More pots from pallet kiln

Unloading the pallet kiln

Here's some pictures of the pallet kiln getting unloaded. It was a successful first firing with some really great pots, and info garnered to helped tweek future firings.

f

Mark Peters, the designer and kiln builder of the pallet kiln.


I'll get a few more photos up tomorrow. It's been a long day with kitty dramas, etc.

More kitty drama

I managed to lure Tommy our feral (not so feral these days)cat into the studio yesterday; but he freaked out once in there, and started climbing along the window edge where I have some throwing tools. He freaked again when he knocked down some of the tools and ran to the back of the studio and hid under one of of my raw material bin tables. So I decided I'd better tidy up and make the studio more cat friendly and moved some of my unfired and bisque pots high up on ware carts, made sure all glaze buckets were well covered, etc.

After that I sat at my desk doing some paper work, while talking to him and trying to coax him out from under the bin table, but he wouldn't budge. After an hour I put some food in front of the table and he peeked his head half way out, so I left the food and gave him some alone time.  Later when I went back in the studio, I saw that he had climbed on top of one of glaze bins tables, then up on the shelving and then higher along a narrow shelf where I had a lot of pots displayed. From there he settled on top of the bathroom ceiling as you can see in the picture. That's about 11 feet high!  He knocked down a bunch of jars and other containers, as well as a favorite shino piece which of course wound up on the concrete floor in pieces. Fortunately that was the only pot casualty. So I got Jim to help and we removed all those pots.

This morning Tommy was back under one of the glaze bin tables and I was able to lure him out with petting and food. Once I had him in front of the studio I opened the door, giving him the opportunity to go outside, which he did, but he came right back in twice! He was more interested in being with me and getting petted. So, I'm going to spend a lot of time in the studio today and hope I can get him to use the litter box.  I can smell male kitty in the whole studio from his having sprayed.  I'm beginning to wonder if he's ever even seen kitty litter! Jim is going to get a bigger litter box today and hopefully the new box and fresh litter without Bonnie's smell, will get him to figure out what he's supposed to use it for!

I've got some re-constituted porcelain to spread on plaster, wedge and get bagged and a few other studio chores. I dare not turn on any machinery for a day or so because I think that will freak him out even more!

Our daughter Erin Perry Kosmic Blue Janis Joplin tribute concert

I think, with friends help, that I finally learned how to get a video to show on the blog. Here's a promo video of our daughter Erin's Kosmic Blues Janis Joplin concert. She's has great reception throughout Europe with this tribute. She also has a couple of other bands, and is a good songwriter to boot. Do I sound like a proud parent!

Cat Jarosz booth

 

Here's Cat Jarosz's booth at the Asheville craft show this weekend. We treated ourselves to a set of her lovely, extruded, salt and pepper shakers.You can get some better looks at her large body of work at her web page:      http://www.catjarosz.com/

After breakfast I'm going to get my cucumbers in the crock for my small batch of pickles. Then I need to get over to Johnson City to see if they have any dill heads, since  no one around here carries them. Some critter ate the ones I planted so next year I need to plant a lot more (maybe in pots next time, or definitely in another, safer spot).  It looks like the peaches will be ripe soon (some are falling off the tree already) so I'm going to be busy with getting those processed. We have a huge crop of very tiny freestone peaches on the one tree, and not so many, but larger ones, on the white peach tree. I see peach pie and peach jam in our future!

I'm limping along with either a pulled groin or my good hip is now going the way of the other one, so I'm staying out of the garden and studio for a couple of days in hopes that I just pulled something and some rest will take care of it. Otherwise it could be that in my near future I'll have a matching titanium right hip to match the left one.

New pallet fired wood kiln at the Energy Exchange

Here are some photos of the new pallet wood burning kiln that Mark Peters designed and built for the Energy Exchange. The kiln was started around 6am and at 1:30, when I got there, it was at cone 08. Earlier they were cutting the pallets in half but just after I arrived they started loading full pallets.

I can't wait to see the results in another 4 days or so.Opening a kiln is always done with great anticipation and more so with a new kiln. Fourteen of the fifteen pots I brought to help fill the kilns, 40 cu ft setting space are in this maiden firing. All my pots have either Linda's Yellow or Randy's Flashing slip on the exterior with two  my celadon based liners. Some have oribe accents in the leaf and fish designs.

In my soda kiln I try to position the oribe pieces at the front to protect them from reducing too much; but I wasn't there for the loading, so it will be interesting to see their placement and the results. When the oribe is reduced heavily you can wind up with an unpleasant liver red instead of green. Sometimes I get an interesting combination of the green and red which I kind of like on some pieces.

English breakfast

I promised Jim a big English breakfast this morning - kippers, sausage, eggs, pan fried tomatoes and the non English blueberry muffins. Needless to say my plate was a lot smaller!

As soon as I get the photos on the computer, I'll post them on the blog this afternoon; but first I need to finish getting my veggies prepped and cheese grated and margaritas mix made for tonight's nachos dinner.

Warren McKenzie video

Here's a link to a recent video interview of 86 year old Warren McKenzie - still, joyously, potting away!

http://www.mnoriginal.org/art/?p=1749

Can someone please tell me how you get those video links to show up on your blog posts. I need the idiots, step by step guide on how to do this! The only thing I can find is a button that wants me to link a video that's stored on my computer.

Our Asheville play day really trashed my one good hip and knees and this right hip is starting to feel like the left one did before it was obvious I needed a new, titanium hip. I'm hoping it will quiet down, because I have way too much to do this time of year!

I've got a batch of blueberry muffins with streusel topping in the oven and the house is smelling soooo good! They're going to go great with this morning's boiled egg breakfast.

Kyle Carpenter at Southern Highlans show

Jim and I had a play day in Asheville yesterday. Our first stop was the Southern Highlands craft show at the Civic center. Here's a couple of pictures of Kyle Carpenter and his exquisite salt fired pots. 

After the show we joined Jim's niece Andrea for a delicious Indian lunch at Chez Pani and then headed to the Fresh Market to pick up a few groceries and sushi for dinner.

This morning I dug up some perennials for friends and neighbors, did a bit of weeding and picked and cleaned more cucumbers. Jim is off to the store to get some dill and dill seed and when he gets back I'll make a small batch of Jewish, deli style, crock pickles. They're made without vinegar - just salt, lots of garlic, dill and some some spices. I also put a little bit of dried hot red pepper to the mix. In this weather I'll be munching on them in three to five days. I like them best when they're mid way between a fresh cucumber and a pickle, which is they way I've had them in some of my favorite Jewish deli's in New York and L.A.

I'm hoping I can get into the studio for a couple of hours before getting together with friends later for porch sitting. There are still a couple of pots to decorate and a few other studio chores to take care of before I start another throwing cycle next week.

The saga of Tommy the feral cat

Here's Tommy, the feral cat who's been visiting for a couple of months. As you can see he's certainly gotten to the point of making himself at home on the front porch during feeding times, and he's fattened up quite a bit. Initially he'd run away when we approached, then he graduated to only running a few feet away while I put down the food. Eventually he sat on the top of the porch steps and that quickly accelerated to him coming right up to me and the food.

Well, this week I decided to put my hand out for him to smell, which he did, and the next day I touched the top of his head. He recoiled a bit; but didn't run away. Well, yesterday we made great strides. He not only let me touch his head and rub it, but it was as though he had memory of this being a good thing. I'm now thinking that he was at one time someone's pet, who was dumped and went feral.

He's a massage junkie! I'm now giving him head and back rubs every time I see him. I think he wants a tummy rub too, since he rolls over on his back, but I think I'll stick with the head and back for a while. Trust takes time to develop!

Yesterday I delivered a couple of small boxes of pots to the Energy Exchange. Mark Peters pallet wood kiln is most impressive. I peeked into the clay hut but didn't check more of the site. It was pouring rain and Jim and Bodhi were waiting in car. I'll try to get back there during the maiden firing on Friday and check out the rest of the facility.

Today I'll be cleaning out the reclaimed clay in the mixer and  dumping it down the hill off the back side yard where there's some erosion. Some of this clay must have had a piece of sponge or something similar that got broken up in the clay mixer and didn't show up until some of the pots were bisqued. I wound up with a few ruined pots where this stuff burned out and let gaping holes - not fun.

Salad Nicoise

Here's the salad Nicoise I made for dinner last night. It's a great summer, main dish,  meal. I picked the yellow wax beans and tomatoes from the garden and got the potatoes, beans and eggs  cooked earlier in the day.  Before serving I poured my garlic, honey, ginger vinaigrette dressing all over. It looked like we'd have leftovers, but there wasn't a speck of food left when we finished!

I managed enough studio time to press out the other version of the stamps I made the day before, and dug out a badly settled celadon based blue liner glaze that I'll be straining this morning.  First I have to unload the bisque kiln and get my regular celadon liner mixed and sieve both glazes. I think mixing and straining settled glazes is probably my least favorite studio job.

The plan is to finish glazing and decorating today or by tomorrow morning and then get the pots delivered to the Energy Exchange for the maiden firing on the 15th of the new wood fired pallet kiln that Mark Peters recently built for them.

Time to water some of the potted plants and head to the studio.

New stamps

Our house guests (Jim's sister and husband), left after breakfast yesterday and I managed a full day in the studio. I made these new stamps after I finished slipping and decorating pots and getting the bisque kiln loaded. Over the years I've amassed a collection of antique, wood carved stamps that are used in India and other places to print fabrics. These stamps were made by impressing clay into small sections of some of the stamps. After they're bisqued, I'll impress them again so I'll have both positive and negative impressions to play with. I may even test impressing them again today if they haven't dried too much from the over heated studio overnight from the bisque firing.

The was done by 7am. I'm hoping to get into the studio around 11, hoping it will be cool enough to work. I need to mix up some liner glazes that have been sitting unused since November. It's a job I'm not looking forward to.

We finally got rain yesterday. It was heavy at times and rained for about 3 hours. This is the first day in over two weeks that I don't have to hand water, other than a few seedlings left on the front porch.

What's wrong with this picture?

I was going through some old photos and found a bunch where I reversed the background paper. It took a while for me to realize what I had done, and some of the pots got sold before I could redo the photos.

Husband and house guests are all napping, so I snuck out to the studio, vacummed the bisque kiln, re-mixed some flashing slip, dipped a bunch of pots and filled 3 half shelves.  House guests leave after breakast so I"ll get a full day in the studio to finish slipping and decorating and will be firing a bisque over the weekend.

I've been busy this week with the garden, getting the house ready for house guests and getting software on to the computer that should work with my Windows 7 upgrade to Windows 7 pro. My other 7 version would not let me load some of my old XP program but this upgrade seems to be working. 

The blueberries keep coming

Jim and I picked more berries after watching the woman's Wimbledon final. There were some very annoying, flying and biting critters who were nipping away at me the whole time and not bothering Jim at all.

I've got dinner covered - took meatballs and sauce out of the freezer yesterday, so it will be a pasta comfort meal tonight. Since dinner is covered, I need to get my hand watering done, then get into the studio and see if I have some decorated pots that I can bisque in case they need more pots to fill the new wood kiln at the Energy exchange. I also need to look for some other blueberry recipes. There are way too many to use in a day or two so I'll probably be freezing the majority of them and keeping some for my morning cereal and maybe some for making another batch of muffins or something else.

Blueberry muffin morning

Made blueberry muffins to go with the boiled eggs for breakfast. The crunchy top was delicious. I think I'd like to try this topping on a lighter recipe. These muffins were tasty but a bit dense which did keep the berries from dropping to the bottom, so I guess there's a trade off.

Looks like we have a bit cooler weather which should make it comfortable for some weeding after these women's semi finals Wimbledon matches. With no rain in the forecast for a week or more, it's time to get those water stealing weeds away from my corn, squash and cucumber patch today.

Yesterday I spent the morning having an MRI - 1 1/2 hrs in the machine. The only down side was a bit of nausea on the last section from the intravenous dye. Now I wait for the results. In the meantime, I have to pick out a pot for the TRAC fund raiser auction, and then there's some hand watering and weeding, computer and paper work to deal with today, and an early dinner with friends.

I'm planning on some studio time tomorrow - finally!

Only mad dogs and English men go out in the noon day sun

After three years of pampering, this plumeria finally bloomed; and oh does it smell sooo sweet.

It's too hot to work outside other than some early morning weeding and watering; but I have been using the time watching Wimbledon matches to go through a pile of cooking and ceramic magazines and other snail mail that's been sitting here a while,taking care of correspondence and going through pages of emails that I've been too busy to read.

My oh my, we've got pie

Just pulled this blueberry pie out of the oven - going to have some for breakfast! Our blueberry bushes are being very generous and the birds and deer are kindly leaving some for us. There were  3 mature bushes when we moved here which I didn't discover until I  had planted two others. They were hidden away up the hill behind the house, somewhat shrouded by some large trees. Now that we've cleared that area a bit, these bushes are thriving and very bountiful.

The garden has kept me busy even in this oppressive heat and humidity; but I'm having to plant, weed, harvest, water and spray in very short increments, retreating to the house to cool off, tend to other chores, and then back outside to work till the heat gets to be too much. I've even started getting some garden time early morning before and after breakfast and at times, even after dinner. I hope this heat breaks and we get some rain coming our way soon. The plants are showing signs of stress and I hate to use well water to do that much hand watering. The heat is draining and I don't have much energy left after garden chores to do anything else but cook and take care of the animals.                



 

Some of the current blooming daylilies

There a lot of new blooms in the garden this week. Here are a couple of my more colorful day lilies. They're not re-bloomers like some of the yellow varieties like Stella D'oro, but their beautiful color makes up for their short bloom time.

Today was a mixture of gardening jobs - planting a bunch of parsley seedlings, weeding,  feeding potatoes, sprinkling blood meal all around to fend off some critters, picking some black raspberries and the first bush beans and  resting in between enjoying Wimbledon. This afternoon I made a huge batch of potato salad for tonight's dinner and porch sitting with friends tomorrow night, and there went the better part of the day.

Some critter or critters have eaten some tops and lots of stems off many of my tomatoes as well as de-nuding one of my potato plants and been munching on my bush beans, and beet tops. I don't know if it's deer (saw about 5 or 6 of them behind the house a couple of days ago), or the ground hog I caught running away from one of the vegetable beds a couple of days ago. I also spotted a big grasshopper, who may also be one of the munchers.This year has been a particularly bad one for every kind of crawling, flying and walking critters helping themselves to our veggies.

Tomorrow morning, while it's cool enough to be out there, I'll try to mix up some of my pepper spray and get it on some of these veggies. Hopefully it will make them a lot less appetizing to the free loaders!

Attack roses

The New Dawn roses are taking over the arbor and attacking passers by. Jim put on some heavy work gloves and wound them through the lattice. I had hoped to get a bit more gardening in today after my doctor's appointment; but only got about an hour because there was a world record breaking tennis match on Wimbledon that begged to be watched. So I dropped everything and watched this match while dealing with some paper work.

They finally called this men's singles match between the American Isner, and the French man Mahut after 9 hours of play, due to darkness. So they finish tomorrow. The score was 59 to 59 games in the 5th set. This match broke all kinds of tennis records. This 5th set was longer than any whole tennis match in Wimbledon history; and maybe any tennis history. There really won't be a winner or loser when they resume play tomorrow. Needless to say, Jim and I will be watching this history making match. I can always find time before or after to water, weed and feed.

Header photo - somewhat

Well, I've done all I can think of to create a photo header with a few pots, in a smaller size and nothing worked. I reduced the size of these 2 pictures to 1 inch and as you can see, they opened larger, even though I selected the small option.

Time to get some outside help, I think!

The family karate kid

Here's our 11 year old grandson Brandon, after receiving his black belt in Tai Kwan do. When I was 11, I was playing jump rope, jacks, hand ball and roller skating.

Since I can't go far from home base at the moment, I'm managing to make good use of my indoor time. I redid the blog today and I really like the new color theme. There's still a bit of work to do.Today I've spent a lot of time with my Paint Shop Pro for Dummies book  and still can't find out how to put three or four pictures next to each other, and save it as a single file, to use a header for the blog. Maybe one of your readers can clue me in how to do this!

After the many failures with Paint Shop Pro, I tried to use Word Perfect, but some of the pictures came up half blacked out (haven't a clue as to what caused that). So I need to keep trying. Maybe I'll try Word which I rarely use.

I did manage a bit of weed pulling and hand watering time in the garden but am a bit weak after days of dealing with the results of eating bad shrimp.  In the meantime, I am catching up on a lot of other things.

The culprit shrimp dish

I've been dealing with Montezuma's revenge from some bad shrimp two days ago. Here's  the offending dish. It looks good doesn't it - shrimp with a cream mustard sauce and bacon; but it must have come from bad waters because the shrimp looked firm and fresh and the strong iodine taste should have warned us!  I think it may be a while before I buy fresh shrimp again; but I think this sauce would be fine with other fish and even chicken.

Needless to say there's been no studio or gardening time other than the odd couple of minutes here or there pulling some weeds and some spraying today.

It's given me time to catch up with some paper work, read Ceramic and cooking magazines that have been sitting here for weeks, watch a couple of Netflix movies and even do some more clean up on the computer. This morning I ordered the Windows 7 key to upgrade from home premium to professional which would allow me to use all my old software that worked with XP but doesn't work well or at all with Windows 7.

Pink lilies blooming

These pink lilies have been opening the past couple of days. The garden is pretty soggy and droopy this morning after the powerful thunderstorm that came through last night. The bees were out very early taking advantage of what looks like a short dry spell before the storms come through again; and the hummingbirds and the rest of our feathered friends are munching away at their various  feeders. The feral cat Tommy, is late for his breakfast. The trust is building between us, albeit slowly. He will now lay down just a couple of feet in front of me, roll over and meow sweetly, as I put down his food; but that's as far as it goes. This is huge improvement from his first visits months ago when he wouldn't even come up on the porch to get his food, until I went back in the house.

Yesterday was a day of  running around, doing chores. Jim and I both had appointments for osteo treatments in Burnsville, lunch at the Mexican restaurant, a bit of food shopping, dropping off a propane tank with broken valve to be fixed, and on and on. The only garden time I had was harvesting some broccoli and a couple of hand fulls of snow peas which I made to go with our fried clams dinner. 

I'll be heading to the studio right after breakfast to slip and decorate some of these mostly bone dry pots while keeping my fingers crossed that they won't crack. I won't even attempt to slip the dry plates. They'll get done after their bisqued. I'll be stopping around 4 to make a shrimp with bacon in a mustard cream sauce recipe from my new Pub cookbook, and after dinner I need to make another loaf of bread. It's amazing how fast a day fills up!

Kiln and furniture ITC'd - finally

Finally got the messy job of coating the small Olympic gas kiln with the ITC100 yesterday. It was a donkey work day in the studio, battling the clogged sand blaster (finally gave up and finished with a brush) and other chores. I had enough ITC leftover to coat a lot of the commercial kiln furniture; and then had a prolonged job of cleaning the gritty ITC out the hoses.

After sitting for months, my most used flashing slip had to be scraped down, mixed and sieved. Normally I can just use my turbo mixer and now re-sieve; but it did funny things sitting that long. After cleanup I was done in the studio for the day.

There are still other slips and glazes that have been sitting a long time, to mix, pots to dip and decorate and more pots to make in between garden and home chores the next few weeks. Today is a day for outside chores and probably no time for studio or garden.

Another man plans God laughs day

This is another one of those man plans, God laughs days! My original intent was to get to the studio and get my little Olympic gas test kiln coated with ITC 100 but realized that in the middle of it I might get some TRAC tour people showing up. Spraying ITC is not one of my favorite jobs. It's a messy, gritty mixture  and you have to stir constantly and work quickly - not a job you want interrupted.

So I changed gears and decided to put together more tomato cages. I  got  8 or 9 more cages installed, and weeded a bit as I went, but the humidity got to me. So I'll cool off again and if it's not raining , I'll try to at least get the rest of the cages and maybe some of the poles up.

Since I don't have enough cages and poles for all these tomatoes, I'll use them  for the  heaviest ones and  let the rest of them just grow on the ground with some straw under them. It's a muddy mess out there with possibility of rain almost every day for the next week. The weeds seem to be thriving with all this rain, along with the snail and slug population. I weed a bit every day but I would need to make it a full time job to get on top of them this year.

Some things hat's blooming in the garden

There's more blooming than room to post; but here are a couple of the clematis that are blooming and the first of the hollyhocks blooms.

Got a good day in the studio doing a lot of things on my "to do" list. Mixing slip and glaze test batches and dipping test tiles, sweeping and mopping the kiln room,studio, porch and mudroom, re-claiming clay in the mixer and having to take a chisel and hammer to some porcelain that was too hard to reclaim with the wet towel trick and too soft to slake. It was a donkey work day but felt good to get that much studio time. 

I got to pull a few weeds in the garden and do a bit of hand watering and that was it for garden work today. Dinner was easy - leftovers. Now I'm going to watch one of my Netflix movies "The Blind Side" and relax for the evening.

This morning's harvest

This is my domestic morning - baking another loaf of oatmeal bread and harvesting a few things from the garden - beets, a cauliflower, a mix of lettuces. That is one huge strawberry that Jim picked - one of the few that the critters didn't get to before us.

I got a little bit of studio time yesterday but didn't get any where near what I thought I'd get done. It took forever to break up my yellow slip which was hardened like concrete at the bottom of the bucket; but I finally got it broken up, mixed and sieved along with one of my 6 tile flashing slips and got a few pots dipped and decorated. I hit a few more glitches with some decorating slips like the under glaze refill from Axner that was so thick it was unusable and when I added a bit of water, it was too thin. It was one of those days! LOL

I'll probably skip the studio today. There's salad dressing and salad to make and pancetta and other things to prep for tonight's spaghetti carbonara and still more email and paper work to catch up on. I also have a large pot bound Boston fern I want to root prune and re-pot as soon as the bread is done and the rain stops.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Picking the first snow peas

Yesterday was a total wipe out day. I perused the garden and saw all was OK. I picked the first couple of snow peas, saw that some pole beans finally sprouted, and the potatoes didn't seem to have any more damage, so I decided to take a real day off and just tend to some of my email dating to 2007 and file some things, write out recipes etc. There's still so much of that to do but it will have to wait. Today is a studio day.

I got a bit of studio time Sunday mixing very hardened decorating slips and accent glazes; but a strong headache shortened the work day. Right after breakfast I'll be mixing a couple of my flashing slips and start dipping and decorating some pots.

Yesterday I uncovered the pots I'd been able to make in small pockets of time since Jim's accident and laid them out on the slab roller. Frankly, I was very surprised that I had this many since studio time has been almost nil. As you can see there are enough plates and bowls and a few mugs. What I need now are more covered jars, maybe some slab pieces and more tumblers and a teapot or two.

When I start a throwing cycle I usually start with some small bowls and if the clay is very soft, maybe a couple of plates and then on to mugs and other things. But since I have not been able to get into a full throwing or studio cycle for months, this group is mainly those pots I usually start throwing for a new cycle.

Yesterday I got them all waxed, trimmed a couple and got a handle on a mug. Today I'll be re-mixing up my decorating slip, a couple of accent glazes and a couple of flashing slips and maybe start decorating this group and getting them ready for the first bisque. I need to have two full bisque loads in my electric kiln to fill the soda kiln.

The only garden work I got yesterday was hand watering the seedlings on the porch and pulling a couple of weeds on my way to and from the studio; but I need to get in the garden tomorrow morning for some weeding, feeding and spraying.

Remembering the 80's

Here's a saggar plate from the early 80's. The pink/lavender from the copper carb among the sawdust. I should do more of these in the future if I can fit my old space age glass saggar in this little Olympic, gas, test kiln. Some of the other markings were from a particular sea weed I'd collect from the Santa Barbara beaches.

Yesterday, after my helpers worked on the warped mudroom door and did some driveway work, they got my little Olympic gas kiln up on the cart for me. It took me a while to find my old sandblaster and get it fitted to the little compressor; but after getting the kiln vacuumed out, I started the job of spraying the kiln bricks with water using the sand blaster and it wasn't working like the last time I used it (about 9 years ago!). After several pressure adjustments on the compressor which didn't make a bit of difference, I finally remembered that I had to raise the bucket of water higher and let gravity help. So I got out the ladder, and  got the bucket of water at the top and voila - got the sprayer working with no problem

Next step was to get the can of ITC100. Big OOPS - no ITC100 to be found! There were three other cans of ITC products and no 100. So back in the house to get on the computer and order a 1/2 a gallon of it from Baileys. So the whole process will have to be repeated in a week or so when the ITC arrives.

Then it was time to try to vacuum the area around the kiln and my Nilflisk, super duper studio vacuum just wouldn't pull, even after cleaning it out very well. I've had this since around 1980, so maybe the poor thing is just worn out. By that time it was time to get some indoor chores done, shower and off to Walmart for more potting soil and another pack of replacement sweet potato plants (a vole has eaten a couple already) and then on to the seafood buffet for dinner.

This morning I need to harvest some spinach and do about an hour of gardening chores and then I'll head to the studio for the day. I need to uncover and lay out the pots I've been able to throw in the little time I've been able to steal for the studio since Jim's accident, and see what I have before I start throwing again.

Lawn sign

After dinner I finished up a few things in the garden and then got on line and ordered 3 lawn signs for the pottery. Vista Print has pretty good prices and I was able to upload a color photo of my work on the sign. Hope it looks as good as it does on line. I don't currently have a sign for the pottery and this is just a test to see if it will be worth it to have a more permanent sign made for our somewhat hidden location.

Workers are here putting on a new door to the mudroom and some road work; but before they leave they'll put my small Olympic gas kiln on the cart. I didn't get to the studio as planned yesterday to spray the kiln with ITC 100. Just as I was heading for the studio Jim came home from the post office with the package of Escar-go, the organic pellets to get rid of the snail and slugs. Since they have been such a problem I dropped everything and got areas wetted down and got the pellets distributed. As always, when I get in the garden, one thing leads to another and before I knew it, it was 4:15, time to come in and start on the linguini and clams sauce for dinner!

I'm heading for the studio as soon as I take my vitamins and get that kiln spraying done. Jim is off to the propane place in town with my 7 gallon and 5 gallon tanks that I'll use on that little kiln. They say it can be fired with 5 gallons but I'm a bit dubious, so I'll start with the 7 gallon for glaze firings and use the 5 gallon as a backup. I want to do some strike firings which will require a cone 10 firing, and then a drop and  4 hour hold at bisque temperatures; and I think the extra gas will definitely be needed for that.

After I spray the ITC, I'll have to do a bisque first and I have more than enough dry pots to fill that tiny 4 cu ft kiln. Then I'll test it with some soda re-fires. I already had Will Baker cut larger holes in the kiln for soda introduction, so there's nothing else I have to do but fire it when ready.

The workers promised to take a few of these tomatoes off my hands, so the porch will soon be back to normal as opposed to looking like a seedling nursery.

Raisin bread

Yesterday started with unloading clay and then after breakfast, it was time to get a loaf raisin bread started and then take advantage of the good weather to keep planting. I got the last large planter cleaned out and refilled and planted the last eggplant,  two French Tarragons, removed some cukes and replaced them with pickling cukes I finally found at Walmart the other day, then had to make new mounds to replant the regular cukes, pulled up some old lettuce, planted a few more lettuce and  spinach starts, more basil, and on and on it went for several hours. I removed the remay from the cauliflower and lettuce to find that one head of cauliflower is ready for harvesting. Looks like we'll be having a cauliflower curry sometime in the next week.

As usual, I worked till I almost dropped, had a later lunch and watched some of the French Open tennis while I did paper work and placed a small order at Axner's pottery supply in Florida. They carry some things I can't get locally and using the post office's flat rate for heavier packages, it makes it reasonable to order some of the heavier raw materials. I think it's in the $14 range for up to about 75 lbs.


I've been waiting for friends Jim and Aaron to come to do some work on the driveway and my tiny electric test kiln that needs elements changed; and I need them to lift my little 4 cu ft Olympic gas test kiln onto the wheeled cart so I can get it outdoors and start using it for tests and re-fires. The tires on the old cart couldn't take the weight, so it now has heavier duty tires, which will hopefully do the job. I need to use my sand blaster to spray it with ITC 100 before I use it for soda and that's probably the first studio job I'll tackle this afternoon since it will be easier to do with the kiln sitting lower on the ground.

Oatmeal bread

Had a good rest day thanks to the rain yesterday. In the morning I loaded up some tomato and hollyhock plants and took them over to John Britt's studio. I was thrilled to look at some of his recent copper red and shino tests - what a huge amount of work and what fabulous and intriguing results! I can't wait to get back to work try some of those recipes as well as some of my own using the striking, and other two firing cycles that John used for those tests, in my little 4 cu ft Olympic, gas, test kiln.

After a shopping trip at Wally world, where I finally found pickling cucumber plants, and did some grocery shopping, I came home, made bread and did some paper work before dinner. The oatmeal bread makes great toast and the strawberry rhubarb jam I bought at the Bakersville Farmers market Saturday morning went really well on this bread.

This morning we drove to Asheville where I picked up my clay and a few other studio items at Highwater. While there, I bumped into Lisa Gluckin and Michael Hunt and Naomi  Dalglish and their beautiful baby girl. I was amazed at how well Michael's truck handled that full pallet full of raw materials! Our Highlander would have sunk with that big a load!

Before heading home, Jim and I had lunch at Chai Pani, a new (for us) Indian restaurant. It was wonderful and worth the search for a parking place in downtown Asheville. They  even had some of the wonderful street food dishes that I had when I was in India.

I'm too tired to unload the clay today, so I'll just relax, let this swollen knee rest another day and watch the Federer Soderling match while I catch up on the days email and check out the new Ceramic Monthly that was in today's mail. Dinner is going to be easy and light - frozen potstickers.