Complications
Jan. 25th, 2022 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrOne of my favorite Ann Reed songs from back in my radio days was a fast-paced ditty listing all the things going on in the songwriter's life. I don't remember the lyrics in detail, but the hook has stayed with me: "More complications to a simple life!"
It me.
So the plan was, I'd finish Holiday Market, take a few days for Christmas. Pack and ship presents to family in the midwest. Spend a week relaxing and reading and eating cookies, then head back into the studio at the point when my hands couldn't stay away from the clay any longer.
I was going to take it easy, limit myself to 50 lbs. throwing a day, spend three weeks on wet work, throwing and trimming, instead of the two that I raced through before the Holidays, then a long week glazing. Fire on the first of February.
It mostly worked? I mean, I also had to recycle 400 lbs. of clay, before it got too dry, but that means I had 400 lbs. more clay, right? And the extra three special orders that popped up on email were fine, I was gonna throw pasta bowls and dessert plates and little tiny toddler mugs... well, one outta three ain't bad.
But I finally got everything done, trimmed the last three dozen soup bowls last Friday morning, so I could run errands in the afternoon, buy bread... and Great Harvest Bakery was down to nine mugs (out of the 45 I took them in December). So I came home and used up the last of my recycled clay making two dozen mugs to carry them over to my next firing in April. It's fine, right?
Then the kiln blew a circuit breaker while firing Friday afternoon. I caught it before we'd lost too much heat, reset, restarted and it continued to completion. But the following firing blew the breaker twice, and that was the firing that had the ball clay I had to calcine to mix glaze because I ran out last month and only made two buckets, which weren't enough for this glaze run so I needed to mix more. And I got an email from someone wanting to pick up some stew mugs for her daughter-in-law's birthday and could she get six? (Including one in a pattern I'd run out of at Holiday Market.)
I've been getting very little sleep lately.
But things are slowly getting better. I went over the trouble-shooting flow chart at the Skutt Kilns website, and talked to one of their support techs, and we both concluded that it wasn't the kiln (whew!) but might well be the breaker, which is frustrating, because it's only been... oh lord, five years? since I got my kiln and had to rewire the studio with a heavier-duty breaker. Still, it's an easy fix, requiring only two trips for parts (Jerry's didn't have 80 amp breakers, only 70 and 90, so I had to drive down to Garfield Street to get the one I needed. Had it back together by lunchtime, left Denise to keep an eye on it while I went and glazed pots, staying until almost 8 pm to catch up on forty tall mugs.
The firing went fine, as did today's follow-up, so I guess it was the breaker. And I took the van to the studio, mixed up a 10,000-gram batch of glaze this morning, and pulled out stew mugs while the glaze was slaking, just in time for my customer. I didn't get that much glazing done--32 stew mugs and the last batter bowl--but I'm hoping once tomorrow's Club Mud meeting is over, the complications will slack off a bit and I can just paint pots for a few days.
Pictures tomorrow, I promise.
It me.
So the plan was, I'd finish Holiday Market, take a few days for Christmas. Pack and ship presents to family in the midwest. Spend a week relaxing and reading and eating cookies, then head back into the studio at the point when my hands couldn't stay away from the clay any longer.
I was going to take it easy, limit myself to 50 lbs. throwing a day, spend three weeks on wet work, throwing and trimming, instead of the two that I raced through before the Holidays, then a long week glazing. Fire on the first of February.
It mostly worked? I mean, I also had to recycle 400 lbs. of clay, before it got too dry, but that means I had 400 lbs. more clay, right? And the extra three special orders that popped up on email were fine, I was gonna throw pasta bowls and dessert plates and little tiny toddler mugs... well, one outta three ain't bad.
But I finally got everything done, trimmed the last three dozen soup bowls last Friday morning, so I could run errands in the afternoon, buy bread... and Great Harvest Bakery was down to nine mugs (out of the 45 I took them in December). So I came home and used up the last of my recycled clay making two dozen mugs to carry them over to my next firing in April. It's fine, right?
Then the kiln blew a circuit breaker while firing Friday afternoon. I caught it before we'd lost too much heat, reset, restarted and it continued to completion. But the following firing blew the breaker twice, and that was the firing that had the ball clay I had to calcine to mix glaze because I ran out last month and only made two buckets, which weren't enough for this glaze run so I needed to mix more. And I got an email from someone wanting to pick up some stew mugs for her daughter-in-law's birthday and could she get six? (Including one in a pattern I'd run out of at Holiday Market.)
I've been getting very little sleep lately.
But things are slowly getting better. I went over the trouble-shooting flow chart at the Skutt Kilns website, and talked to one of their support techs, and we both concluded that it wasn't the kiln (whew!) but might well be the breaker, which is frustrating, because it's only been... oh lord, five years? since I got my kiln and had to rewire the studio with a heavier-duty breaker. Still, it's an easy fix, requiring only two trips for parts (Jerry's didn't have 80 amp breakers, only 70 and 90, so I had to drive down to Garfield Street to get the one I needed. Had it back together by lunchtime, left Denise to keep an eye on it while I went and glazed pots, staying until almost 8 pm to catch up on forty tall mugs.
The firing went fine, as did today's follow-up, so I guess it was the breaker. And I took the van to the studio, mixed up a 10,000-gram batch of glaze this morning, and pulled out stew mugs while the glaze was slaking, just in time for my customer. I didn't get that much glazing done--32 stew mugs and the last batter bowl--but I'm hoping once tomorrow's Club Mud meeting is over, the complications will slack off a bit and I can just paint pots for a few days.
Pictures tomorrow, I promise.