Finally got a few good hours of studio time yesterday. I spent time sorting through bisque and finished pots and re-organized them and got them stacked as well as I could to free up much of my only work table which is also my big, Bailey slab roller. The other job was to make a bunch of cone packs and draw tiles for future soda firings. Since I hadn't used the pug mill for a while I got it working again and pugged enough clay to throw a teapot which out daughter has requested.
She gives these amazing and elaborate tea parties for her girl friends and needs more teapots. I'm trying to get those parts dry enough to finish today. The garage studio is pretty damp, so it may take another day to get it to the right leather hard stage. Meantime, I have some of the slipped and glaze earthenware pots which need finishing.
The younger trick or treaters will probably be showing up early like last year. Last year we got well over 100 kids. One of our neighbors counted 135. Thank goodness we had enough candy and we're loaded again this year. When we lived in the mountains of North Carolina we never had a single trick or treater in the years we were there. Looks like we're making up for it now! BOO!
I think our steep hills keep the walkers away, we get very few visitors for Halloween. I heard on NPR the other day that zombies and bacon were two of the most popular costumes this year, also Mylie Cyrus, be glad your kids didn't choose that one, haha!
ReplyDeleteThe bacon made me smile! Halloween seems to be catching on in NZ, and there were a few local children out there last night braving a downpour of heavy, thundery rain. I think that many zomibies got soaked through, but they seemed to be immune to the effects of damp.... I guess that being dead already has some advantages after all!!
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to see your pots from the soda firing you did a few days back. I was wondering how well an IFB kiln stood up to the effects of soda?
Peter, I've done 3 soda firing in that kiln and it's holding pretty well considering; but I did spray the inside with ITC!00 which helps. I have one section on the floor where I think something fell and melted. It looks like it was a piece of metal, so I may have to grind up some firebrick with some mortar and fill in that one spot. The burners get pretty rusted out quickly because of their upright positioning. I'm only hoping this little kiln will last long enough for me to fire the rest of the bisqued soda pots I have on hand. That's going to take quite a while since I can only fit about 11 smallish pots in that tiny kiln; and no one around here is doing soda firing, so I'm on my own with getting these fired.
DeleteTracey, bite you tongue! LOL I'll bet some kids may be going as Mylie Cyrus. And here I thought the bacon was novel. Boy, am I out of the loop!
ReplyDeleteBacon? I suppose that might be considered scary in a particularly strict Jewish or Muslim neighbourhood, if not particularly culturally sensitive. My husband and I laughed a lot and decided that Aidan is just on a slightly different wavelength - and that's all good.
ReplyDeleteAida is a brilliant kid and definitely on a different wavelength. At 8 he wanted a book to learn Chinese because in his school, they take Chinese when they're in 6th grade and he wanted to get a head start.
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