Catawba Care Coalition

Today I packed up some pots that I'm donating and selling for this organization in Lancaster South Carolina. You can read more about the event and the fundraiser for World AIDS day. This evant is being held at Bob Doster's BackStreet Gallery in Lancaster SC. Here is a posting they sent to me last week.......


December 1st, from 7 until 10pm our gallery will be the host location for World AIDS Day: A Celebration of Art. Vignettes by Main Street Theater, Fashion Show by Luis Machicao, live music by a variety of regional musicians, and a hair design show by Varji & Varji’s Jeremy will entertain you as you sample wines & culinary delights from a multitude of local chefs! An incredible selection of artwork by artists from around the southeast will be on sale: paintings, pottery, fashion accessories, sculpture, drawings, photography, and more! A Bob Doster sculpture & gift basket chock full of gift certificates will be up for grabs, too! Tickets are only $25 in advance & $30 at the door. Proceeds benefit Catawba Care Coalition, which serves those living with HIV/AIDS in Lancaster, York, & Chester Counties. Check the website at http://www.catawbacare.org/.

Last night I enjoyed making some mugs, pie plates and starting on some large bowl orders. Tonight I my last class at Clayworks for the session. We are finishing up with trying some Majolica on bowls we are making for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Charlotte. I always have fun doing some other sort of decoration than my own with my class. Its kind of like my own mini play time in clay!

Christmas is officially here for Me

Tonight I got to watch "The Grinch", so I know that Christmas is here for me. When I was little my sister and I could pretty much re sight the whole cartoon. We use to tell my father that, " Maybe his socks where not on quit right or that maybe his head wasn't screwed on quit right!", whenever he was in a bad mood around this time of the year.
Its so good to be home and doing the things I always do after a show. I've cleaned my studio, re-packed my display, pugged clay and started throwing mugs. Things that are routine to us are comforting I've concluded.
I did get my letter in the mail today saying I got into the
Carolina Designer Craftsmen guild. Yah!!!!!!! Its nice when hard work really does pay off. I guess I can forgive myself for vitrifying all those pots a few weeks ago.
This Friday and Saturday I will be showing my work with my fellow potters/clay artists at Clayworks in Charlotte. There is always new stuff to see from all the great creative minds we have working there and renting space. Community studio's are so good for people who are just getting started in this business because you always have someone to bounce idea's off of and ask questions about the million things that can go right or wrong with the process or clay. Stop by if your around Charlotte this weekend!

Carolina Designer Craftmen show

Yesterday I returned from my "big show", as I like to call it. It turned out to be such a great experience for me and I was so happy I got a chance to do it! I had such a great time, a pretty good show for the first time and I just really liked doing this type of indoor venue that went on for more than one day. After all was said and done and I finally calmed down after the first opening day I had such a great time with all the other craftspeople I known through out the years. I had so many friends come to cheer me on and support me - thanks everyone it was so nice to see so many familiar faces !! I also met a lot of great new people who bought my work or just gave such great comments about it. When I was in my 20's I use to work in retail and I can't say I was the greatest at talking to people I didn't know. Now I can see that with age comes a sense of not caring whom you start up a conversation with and this has been one of the things I like the most about selling my work face to face! I also have to give so much credit to my family. My sister and her family, my parents,my mother-in-law and of course my right hand business manager/computer whiz/ handy-man and an entire list of other things.............my husband. Between babysitting the kids, getting me packed, set-up and broken back down , I could not have done it with out all of them. I have a great support group behind me and I'm so lucky!

Here are some shots of my booth and some of my fellow craft friends who where doing the show for the first time also. My booth shot is not so great because I think my lighting was so intense ( sorry), but you get the idea. Next week I find out if I got into the show via a letter.

All the new craftspeople ( and there where 19 of us) got judged on our booth and the work so I'm crossing my fingers for a shot at next year!

Here is Kelly O'Briant's booth. That is her and Ronan Peterson chatting on Sunday. Kelly did a Circle of Eight sale with us last spring! Her work is so nice!Here is Ronan Peterson's booth. Ronan's work is very fun. I own 2 of his bowls now and my kids love to eat out of them. Ronan also was in a show with the Circle of Eight gang this summer.Here is my friend Betty McKim and her husband George. I've known Betty since I first came to Raleigh and worked at Cedar Creek Gallery. I own many of her pieces and we have a such a funny friendship. I love doing shows with Betty because we just have a great time together.

I'll post some more about our Thanksgiving and what I'm up to now that I'm back. I need to get going on finishing my final report for my grant/kiln report. ( My poor kiln just sits out there waiting to get the final finish on it....got to run!)

( I just had a mental image if me in a super hero cape dashing off...maybe I need my mother-in-law to make me a costume like all the ones my kids own....or maybe I should just barrow one of there's. )

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
We are all here in Raleigh for about 4 days staying with my sister Pam and her family. Today she cooked a good feast for the 12 of us and we celebrated Quaid's 7th birthday! ( I have no idea how he got to that age so fast!)
We got here on Wednesday and Joey , my brother-in-law and I headed over the show to start setting up. My brother-in-law is a whiz at everything so I knew he could help me figure out how my lights show go in my booth. It was so exciting seeing my black curtains all up and getting my booth display up also. Joey and Dave ended up going to Lowes and getting me these awesome high tec lights for my booth which just made it look so put together. Tomorrow I'm heading over there in the morning to finish setting up by myself and than at 6pm the shows opens! Very Exciting! There are lots of familiar faces for me doing this show since I once lived here in Raleigh, which is nice.

Up top is a postcard for my open house Dec. 15th from 10 to 5pm. I've been working so hard and plan on getting right back to work once I get home to make more stuff so I have a good selection for my home show. I haven't done a holiday show in 3 years and I kind of missed that. Its fun having all the decorations up in my house and my pots on display in the living room. It also gives me an excuse to have a day of eating nothing but appetizers and sweets!!

Give a big round of applause once again for my husband who did the postcards for me along with a thousand other things to help me get ready for this show.

Kiln Out

I unloaded my first glaze and was thrilled! This photo may not look like much because its in my shed with lots of junk around the pots but to me I was so excited because I had only one glaze run in the whole lot and for me , this is super. ( My glaze makes for a lot of grinding some days). I'm still plugging along. My kids have a big program for grandparents day tomorrow and today I spent the morning with Quaid in his class because we celebrated his 7th birthday. He was a Thanksgiving baby! This may be my last post before I"m off to Raleigh, but who knows, I may post while I"m away...keep checking in!

Have a great Turkey Day!

On Track

Quick update...here's my calendar and I'm up to date!( So far so good.) Isn't it a mess? I've had a bunch of school functions and more next week. The kids have been really great about letting me work in the afternoon after school. They have been playing play dough, out in the leaves and watching some movies so it has worked out pretty good. Today I start to glaze-3 loads to get in! Wish me luck!

Here are a bunch of flower blocks!

Movin' Along

Nine more days until my big show. I'm so excited to see how this all comes together and if I can pull this off! The booth, all the pots, keeping things organized ect.- its a lot but I think I am up for the challenge. Slow and steady wins the race, Quaid reminded me of this saying the other day so I'm taking it to heart every day. Its not just all that I need to remember for the show; we will all be in Raleigh for 4 days and that means getting all the kids packed and organized as well.We will be at my sister house for 4 days and she has not had us all there before and I think she is bit worried and out of practise when it comes to entertaining little kids. We are lucky in that we get two days to set up for the show so I feel like I can really make my booth look very good and get super organized rather than throwing it up 2 hours before a show. For the most part I'm back on track with making and fireings this week. I still have to get my lighting worked out for the show and purchase a rug for my booth display. I found this really cool one at Lowes that is black with white swirls in it that I think will be perfact with my booth set up and work. My friend Brain made me a new desk/check out stand along with some very nice risers so it is all coming along slowly. Tomarrow is another full day in the studio!

So..it can be done

I got my kiln unloaded today with the pots I vitrified and yes, believe it or not I did manage to glaze them and have them come out. What a miracle! (I truly pulled that one right out of thin air.)
So...I thought what a better technical piece of advice that I should post on my blog than how to glaze something that is vitrified! Most people post about how to do something right and yes....here I am about to post about how to fix a very big flub up if it ever happens to you.

Here's what I did~ I put my bottom two elements on Md. and set the pots in the kiln and heated them up for about 1/2 hour with the lid cracked about 4 inches. Then I put on gloves, got my tongs and started dipping them as fast as I could. You have to keep the pots upside down so all the glaze runs towards the top in stead of the bottom of the pots( where it wants to go...off the pot). What you want is for the heat to dry the glaze on there as fast as it can since the clay has lost all its porous qualities. I would dip about 4 pieces and then go back and do another coat while the piece was still warm. Layer upon layer is the key along with the heat. Then I took a little dish of glaze, put it in the kiln and let some of the water evaporate. This was for the inside of pieces. I would set the glaze piece back in the kiln, warm it up again and then pull it out to brush pretty thick glaze on the inside. Now, I was just doing cups, mugs and small pitchers so this all worked pretty well. I'm sure vitrifying a teapot and trying to salvage that would be very hard because the tongs are the key to not burning your hands. It was all a very long, messy and tedious mistake but I needed the pots for an order and I figured the amount of time it took fooling with them was worth saving the pots.
I know one thing about all this, I'm going really start paying attention the next time I stick a cone in my sitter!

Letting stuff drop

I had a student last night tell me a story about her sister who is a single mom of two girls and how she had called her crying about how hard it is for her to be responsible for everything. My student is not married nor has any kids so she was telling me how she had told her sister she was in such awe of her for all she did. Whenever I hear about a single mom I am always in awe and have so much empathy for them. I have a lot of help and I still wake up in the morning and feel like I am on a race the rest of the day until I get in bed at night. Some mornings I feel like I actually shake from all the adrenalin that I've produced on the way back from dropping the kids off at school and thinking about all that I need to accomplish while they are there. (Of course maybe coffee has something to do with this as well). Going to the gym has helped get rid of some of the thought induced energy which is good but some days I am still buzzing by 3pm.
I'm telling this story because often I describe my life as trying to keep all the ball that I'm juggling up in the air and not letting any of them drop.Of course no human can do it all and pretty much weather its what is going on with one of my kids, the house, my husband, my studio work or I guess just myself, ultimately something drops. This week it was putting the wrong cone in my bisque kiln and vitrifying a load of pots. Doesn't that just make your stomach sink!!!!
Well like most of these times I go through those thoughts of kicking myself for about a day or so and then I convince myself that I can fix it some how, which for the most part I did. I did of course something that I always tell my students you can't do- glaze vitrified work. I put those suckers in my kiln, heated them up until I could hardly touch them and dipped away...heating, dipping, heating, dipping. It was a mess. For the most part they came out but I do have some bare spots I need to re fire again and of course they are not my best looking pots beacuse the glaze is thin. I'm laughing about it now but I still feel like a lame brain. I keep thinking that some of the great potters I'm sure do these same lame brain things and if they don't...well maybe that is why they are great.
To top my week off, this morning while racing the clock to get the kids out of the door we saw one of our cats race through the house and Quaid yell "there's a bird in the house"!! Sure enough Clayton had pulled a cardinal in through the cat door and the bird was catching its breath way up high in the kitchen on a pot. Joey did manage somehow to get the bird out of the house while I shut two screaming girls and the cat in the front of the house and continued my quest to get them to school on time. I swept up little feathers this morning before going out to work. Never a dull moment here......

Back-peddleing

Today is Tuesday but I'm still thinking the weekend. I had made a big calendar Friday that I hung on my studio door telling me all I needed to do each day. Well, I'm still working on some of the things today that I had posted for Sunday, hence my time warp issue.

I forgot to mention that Saturday I took Joey on a little excursion for his birthday. He wrote more about it on his blog Smakeapple but it was one of those few weekend days in a long time I did not do any work. We went up to a winery about 2 hours away from here called Childress Vineyards. I really wanted to do something as special for him on his birthday as he had done for me but I just didn't have the funds or the time since it is fall and I'm feeling slammed with getting as much stuff made and sold as I can. We had a nice day together just the two of us, and that evening some friends of ours came over with there children to just hang out. Very low key and for the most part, that is what Joey is all about so I think he enjoyed the day. ( Hopefully maybe when we are older I can surprise him with some far away destination!)

Today I made glazes and finished up some boxes. Boxes take so long to make/finish. I think each box took me at least an hour to clean up, put feet on, make flanges for the lids and "dress" so to say. I finally admitted to myself that I really hate making glazes. I wonder if anyone really likes doing that?? Tonight I have to glaze and get a kiln loaded for two orders that need to go out. I'm really stressing about getting everything done for Thanksgiving weekend. I decided not to do the Carolina Pottery festival this weekend. I could of shared a booth with someone but I just do not have the work or time to spare.

Here are my butter dishes. I thought they kind of looked like little chickens roosting!

Quick post

Daylight saving time is something I always look forward to but today it has kind of thrown me off a bit. That and the fact I have a cold so my head is a bit foggy today and I'm walking around in a fog. I'm just taking a quick lunch break to check my email. This morning Joey and I worked on getting my plastic up on my studio-porch. I was freezing last week and when that happens I'll find every excuse not to work late.
Friday I went and got more bricks for my chimney. We also attempted to finish up my chimney stack but found that the bricks where not exactly the same size as my other bricks so we are going to have to do some cutting. Joey felt like we needed to wait until right before the guy comes to weld the whole thing together because he has fears of the chimney getting to high and it tumbling down. I guess anything is possible so I agreed with him. I really hope the guy who's helping me with the welding can come next weekend because I need for this project to be done soon!
Today I'm firing a bisque and working on boxes plus packing up pots for our Circle of Eight show next weekend at the WoodenStone Gallery in Davidson. I'm waiting to hear weather I'm going to do the Carolina Pottery Festival next weekend or not...I was on the waiting list and it may be a blessing in disguise considering I'm feeling a bit behind in my potting.
Hope you had a good weekend!

Some good info.

There has been a lot of talk back and forth between people about weather or not to cancel your pottery magazine subscription or not. I'm a bit ashamed to say I still get mine but my reasoning behind this is so I can enter national show and get my work out there some more. Most of the time I look at CM just once when I get it, comment to myself about what I DON"T like in there ( or do ) and go straight to the back for the show info and enjoy finding out of who is where and doing what. I do read Clay Times because the people who write the articles in there are pretty funny and easy to understand.
Today I got my CM in the mail and in the front there had there Buyers Guide section. I have to admit it had some great useful information in there that I think I will post on my walls in my studio for reference or copy for my students. Here is some of the information I thought was useful just in case you don't get Ceramics Monthly but just want to buy this one issue.
* How Glazes Melt
* Primary Function of Common ceramic materials
*The many faces of Iron
*Brushes for China Painting
*Making perfect Plaster
* Repair your elements in a electric kiln
( Something I did not know much about in Grad school since I only used gas/salt kilns)
*How low voltage effects firing time
( Again, electric firing sometimes is not as simple as everyone thinks it is and you need help in understanding things like this)
*Kiln fireing chart( great for students)
*Temp. equivalents for ortan cones
*Glossary of common terms
( Great for teaching when you need to find the def. for a term that is not is those thousands of books you have on your personal ceramic book shelf!)

I hope everyone had a good Halloween! We had a great time but the photo's did not come out that great. Just for the record we had a Wonder Women, Spider-Girl and Ninja at our house. They had more fun handing out candy when they came home than going to get candy I think. I had a nice visit on my porch with my friend MaryAnna - pizza and wine while Joey took the kids around. We got tons of trick-or-treaters here so its always a good night to be out of the studio.

Cups and such

(Santa really needs to bring me a new digital camera this christmas)

Here are some large mugs and the pitchers I've been working on. I'm not sure how I like the designs on the cups but we will see once they come out of the kiln. I do like always making different sorts of mugs just so people can collect different ones from me. I had a special order for big mugs and since I had a good response from the mugs I did for Cedar Creek with the drawing on them, I thought I'd try some drawings on these. We'll see......

I am happy with these pitchers! I can't wait to see how these come out. I'm always working on my spouts and this time I added a bit of clay to the tip after I pulled them. It give the spout a little more room for the liquid to flow out of it I think.

Today I'm working on Halloween costumes and I visited a new gallery that wants to carry some of my work. The owner is a painter, so she was easy to work with. I find that when a gallery is owned by a former artist, they seem to be more easy going.

I'm hoping tonight after dinner we can get the plastic up in my studio. It was freezing out there last night even if the temp. was just 30 ( or something like that). I'm getting to be a wimp about the cold the older I get. I did start working on my butter dishes so hopefully I will be able to push on from there with my sets.( I'm dieing to make more dinner dishes to draw on but I'm going to try and stick to my plan!)

Check back for some Halloween Photo's!

Its already Oct,27th

I can't believe I have not posted since the beginning of the week! I had a lot of emails to return in the evening and found myself napping off when I got on the computer to post my thoughts. So..its Saturday and here I am.

I had kind of a slow work week after I had planned to do so much. Here on the ( southern)east coast we did get the much needed rain we had been hoping for months to get. It was a nice light rain which made me happy and Joey too since I didn't get all bent out of shape about my neighbor and the on going water issue. I'm sure someday soon we'll have another monsoon rain and I'll be out there up in arms about the arch I'm going to have to build for my kids and two cats. ( Where was I with this.....oh yes...pots, work ect.) My pots due to the moisture took forever to dry. I didn't even get to my sets this week. At the last minute the urge to throw lots of pitchers and small mugs came to me. I love making pitchers almost as much as mugs and each time I try to make them better than the last. The last bunch I made had one really great one in the batch and its at the show at Gaston College. If I get it back I'm going to save it for a slide.


Still no bricks to finish the chimney. I tried to get some in Gastonia last week but was unsuccessful. This week coming up I'm going to have to go the opposite direction in search of the last 60 I need.


I also got a little side tracked by going to a new YMCA in a little town on my way back from taking the kids in the morning. This has been a big issue with me since I've had kids. Getting my weight back to normal and getting back in an exercise routine has been the hardest thing for me to accomplish. I use to go to the gym and walk religiously before the kids came. After that and we moved here to York it has been a struggle to enjoy the YMCA we have here. Its old, dirty and the nursery is horrible. Every time I took the kids I spent the entire workout feeling guilty that they where in a dirty environment. I just could not do that to the kids so I just would not go or just go for a super short work-out. Well not only do I not have to worry about the kids, but this YMCA is super clean and I was thrilled to stop there on my way home and get in a work out. Hopefully I am on the right track again to feel good about myself and get healthy again.

This is a big week for the kids. HALLOWEEN! Friday we did the fall carnival at school and this evening we made carmel apples. Tomarrow we cave our pumkins and than it is off and running for the school week and lots of party stuff I"m sure. ( You know I'll have lots of photo of that!)
Here's a little lady bug painting McKenna brought home for me this week. Children's art is just the best!

William Morris

As I said, Monday I spent my studio morning at the Pumpkin Patch with the girls and of course they had a blast. Since the kids go to school 30minutes away from where we live and the girls get done with school at 12:30, I ended up having some time I had to kill after the field trip. I've learned in the last two years that spreading the Christmas/Santa shopping out over the course of three months is the best thing for our budget so I was off the my favorite discount haunts to find some treasures. This trip turned out to be not very successful for the kids but I was thrilled to find a wonderful book on the Arts and Crafts movement that was dirt cheap for me! I use a lot of furniture and fabric books when I get stuck on something to make or a new pattern to inspire me. I have always loved anything made during this movement especially the patterns that William Morris created. There is something about the flow and detail of his sketches, fabrics and wallpaper that I can view and find new things for hours. They are almost like looking at old stain glass windows. Your eye gets lost in the color and endless pattern that goes on. If you ever get a chance to go the Virgina Museum of Art in Richmond Virginia, it has one of the best Arts and Crafts display that I have seen in any museum.

Here are the girls!

Festival

Its Sunday, late in the afternoon and all is quiet in the house so I thought I would try and sit down and write.

Yesterday and today where very nice days to work in the studio. The weather is just right, not to hot and not to cold to enjoy my screened in porch. Joey had made a new disc of Ryan Adams and Wiskey Town so I was in heaven singing along and throwing pots. As I said, so far I have been all about a lot of production pieces. Cups, bowls ect. I have to admit, some days I do like the repetitive work of making a lot of one thing. I guess its one of those times "getting in the zone" and enjoying just the feel of the clay and how your brain after so many years of throwing can just tell you hand what to do. My plan is to split all these huge amount of items up into various boxes and store things away for my big show in Raleigh and other smaller ones I have in November. I have to keep on telling myself that the more I make now the less stressed I will be about my inventory come Thanksgiving. I do have a few small orders that keep certain items at the for-front this month but pretty much it up to me to decide what I want to make for the CDC show.

We had a nice family weekend also. Friday we had movie/pancake night. This year I have started a tradition that the kids like where we have breakfast for dinner every Friday and this Friday we got the movie Flushed Away and we all sat in the living room and enjoyed that. On Saturday we took the kids to the Carolina Renaissance Festival. This is the 3rd times I've been and this experience of watching all sorts of people dress up never ceases to amuse and intrigue me. Joey and I really get a kick out of trying to understand what types of people dress as which characters ( ie. peasant girls, royalty, fairies ect.) along with the performers that travel around doing these festivals for a living. Of course the girls dressed up in one of there many princess dresses and all Quaid was transfixed on was being able to go into the dungeon display. ( Here's Quaid and McKenna in the photo.)

Today was spent having my grandmother over while my parents where away on a trip. She sat outside and entertained them by making newspaper hats and telling stories while I listened and thought how lucky they are to have 98 year old to spend time with.

Tomorrow I have a field trip to the Pumpkin Patch with the girls so I will lose some studio time that hopefully Tuesday I can make up. This week on my list of things to make are butter dishes and small sets of things.

Have a good one and check back for some photo's.

Pecan's

This week went by to quick. It seemed like the weekend had just been here and its Friday again..not that I'm complaining. Going to Gaston College this week really broke up my usual routine so I got more of a taste of what my life would be like if I was teaching more during the week. I had only three mornings in my studio and it just wasn't enough for the peace of mind I've gotten use to since September. As far as getting back to work I stuck to my routine of making simple forms before I dive back into the more tedious pieces. Lots of bowls and tumblers out in my shelves.

Today the girls and I enjoyed an afternoon outside. I racked leaves and the girls jumped in the small pile I had gotten together for them. I love to rack leaves because it feels like such an accomplishment when I get a good number of piles all over the yard. I also figure its some form of exercise and since these days for me that is few and far between I try to do whatever I can when I have the kids in toe. Pretty much all of our neighbors own leaf blowers and although I'm sure they are very handy to use, once again the noise just bothers me. Some nights I hear people using them pretty late and I always think "why "? As I was racking leaves and the girls where having so much fun in them I was thinking back on the first year we moved to this house. Quaid was only 6 months old and I would put his little sweater on, lock the gates and rack the yard while he just crawled everywhere around the yard. There was so much for him to explore we would stay out there for an hour together and he was as happy as a clam. Now he's into riding his bike everywhere out there!

Another reason I like racking leaves is because our house is in the center of an old Pecan grove. Every other year we get a huge amount of nuts and I want to make sure this year I don't one nut. The frost that came late here in our area really did a job on all the plants we can tell that the pecan crop is not going to be great his year. I have sort of a love hate relationship with these trees because although I do like getting the free pecans, the trees are so brittle that we lose lots of limbs during storms and I'm so afraid of one going through our roof some day. I would love to know how old these trees are or when they where planted.
Bed time!

Chimney

I took time away from throwing yesterday morning and decided to finish as much as I could with the bricks I had for the chimney. Its at the point where its to high for me to put anymore bricks up there myself. The next step is to figure out how many more bricks I will need before I can add the stack on the top. I need Joey's help to measure and get up on the roof of the kiln shed. I have a lot of reservations about how high my shed is still but it is too late now to worry about that. Here are some photo's of yesterdays accomplishments!

Today was my demo at Gaston College which I think went pretty well. There where a lot of students that came and went with the change of classes and one pottery class that hung around the entire demo. My friend Vicki Gil showed up, which was nice...thanks Vicki for the support! So, we'll see if I inspired any students to sign up for the class in the spring. Tonight I'm excited to throw. Last night I did make some just simple bowls and some things for my demo today.

Photo's from show

Here are some photo's from the Barn Sale/ClayMatters Guild show in Charlotte. I had a good show and the weather was wonderful.



This is Amy Sanders, who I talk a lot about in my blog and my tent next to hers. Her husband made my set and as you can see, its just like Amy's only black. I love my shelves!


I opened my kiln at 5am on Saturday ( yes it was all cool) and found my flowers blocks had come out perfect! I was so happy and finally felt like the pottery gods finally gave me an A for effort. I've worked on these forever to get all the kinks out and finally I feel like I got it. I did sell 3 of these yesterday and got great feed back on them.

On the other side of me was Ron Philbeck. In fact, all of the Circle of Eight where together on the same row. I think we all find this fun because we tend to congregate behind our tents and visit.....probably more than we should. I should of taken a photo behind our tents because mine looked like a bomb went off behind it yesterday. I had to do the show on my own and boy did I miss Joey.

Here is one of my square flower blocks. I'm not sold on this shape and the glaze didn't do what I wanted it to, but all in all it came out.
Here I am with two of my students towards the end of the day. I was so tired yesterday. By 2 I was feeling so loopy! I think I'm standing here half listening and half feeling like I'm going to fall over! I got to see a lot of my students which is always great. Its taken me a while to feel comfortable at shows. It helps being around lots of friends and familiar faces.

I'm going to actually go and sit down and watch some TV this evening. Its my vacation day after a show. I always need a day off although I did work on the chimney of my kiln today. Monday I'll be unpacking from the show and pugging clay for throwing Tuesday. The kids are off from school tomorrow for a teachers work day so I'll come up with something fun to do in the morning and maybe in the afternoon I can sneak away to the studio.

Calming

The day before a show I've learned to calm everything down and not rush around at the last minute. Joey took the day off and has the total job of kid duty today. ( He's been running car pool duty and making lunches ect. so I could get some much need extra sleep...what a guy). I have my last kiln cooling , which I will unload this evening. My kiln two days ago had some more pin holing issues that I'm still not sure how to totally resolve. I've soaked, I've rubbed down my glaze surface before putting my pots in the kiln, I've changed my bisque temp., there is never one factor that determines why sometimes they come out great and other times I just have to re fire like made. My salt work can not come soon enough in my eyes even though I know I will have knew issues.

I wanted to let everyone know that I calmed down from the last post about my neighbor. Lots of times I just like the drama of my day even though it was true, the noise did get to me. All I could think about was how during the gulf war they used music to try and smoke out the enemy. I can see how this would work! There is a great line from a song by the group Del Ametri that goes " I sometimes think to much but say nothing at all". When I can't turn my mind off about something that I know I'm not going to act on, I hum this to myself. Maybe one day I can catch my neighbor off guard and in a comical way I can get my point across about the music. ( Or so I'd like to think.....)

Wish me luck on Saturday. Have a good weekend- enjoy October where ever you are in the world! I'm heading outdoors with my cat Paws to wait for the kids to come home from school. I'm looking forward to seeing my pots come out of the kiln all shiny. I am really liking what I'm doing with leaving some white on the edges of my pieces. Its nice to get to a place you like and then go from there. It feels like an accomplishment that you didn't see coming but just showed up one day.
Chow!