A day at the hospital

I did get some early studio time yesterday to throw more tests tiles, mark others and batch and dip a couple of flashing slip revisions. I expected a full studio day, but Jim reminded me that we had 3 family birthdays this week, so it wound up being only a half day in the studio and the other half card and grocery shopping and dinner out.

This morning Jim had to go to the hospital for an MRI for the severe back pain he's been experiencing for over a month. He told me to stay home since he was feeling a bit better after 3 days of flu symptoms, so I got busy with charting these flashing slip tests, before planning on a day in the studio. Our phone was out and the repair man showed up and he was still working on the problem when my friend Laura was at the door. Jim had called her from the hospital and asked her to come get me. The MRI wasn't working. They tried twice, but his back kept going into severe spasms, so they had to put him on muscle relaxing medication for a while before they could try again, and they said he wouldn't be safe to drive afterwards.

When I got there they had him on oxygen and iv's. After sitting with him about an hour, it was clear that he would be there at least another hour, so I drove home, stopped to pick up a few groceries, got the cat in, walked the dog, put the groceries away and drove the half hour back to the hospital.

I arrived at the radiology deparment just as they were wheeling Jim back out. He was awake and they were able to complete the MRI. Halleluijah! I had stopped to get him a sandwich just in case he wanted to eat. Miraculously his appetite was back and he ate the whole sandwich. After about a half an hour they determined he was stable enough and they wheeled him out, helped him in the car, and we headed home.

He's napping now and looking forward to some wine and cheese and cookies later (his menu choice for the evening). A Netflix movie arrived "A Day in the Park with George" - a wonderful musical that we haven't seen for years, so we'll watch that while we munch.

It will be an early night, since we have to be back at the hospital in morning to go over the results of the MRI. Pots and studio work will just have to wait. There are much more important things to tend to right at the moment.

Back to blogging

Studio time has been almost nil while I try to get rid of the latest bout of this viral bug. So, other than throwing and trimming test tiles and doing a huge amount of studio paper work, (mainly getting all my glaze and slips notes updated and getting a gathering the next batch of recipes to try for this cone 6 soda project,) the only thing that's occupied my time has been cooking and cleaning up a lot of old email.

Our friend Shane gifted us with 2 lbs of shrimp the other day, so I pretty much spent the day prepping and cooking shrimp and grits and pot de creme for dessert. Yesterday was Mexican night - a chicken, tomato, serrano chile, onion stir fry with re-fried beans.

I'm heading to the studio now with my pile of recipes in hand, and will be weighing out and mixing Cone 6 flashing slips and liner glazes all day. The forecast is for another couple of high 60's days Sunday and Monday, so I'm going to try to fire these cone 6 soda tests one of those days if I get all these new tiles completed.

I have some soups in the freezer, so tonights' dinner will be soup and salad or soup and tuna sandwiches - Jim's choice.

Cone 6 soda project continues

Managed to fire some of the cone 6 soda test tiles in one of my tiny electric kilns yesterday, hoping that taking some of them up to a full cone 6 -7 might mature those flashing slips a bit more and it just didn't work. I had cone 6 touching and cone 7 at 2 o'clock and those flashing slips are all, still dry.

So it's back to square one. I decided to not fire the gas kiln as is, unloaded it, and picked out the new, unfired tiles and threw some new test tiles - more to do tomorrow. Right now I need to head back out and cut those tiles off the bats and tomorrow, finish them as well as throw some more.

From what I've seen of photos of cone 6 soda pots, the flashing slips look drier than what I'm used to at cone 10 and higher. When the flashing slip is more of a background base for a lot of glaze and colored slip over, I guess it seems to work well; but my hope is to find a way to get these slips a bit more mature at that temperature. It may be a futile attempt, but I'll keep at it a bit longer

From the various flashing slips I tried, Bauer, Blair Red and Randy's show the most promised Of maturing at these lower temperatures with a bit of tweaking.

In the meantime, I have more glazes to batch and new tiles to dip. Fortunately, most of the flashing slip revisions are batched; but it will still take me a week or two to get it all done. Stay tuned.

Snow and icy conditions

It's looks like it may be another woman/man plans and God laughs day!

Went to the studio at 7am to get cones for the little electric test kiln, and when I went into the kiln room/aka garage, it was like an ice box. Seems that Jim didn't quite close the door yesterday and it flew open overnight. It was around 20 degrees outside and in!

With the light snow cover over an icy driveway, and snow continuing, Jim doesn't want to take the car out of there today, so I'm hoping it will have warmed up enough in another half hour or so I can get some of those tiles out out of the test gas kiln and into the electric kiln.

The kiln is up against one of my large industrial shelving units and the car is too close to the kiln to allow me to fully open the lid. This may be an exercise in futility today. Oh well, there are always plenty of things for me to do both in the house and the studio.

After our buckwheat pancake breakfast I'll head out to the kiln room and see if I move the kiln out enough to open the lid and access those tiles. If not, I'll weigh out a few cone 6 soda liner glazes that which I'll have room for once I remove some of the flashing slip re-fires in the gas kiln.

Pizza night

Today was a "stay in" day wrapping up a lot of my "to do" list, like getting on line and ordering vitamins, email mail, snail mail, paper work and then getting an early dinner of pizza made.

Yesterday was a day for osteo treatments and food shopping, so full studio days will have to wait until this latest re-run of the flu bug wanes a bit more.Our doctor said this viral bug is a bad one and many people are winding up with viral pneumonia when it comes around for the fourth time, so I'm not pushing myself until I feel that this current bout is well under control. But saying that, I will be out early tomorrow morning to load and re-fire some soda test tiles which didn't reach temperature in the last firing. Since they had plenty of soda mix in the firing, the plan is to just load some of them in my tiny electric test kiln.

Since I tested each flashing slip on 3-4 different clay bodies, I'll probably just
pick two of each for the electric re-fires and have the rest in the gas kiln firing some time next week.

A couple of other Cone 6 potters (who read my block, generously sent me some Cone 6 soda recipes. So I'm hoping to get some time over the weekend to weigh out a few. Thank you Mark and Rebekkah!

Good day to make glazes

Where the day went. Yesterday was a piddly day in the studio, doing lots of little things - wet the towels that keep the clay in the pug mill workable, loaded a few more test tiles in the small gas kiln, moved the kiln and tanks so Jim could get the car in the garage, put away a lot of things, moved all those cone 6 test containers off my wedging table and got them in numerical order, and a tiny bit of the never ending paperwork among other things. I quit early to make a big dinner and after dinner did a bit more paper work before calling it a day.

Today's plan is to weigh out a couple of color versions of one of my revised cone 6 glazes which I revamped to be more of a gloss. I also need to make a couple of small batches of my cone 10 liner glazes so I can finish these cone 10 soda pots. I'm optimistic about the possibility of switching to cone 6 soda in the future, so I'm not going to make any big batches of any of those cone liner 10 glazes any more.

It's easy pot stickers for dinner, so I'll get a full studio day for a change.

Firing postponed

It took longer to get the little kiln loaded, mainly because I decided to batch a couple of new tests earlier. The firing was planned for today, but I'm putting it off till Tuesday, the next warm day, because there's a bit more room in the kiln for more tests and Mark Knott will be sending me his cone 6 recipes and I'd like to hold off the firing to include them.

I need to find a way to set up this little gas kiln indoors so I'm not at the mercy of the weather with the firings.

Time to get to work. Studio time today is going to be tidying and paperwork. I'll quit early to start the dinner I had planned yesterday. Because I didn't finish loading the kiln till it was our usual dinner time, Jim suggested that I close up the studio and relax and he went into town and brought home two prime rib dinners. Love that man!

Almost a spring day on the way

Two days of relative, post holiday rest, and continuing an herbal liver cleanse, have perked me up almost enough to want to hit the studio today. A bit of the sniffles is no excuse - I know, I know, so after breakfast I will March out the mudroom door and walk to my lovely studio and sort the tiles to be re-fired and load that small Olympic, gas, test kiln. Since Jim has doctors orders not to do any remotely, heavy lifting, I'll have to load the empty propane tanks and he can get them filled in town and I'll unload them.

When you have a titanium hip, you're warned to not lift more than 25 lbs, so my trick is to lean and put the weight on the not so good hip. Aging and dealing with a very well used body, force you into some interesting life changes!

We're in for two days of sun and a forecast high of 60 both days, so if I can't fire that small kiln tomorrow, I doubt if I'll get another chance for such warmish, sunny weather this time of year.

Yesterday was a day to do more email catch up, play some computer word games, watch TV, computer filing and some glaze chemistry - sometimes juggling all around the same time.

Dinner was easy last night - spaghetti with bolognese sauce which I had frozen. Tonight's dinner is broiled chicken breasts coated with kosher salt and slathered with a mixture of creamed butter, soy sauce, garlic, mustard, cayenne and lemon. Sides are rice and baked butternut squash with a filling of butter, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate and a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg all mixed together (the only way I could get my family to eat squash years go and it still remains one of Jim's favorites.)

178 cone 6 test tiles

Winter has arrived in force. Late morning, it was still only 14 degrees F, and it only rose to 17F, which is what it is now. So I decided to just sit tight and try to catch up with all the email that backed up the past few days when I had house guests. Our lovely house guests (Jim's sister, husband and daughter)left yesterday and I had the afternoon to relax and just vegg out with some reading,computer word games and movies.

With the snow, wind and cold temperatures this morning, I knew the water in the studio was probably going to be frozen because I forget to leave it on an overnight drip, so I opted to continue to go through some of the 300 plus emails and get some things filed and some read and deleted.

After a hot chocolate lunch I headed for the studio, watered the plants and transplanted a very small Kaffir lime tree which I'm growing mainly for the leaves, which I'll use in Thai recipes. I also made a list of the glazes and slips I batched for the cone 6 firing last week; and now I have to make a cleaner list and match it against the tiles. There are a couple of missing and unmarked tiles; and there's a really great looking oribe which is unmarked and that's the main one I want to track down. Fortunately I made a chart when I was dipping the glazes, and noted which glazes were on which clay bodies, so finding the skipped ones should be easy - just a bit time consuming - a good after dinner project.

After all the holiday eating and merry making, I started a one week liver cleanse yesterday - no wine and lots of liver cleanse herbs. Tonight I'm just making a simple bratwurst on crunchy hard rolls with sauteed green peppers and onions. This is the meal I had planned for yesterday, but instead we opted for just some easy and comforting chicken soup.

Happy New Year

Our company has arrived and settled in and they're all taking naps; and since dinner is made (did the gumbo yesterday and started the cornbread for dinner and tomorrows breakfast bread before dawn today), I actually have a few minutes to relax.

We had a great 5 course dinner at the Knife and Fork last night. And Jim's opening another bottle of wine when we got home made for a very, "making merry" New Years eve. Tomorrow I go on a liver cleanse to undo all this holiday eating and drinking!

I'm eager to get back to the studio. The weather isn't going to be good enough to re-fire some of those cone 6 soda tests outdoors, in my little gas test kiln till this coming Friday; and I'm not sure I'll even want to do it then if it's too cold. More cone 6 test tiles need to be thrown and the studio needs some tidying before I get on with batching some liner glazes for these cone 10 soda pots.

Happy New Year

Well,another year, filled with productivity, challenges, and world changing events has passed. Jim and I continued our current solitary celebration, early, with a lovely 5 course dinner at our favorite local restaurant "The Knife and Fork", followed by a relaxed evening in bed, with a great bottle of Frank Family Winstone Cabernet single vintage, red wine, while listening to a the wonderful PBS concert of Leonard Bernstein's score of West Side Story, with those amazing counter melodies - what a score in it's time and it still stirs the soul! And now, they've switched to Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. What would life be without music that takes you to such heights!

While Jim takes our little furry, Jack Russel terrier, Bodhi, on his last walk of the evening, I'm taking a bit of time for this blog.

Today was a busy kitchen day, spending lots of time chopping and cooking, but a delicious, spicy, shrimp and chicken gumbo is cooked and ready for tomorrows house guests. In the morning I'll be baking corn bread and a breakfast nutty fruity, sourdough bread which I had hoped to make today; but that job had to be put off because i forgot that it needed sourdough and my sourdough needed feeding. The sourdough's been fed and the bread will get made in the morning. Then it will be time to tidy up the papers which seems to shroud my sitting area of the living room, which has become my other office. When am I going to slow down and just enjoy retirement! Busynesss is a lifelong thing for me and even at 72 is one that is hard to release. So rather than fight it, I just stay productive and let it take me where it takes me. If this body fails me totally, I guess that will be the time to just contemplate my navel.

House guests arrive tomorrow, for just a day, so it will be a lovely start of the New Year with family, belly warming, spicy seafood and chicken gumbo for dinner along with home made fudge and some other, lovely, store bought candies, and Jim, our in house sommelier, sharing one of his lovely white wines for the gumbo.

Hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration with loved ones, and/or dear friends, with good food and quality liquor if that's your choice! And I hope you all have the most productive, healthy, joyous and prosperous New Year, filled with joy, challenging and rewarding experiences and live well lived!

Mish mash sort of day

The only remotely studio related things I did today were copy and print out the four pages of the charted notes on the cone 6 soda firing and driving them over to John's studio. I also compiled all the information I've been gathering on earthenware clay bodies, slips and glazes and will print those out tomorrow. Exploring earthenware is one of my 2012 projects.

The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping for company dinner Sunday (shrimp and chicken gumbo), having lunch out, then back home to put away groceries, tend to house plants,email, make dinner, then after dinner, make a batch of fudge.

It was then time to give Bonnie kitty some mom play time. She loves this crazy laser light. Fortunately, she chases it with such vigor that she tires herself out in about 5 minutes. Time for the adults and a Netflix Midsomer mystery before meditation and sleep. It's been a busy, smorgasbord kind of good day; but a good one.

Chicken soup and test tiles

I'm bleary eyed, and waiting for these back spasms to ease after getting over 7 dozen test tiles lined up in numerical order on my slab roller and making followup notes; but the job is done! In the morning I'll photo copy these 4 pages of notes for John, my testing partner in this venture and drop them off at his studio.

Next step will be for me to re-fire some of these tiles, and make new tiles for another firing; but that will have to wait after this weekends company leaves, and the weather is mild and dry enough for two consecutive days, to wheel my little gas test kiln outdoors to fire. The weather forecast for next week is pretty gruesome (cold, wet, snowy), so it looks like I'll be focusing on getting the cone 10 pots finished before I can re-fire these cone 6 tests.

Meantime, there's the house to tidy, and food shopping and cooking to do before house guests arrive early Sunday, as well as a studio to tidy if I can squeeze in some time after I get back from shopping and other chores tomorrow. I'd like to start the New Year with the studio a bit more organized; but it looks like I may not have the time to complete that goal, with all the other things I have to do between now and the New Year.

Tonight was a good night for chicken soup and fortunately I have leftovers for tomorrow. If we get home early enough and I'm not too wiped, I may just get an hour before dinner to do some of the studio tidying. That would be nice!

Cone 6 soda test tile results

The cone 6 soda test tile firing looks very promising. I will need to re-fire tiles because we only reached cone 6 just starting to soften. Cone 7 looked like it was at 3 o'clock; but it turned out that it was just in the process of toppling over. Guess I didn't seat it well enough in it's little house. With only one cone pack visible I asked John to just shut it down, rather than risk over-firing, which was a good call, since I was more interested in getting a true picture of the flashing slip at cone 6, not cone 7.

These tiles look more promising than the tiles from the Energy Exchange's wood/soda firing. They're brighter, and with the new soda mix, it looks like they will flux more at a full cone 6. They also showed more flashing potential in this firing with this new soda mix. As I suspected, the wood in the Energy Exchange firing made the tiles drier. The yellow slip was a great example to show the difference. It was buttery on all 3 tiles but dry at higher temperature in the Energy Exchange firing.

The draw rings were very good and some of the glazes are good at cone 5. One oribe is a beautiful, rich, dark green and the turquoise oribe also looks promising. A matt white was under fired at cone 5 as was Reeves green, and another oribe.

I'll make new tiles for the shinos and a few others and start body reduction a bit earlier next time and do it a bit heavier,reduction next time. Two of the of the shinos were mature at cone 5 and look good as potential liners. They just need more and earlier reduction to shine. The one temmoku in the firing was brown; but re-firing might help. I think I'll also do another version. I have to check which Iron I used, but I thought I used a very high purity iron and was expecting black, not dark brown. John has one C 6 temmoku that I'll try as well. I forgot to put my celadon liner in this firing, so that will go in with the re-fires along with another one from John.

My new gloss base looked good, but some of the tiles got hit with too much soda - difficult to avoid in a small kiln with only test tiles. My yellow slip (Linda's yellow with my revisions) turned out great on all bodies tested. Another really nice surprise was 2 versions of a known glaze called Juicy fruit - better at cone 5 in soda and light reduction than in my full cone 6 oxidation firing using Steven Hills firing schedule.

I'll be spending another day or two making some charts, cataloging these with follow up notes, then it will take another couple of weeks after the holidays to make, bisque and dip new tiles and then wait for two days of consecutive good weather to fire them; but I'm very happy with all the information and more potential good results with some tweaking and re-firing.

I also want to batch some new revisions of a couple of flashing slips using Ronans excellent suggestion of replacing Grolleg with EPK and Newman red with Redart.

Time now, to get a cup of herbal tea and start cataloging the other two shelves of tests.

Cone 6 soda test firing cooling

The firing went well and I was home before 7pm. Love it! I think we may have gotten a bit hotter than our goal. Cone 6 in the only cone pack that was visible didn't seem to be moving although the pyrometer showed it should be. So I opened the burner shutter more and adjusted the damper for light reduction and we went off for a few minutes and when we came back cone 7 was at 3 o'clock, even though cone 6 hadn't shown any sign of movement a couple of minutes before! With soda you never know if that's a true reading; but I had the cones inside a little open hut of sorts to protect it somewhat from the soda in an attempt to get a truer reading. The tiles should tell the story.

The last draw ring showed good gloss from the new soda mixture (which Dan Hill uses for cone 6) which was 4 parts sodium bicarb, 2 parts soda ash and 1 part borax. This soda test kiln is small - maybe 4 cubic feet of setting space, and I didn't even finish the 1 gallon of solution which had 1 1/2 lbs of the soda mixture. In fact, I may have gotten a bit more in there than ideal. We'll see.

John thinks we may be able to open it this morning. I'd be thrilled to have one workable flashing slip from all those tiles! If not, we should have enough information to explore it further.

The high grolleg flashing slips tend to be dryer than some others unless fluxed a lot or have some clay substitutions. Ronan Kyle Peterson said that his experience has shown that replacing the grolleg with EPK was an improvement. So I can try that in future tests if needed.

In our first soda firing, using the Gail Nichols method, straight cone 10 flashing slips were all dry or very dry; but there were some that had more possibilities - Randy's, one of my Avery clones, and two others. I didn't put those originals in this firing with the newer soda mixture; but I did have several variations of those in the firing. Looking back, it might have been a good idea to put at least one tile of those 4 original ones in the firing with the new soda mix as a good comparison.

Another very good suggestion from Ronan was to sub Redart for some of the more refractory clays. Randy's uses Newman red which is classified as a fire clay, so that is another possible, future test.

Day after making merry and firing day

Moving slowly after all the holiday merry making and too much rich food. Friend John Britt said he'd be lighting the kiln around 8am this morning, so at some point I'll be heading over to his studio with this soda mix and my fancy, battery charged sprayer.

I dragged myself into the studio to weigh out the soda mixture, and make sure both battery packs for the sprayer were plugged in, before my first cup of tea. Until I hear from John about when my presence is needed, I'm going to just vegg out and catch up on a lot of correspondence and get my own battery recharged.

Hope all who celebrate had a great Christmas and a great Hanukkah!

From our house to yours

From our house to yours - wishing you a very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and a joyous, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

June and Jim Perry

Twas the Night before Christmas

This is for the children in your house and for those of us who still love to tap into our childhood memories every Christmas.

Today will be an all day baking and pre Christmas dinner prep day. Yesterday I went through all the flashing slip test tiles that were in the Energy Exchange firing and most still seemed too dry; but I suspect the wood ash also contributed to some of the dryness.

John and I put off our firing of the 175 plus slip and glaze tiles till Monday. Hopefully by then, we'll have heard back from Ronan on how hot they fired the kiln and what kind of soda they used in the firing. Till then, I'll be cooking and baking and indulging in some wonderful holiday meals.

Tomorrow we'll be having our family's traditional Lithuanian/German/Polish breakfast of home made babka, ham, kielbasa, hard boiled eggs and horseradish. Dinner will be pretty much a repeat of the Thanksgiving turkey dinner since the store was out of the rock cornish hens which I had planned.

Wishing all who celebrate it, a very Merry Christmas.

Mr and Mrs Claus

Jim's sister Pat gifted me these delightful Mr and Mrs Claus dolls several years ago and Jim found the perfect place to display them for the holidays.

Yesterday was a busy day getting the last paper work done for the test tiles, dipping a few last minute ones and packing them up along with draw tiles and cone packs and delivering them to Johns studio. When I got there I got a quick peek at the tiles that he had just picked up from the Energy Exchange firing. At first glance, most still look a bit dry, so I'm waiting to hear more about the firing. John hasn't been able to reach anyone yet; but it looks like they did a light salting; and my guess is that they only used soda ash. I'm hoping that using bicarbonate of soda and some borax in our firing will flux those slips more.

John had some tests with laterite which had a much better finish but were darker than my current flashing slips. I brought home the box of his tiles with my slip revisions which I'll examine closely today.

I'm not sure if we'll be firing today. It will be Johns call; but I'm thinking it might be better to wait until we get the information about the Energy Exchange firing.

It's going to be turkey again for Christmas because the store was out of rock cornish hens, my first choice; but I got all my Christmas food shopping finished yesterday and if we don't fire today, I'm going to relax and go through the piles of unread mail and get this living room company ready for next weeks house guests.

Foggy mountain top morning

We got a little antique Baker figure (actually looks more like a butcher holding a roast; but the ebay listing said it was a baker) to put in front of the bakery under the tree. This year Jim lit up the buildings which is an improvement. You can actually see what's inside some of them now.

Yesterday I got 175 of the finished tiles in numerical order and charted them all against the list I made when I dipped them; and got the last 6 raw dipped tiles bisqued. I found a couple of unmarked and two obviously mis-marked, so this morning I'm going to check those against the containers of glaze and slip. Counting the 6 I bisqued overnight, plus the couple John included in the Energy Exchange firing, there are at least 185 made so far. This morning I'll probably re-dip a few of the missing and obviously mis-marked ones; but first I need to make another list of all the slips and glazes I batched for this project.

When I left the studio around 6 last night, I forgot to turn up the tiny test kiln. Fortunately, I awoke around midnight and hobbled out to the studio, turned it up to high and went back to bed; and I was able to empty it early this morning. The base of one of the tiles broke off; but I think it was one that was broken before the firing and patched with some sodium silicate and not because of firing it so fast.

Our lobsters didn't arrive till almost 7 o'clock last night; but they were worth the wait. We decided that 2 lb lobsters might work better than the 3 lb ones since neither of us could finish those big lobsters even though we only have a little salad before. So I put aside the few leftovers bits and will make a tiny amount of lobster salad which we'll have as a lunch snack on crackers today.I also think the smaller lobsters would be a bit more tender. The lobster dinner ended my delicious, week long birthday celebration.

Lobster day

This is another section of Jim's, under the tree village.

Today is the last day of my prolonged birthday celebration, with an indulgent lobster dinner. Jim ordered two 3 lb lobster which will be delivered some time today. With our advanced years, we decided that we should do this prolonged birthday celebrations starting this year and it's been great fun!

I would have been in the studio early; but some good friends stopped by for a visit this morning, and brought a present of home made cookies. I'll still bake some of my own, but not as many as I had planned. For now, it's time to get to the studio and finish making glaze notes on those tiles which I'll be delivering tomorrow to John Britts studio for our Friday cone 6 soda firing.

Yesterday we were out and about all day with doctor's visits, lunch, food and other shopping and didn't get home till dinner time. Fortunately we had the leftover lamb shanks so I didn't have to cook. One of our stops was to pick up some prescriptions for Jim's back; and I can report this morning that they're working. Now I just have to keep him from doing any more heavy lifting in the future!

A working birthday

Was prepared to get a full studio day since we celebrated my birthday with friends yesterday with a brunch at the Grove Park inn; but as often happens, a planned day goes awry with unplanned chores which demand attention.

A huge amount of emails this morning, mainly from so many wonderful birthday wishes, notices that my Norton anti virus software has expired, and using the last of my bread, changed the plan. So now I'm downloading the software on one computer, with two other computers to do after this, then I need to start on another loaf of bread, and get an early start on tonight's braised lamb shanks dinner before I can even think about the studio.

I will get in the studio at some point this afternoon to finish sorting the test tiles and making those last minute notes, which I didn't get to do yesterday because we didn't get home till around 5 o'clock and still had to unpack the car and get groceries put away before thinking about dinner, which wound up just being some popcorn with some parmesan and spices.

After the lovely brunch and working through the tourist crowds at the Grove Park Inn viewing the gingerbread house contest entries, followed by a Sams Club shopping trip, there was no time or energy to do anything more than rest for the rest of the evening. Our friends have these insulated bags that they bought at Sams club, which work great for those long drives home from Asheville. No need anymore to spend several dollars on ice or deal with large, bulky plastic boxes. We bought two of them ($9.98 each),and everything was still solidly frozen after an hour and a half; and we can leave them in the car since they lay flat and hardly take up any space.

Time now to get that bread started, finish those downloads, and get the dinner started early.

A play day

Here's one of the middle sections of our under the tree village decor.

Having an early birthday celebration with friends and brunch at the Grover Park Inn. We haven't been for two years and are really looking forward to the brunch and checking out the yearly gingerbread contest entries and the lovely Christmas decor.

Doubt if there will be any time studio when we get home. If I'm up to it, I might just go in and finish getting all those test tiles in numerical order and go over my notes. I have a couple of tiles I forgot to mark, but I did make a chart and enter which tests were dipped on which clay bodies, so maybe I can figure it out enough to either mark them or just re-dip new ones.

Before I get back to glazing the cone 10 soda pots I really need to do more studio tidying; but that job will have to wait for another day.

Fettucine revisit

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We're having a repeat of this fettucine, ham, onion, mushroom dish from two nights ago. I made enough of the sauce, so I'll just have to cook fresh pasta.Since dinner is covered, I'll be able to get in a full afternoon in the studio.

Yesterday I got all the draw rings and cone packs made for both cone 6 and cone 10 soda firings and just did a bit of studio tidying (a never ending chore)since I didn't have enough time to batch that last glaze because we had to do a Walmart run before another great dinner at the Knife and Fork.

Time to head to the studio and get that last glaze base with six color variations weighed out. At this point, I'm pretty saturated with this glaze testing, so I hope all this work brings forth some encouraging results for me to switch to cone 6 soda next year.

Hubble photos to Bach's Air on G string

Hubble photos and Bach's air on G string - what a great way to start or end the day!

Didn't get much done yesterday other than dipping a few more tiles and doing the attendant paper work. Too much standing on the hard, concrete, studio floor the day before made this bad hip and knees act up, so yesterday was a day to find mostly sit down jobs.

This afternoons plan is to get some cone packs and draw rings made for both next weeks cone 6 soda firing, and my later cone 10 soda firing.

The Energy Exchange wood/soda kiln is being fired to cone 6 today with some of my cone 10 flashing slips revised (hopefully) for cone 6 included; and I'm really eager to see if any of the alterations bring up a couple of good results. I really only need one good flashing slip as a base to make the switch to cone 6.

Glazes for cone 6 soda/salt are much easier to design - just make sure you have enough calcium, boron, barium and/or magnesia in the glaze to repel the soda/salt; but the flashin slips are a bit trickier, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed so that when that kiln is opened Monday or Tuesday, there might be some encouraging results to use, or at least, to build on for next weeks other cone 6 gas/soda firing in John Britt's small soda kiln.

Mashiko "Broken Earth" exhibit

Here's some morning eye candy of the Mashiko Potters "Broken Earth" exhibit in the Netherlands. Thanks to Swanica Ligtenberg for making and sharing this body of some exquisite work.

Nothing new to report at this pottery - still dealing with cone 6 soda tests for a bit. I got all the current flashing slips done and some liners like celadon, temmoku and shinos batched, along with a couple of colored slips; but now I'd like to get some exterior glaze possibilities batched. I designed a couple of bases and will start weighing those out today. By the weekend, I should be finished and then go back to getting these cone 10-11 soda pots lined.

John Britt and I are planning on firing all his and my test tiles in his small soda kiln later next week, and I might even be able to get my cone 10 soda firing in after Christmas. It will be good to have both of these projects wrapped up before the New Year. It's been a bit of a mind scramble, multi tasking journey, having to shift gears in the middle of one project to start another, then merging the two into a bisque firing which I unloaded yesterday.

R.I.P. Malcolm Davis

Malcolm Davis passed away yesterday - such a loss! He took American shinos to another level with his years of work on carbon trap recipes and firing techniques, discovering how wax resist over the glaze could give these wonderful patterns, etc.etc. He will be sorely missed.

Spent part of the morning with John Britt, dipping some of his test tiles in some of the flashing slips I made. He'll be putting them in the Energy Exchange wood/soda firing this weekend. I opted to skip it since it turns out it won't be just a firing of tiles as I was originally told, and with 155 of my tiles alone (so far), they wouldn't have room for all of them. So John and I will be doing another firing in his small soda kiln in another week or so. That will actually work better for me since I fire with gas and only introduce a bit of wood in the kiln, so I'll get much more useable results for from that firing.

In the meantime, the flashing slip tests in the wood/soda kiln will give us a good idea if I've fluxed them enough for cone 6 or too much and make some adjustments before we fire in Johns kiln.

On another note, this gives me more time to batch some more cone 6 glazes I've designed for soda. So, it's all good.

I spent the rest of the day (still at it), redoing my notes and chart on the finished tiles, and got my early dinner prep done for tonight's dinner - fettucine with an alfredo type sauce with sauteed mushrooms and ham. It's one of my favorite pastas, but since I put it in the category of "heart attack specials", I only make it once or twice a year and hope the wine will lessen the damage from the cholesterol. :-)

One more day of test tile batching and dipping

Here's the second section of Jim's wonderful, under the tree decoration. It's such fun to wake up and turn on the Christmas tree and other Christmas lights on the staircase - such a happy pre dawn vision.

Before breakfast I headed to the studio to clean up a couple of the cone 10 slipped plates and dipped a few more raw tiles and got the bisque kiln loaded with the tiles and the last of the cone 10 pots. They're warming up a bit to dry things out and I'll start the bisque this afternoon.

The cone 6 test tile count is up to 137 tiles with more to be done today. Tomorrow I'll be wadding them all. If it were my kiln, I'd just lay them on a good layer of alumina hydrate; but in the wood/soda kiln I think it best to wad them.

With some very early studio time, I need to get my tonight dinner prepped early. It's potato pancakes tonight. The potatoes and onion are peeled so I just have to grate the potatoes and get everything mixed and ready to go so I can work till 5 o'clock.

111 Test tiles

A hundred and eleven test tiles done and the test tile marathon will continue for a few 3 or 4 more days. then I can get back to finishing my cone 10 pots and get a soda firing in - hopefully before the New Year!

I quit at four o'clock when Jim arrive with 60 clams which I had to get soaking and scrubbed. Then I steamed them with white wine, onion,garlic, thyme, parsley, garlic and pepperonici pepper. That lovely broth along with butter to dip the clams and crunchy bread made for a very satisfying and filling taste treat.

Time now for some mindless TV and maybe some computer scrabble or Word with friends (my new discovery).

The day's agenda

Made another loaf of this delicious nutty, fruity bread yesterday morning. Instead of going back and forth - house to studio, during the various risings, etc. I opted to take care of other pre Christmas chores like getting family Christmas cards done and some on line Christmas shopping and then spent all afternoon on getting another 12 tests tiles done.

This morning I prepped all the veggies for tonight's Mexican stir fry,enabling me to work till five. Today I'm weighing out some oribes, temmokus, and maybe another shino or two.

Under the Christmas tree farm scene

Jim spent a few hour yesterday setting up the farm and village scenes under the tree. Most of these are from my childhood, with a few new and vintage additions over the years. These go very well with my overly decorated, Victorian looking Christmas tree.

Started another nutty fruity sourdough early this morning and it should be finished it's first rise in half hour or less. I'll be back in the studio right after breakfast, then running back and forth to the house, dealing with the bread, as needed.

I met yesterday's goal of dipping and marking 28 new test tiles. That makes a total of 64 tiles now finished. There are two batched which I need to dip this morning and more glazes and slips to weigh out later today. Glazes are not a challenge for cone 6 reduction, but flashing slips are, so I've tweaked some common flashing slips, upping the Neph Sy in some, doing the same in others but adding some borax and/or soda ash.

We had a lovely steak dinner at the Knife and Fork last night, and brought half of it home, so we have leftovers tonight which means I get a full studio day. Life is so very good!