Good night for linguini and pesto

Pesto in a sweet Brita Jepson porcelain bowl.

My little container garden is working pretty well so far. The basil is lush, so it was time to harvest some and make pesto for tonight's linguini dinner. 

The one small mint plant I put in a low wide pot about a month ago, has now filled up the pot! Mojitos can't be far away!

We've been enjoying a fairly lazy Sunday starting with a drive to our sons house to see our daughter in law and grand kids who've just come up for the summer. Wish I could have stayed and fished, but the electrician had kindly agreed to come over and fix the problem  (no power  in the back yard). It was an easy fix and while here, he also installed a couple of flood lights in the Kwan yin container corner. I can't wait to see it lit up tonight.

While I did my hand watering and dead headed all these containers flowers, Jim moved a bunch of stuff out of the garage and into our new tool shed, which will help a lot with de-cluttering the very tight garage/studio space. I thought I would get some planting in when we got back from the river, but it was way too hot out to stay out there any longer, so planting will have to wait till tomorrow morning.

cone 6 glaze tests

Got the tiny test kiln fired Sunday. These tests were mainly glazes that Steven Hill is currently using for his cone 6 oxidation, and some that he used for his cone 8-10 firings, as well as a few of my own re-vamped version of a couple, and two new glazes of mine. Before continuing with this cone 6 ox spraying project, I wanted to see just what these glazes looked like on the various cone 6 bodies available from Highwater. I tested each glaze on at least 3 bodies - Little Loafers Glory, Buncombe white, Desert Buff and one tile on a P5 tile that I had on hand.

It seems that Little Loafers Glory or P5 porcelain would be the best choice. So I'll have to get to Highwater to get some P5 porcelain this week. They'd been out of it for a few weeks last time I was there, so this time I'll call first, or just make up my own if they're out. The firing schedule I used was a slow one, soaking an hour at top temperature till a free standing cone 6 was touching, then cooled to 1700, and from there fired down 50 degrees F per hour to 1600, held for an hour at 1600 and let the kiln cool naturally. Looking at the results, some of these would benefit from a hair more heat or tweaking a couple of these recipes with a bit more flux.

Not all the tests I have on tiles, made it into the small kiln; but I'll wait till I get the next bisque done in my Skutt, which should be in a week, then do another glaze firings of these and other cone 6 ox tiles and pots after that. It was as much leg work manually firing that tiny kiln with all the holds, firing down, etc as firing a gas kiln, so the rest of these tests will have to wait to be fired in the larger Skutt programmable kiln. The results from such a tiny kiln don't warrant this much work. I was exhausted!

Today I'll finally get around to slipping and decorating some more cone 10 soda pots, which will enable me to top off and fire the bisque kiln in a few days. Carpet cleaners are arriving in an hour and Jim says he'll deal with them so I can get into the studio right after breakfast for a full days work. Dinner is simple - linguini with pesto, arugula and watermelon salad, already prepped, other than making a light vinaigrette which I'll do right after breakfast.