever done a platypus. I said I'd never had a request for one. Oh, you do requests, do you? Sure, some of my best patterns come from special orders. Which is how I came to paint this little darling later in the week.
It's a plate-ypus.
I'll see myself out...
Glazing and firing, of course. That's the time I find myself putting in ten and twelve hour days, stumbling home exhausted, rolling out the next morning and repeating the process. I take pictures when I think of it, always intending to post updates, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather flop on the bed with a book and read myself to sleep. In this case, it was complicated by the fact that I was also completing posters and flyers for Clay Fest, as well as print and online advertising, on a computer that was somewhere way below reliable. More on that tomorrow, maybe...
Meanwhile, a brief reprise of the last couple of weeks.
I started glazing a week before the Sunday I planned to load the kiln. The potter firing ahead of me was over two weeks late in loading (he'd signed up for Labor Day), so still had every shelf in the kiln room full of his stuff. I worked around it as best as I could, stacking shelves in the hallway by the grinder, carrying them back into my studio (less than ideal; I'm far from the kiln, and would have to bring it all back). He finally loaded up on Tuesday night, which is why I wound up putting in 12-hour days Wednesday and Thursday.
(He was also scheduled to fire right after me, but cancelled a day or so before my load-in. So I could have taken an extra day or two glazing, except I'd arranged for two of our potters to shadow my firing, helping me load and learning how to fire the big gas kiln. So I was kinda committed to loading on the day we'd agreed on a month earlier.)
Got everything glazed by Friday afternoon, as it happened, so we could do Saturday Market as usual. Denise usually helps me load kilns, but as Linda and Brian were helping instead, she got to take the afternoon off, going to open studio with her book arts group.
I forget how reliant I am on her help. She knows when to bring me something to load, when to wait while I figure out what I need. She's always half a step ahead picking out kiln posts, and she never picks up a pot by the painted side. (Lookin' at you, Brian). But still, we ended up finishing up only a little later than usual, Linda was there that evening to watch me light the burners, and Brian actually showed up at quarter-to-six the next morning to observe body reduction. They both were around much of the day, and the kiln behaved beautifully, dropping cone 10, top and bottom together, at around ten minutes 'til six.
I'm really liking the kiln these days--the last three firings have been really consistent, in time, gas used, and minimal amounts of oxidation. I made up a three-page crib-sheet, including notes on how I prep and load the kiln and a copy of my log for this firing, and emailed it to them both.
All right, some pictures.
The squeeze bottle next to the fawn creamer is my new favorite tool. My frequent neighbor at Market, Cherie Todd, does pots decorated with dozens of dots of glaze; when I was complaining about how hard it is to get consistent spots on a fawn with a brush, she gave me a spare glaze-trailing bottle to try. It works brilliantly, on fawns, woodpeckers, barn owls. Anybody who needs white dots over an oxide or stain wash now goes to the head of my glazing list.
I took a couple of interesting special orders this time; Denise's cousin Diana wanted some stealth wine cups, stemless and opaque so she can take the forbidden fruit to neighborhood picnics. She has feeders on her balcony, so her cups feature frequent visitors: hummingbird, flicker, chickadee and dark-eyed junco. I also got a request for smaller teapot: three cups, instead of my usual four (or occasional six. Denise drinks a lot of tea). I did two, as is my wont, and not only did both turn out beautifully, I actually sold both last Saturday.
But the best part of the glazing week happened Tuesday. Fellow potter MIchiyo and her husband Andrew brought visiting family in for a studio tour. Andrew's family is from Australia, so as I was glazing pie plates, I demo'd a koala in their honor. Which led Andrew to ask if I'd ever done a platypus. I said I'd never had a request for one. Oh, you do requests, do you? Sure, some of my best patterns come from special orders. Which is how I came to paint this little darling later in the week.
It's a plate-ypus.
I'll see myself out...