Too hot to work - but I have to, it's Spring Fling next weekend

 

Loads of finished pots came out of the kiln over the last week. The workshop is in chaos. I haven't had enough time to sort through them so they are all over the place waiting to be reviewed, photgraphed, (the best ones), and priced.

  

I'll show some better photographs soon, these are just snaps as they sit on the shelves. I feel that I have to get to know these pieces again in their new glazed state. As always there are bits I like and bits I am dissatisfied with and could improve. But generally I like them.

  

There is so much to do through, next week is going to whizz by. It didn't help that the good weather brought out an unusual amount of visitors to the showroom last week. Not only did this take up a lot of time,  they kept buying things, things that I wanted to keep for Spring Fling. How annoying is that!

Last weekend there was one day I simply couldn't get warm and went to bed that night with two hot water bottles. This week each day it has been getting hotter...and HOTTER. Today with so much to clear and clean for Spring Fling I have hardly been able to function for overheating. At five o'clock I realised that the tide would be in and cycled down to jump in the sea - bliss!

But its getting there. By this evening the back yard was looking like a proper courtyard again, with clean tiles, pots and plants.

While the immediate panic is next weekends four day Open Studio, I also have one eye clearly focused beyond Spring Fling, on Earth and Fire. I knew that to have these bigger dishes finished for this event I had to have them well underway and drying out before next weekend. After a full day slip spraying on Thursday and Friday  they were safely on the high shelves drying slowly under polythene.

 

I still hope to get the Spring Fling preparations all in hand by mid week in time to have a couple of days to work on a damp cupboard full of black vases, which I hope are still damp enough to work on.

But its not all pots. I did have a grand afternoon out on Saturday playing with the Samba Sisters at the Kirkcudbright half marathon. It was great to be away from the workshop for a while and make a good old racket in the sun.

I tell you what though, those cats have been loving this weather.

Cats, Clingfilm and Wasps

 Timbalada views the outside world from the safety of the top rung of her favourite ladder. It is cold out there and who knows what scary things might happen to her if she ventures out. Such is her character.

                                                             
I have been glazing my flotilla of boats all week. It has been rather a labour of love, trailing small areas of colour then masking out with wax the sections that I didn't want the transparent glaze to cover. This worked fine on the smaller boats which I was able to dip and pour. But I chickened out of dipping the large pieces - they were just too awkward and heavy and resorted instead to the spray gun. I soon found that sprayed glaze doesn't run off wax, leaving instead a fine residue of powdered glaze which is hard to sponge off. It was cling film time, head stockings and arm stockings of the stuff. This worked a treat and saved a lot of wiping off time.

 Meanwhile Rodger has been busy fixing the new huge expansion box to the vertical pugmill. It's all ready to go, but I will have to be patient. I simply don't have the time to take the leap into the dark at this stage with the next two shows  looming. All that potential but later. I have a rather nice commission to make two tables this Autumn, so there is plenty of chance to come into its own.





                                              


 Tomorrow I get to open the kiln and see the first flotilla results. It's a bit scary really when I seem to have spent so much time on them. I am bound to be disappointed! The kiln is back to full health, our very nice local electrician sorted it out, it was a seized up switch. However he also spotted that when the fellow wired up the heat pump last year he somehow managed to alter something which meant that when you isolated the mains to the kiln it wasn't actually isolating it at all. Eeeek! Pretty fortunate we still have a Rodger.

 Today Rodger found this (empty)wasps nest and cracked it open. What a beauty from such tetchy insects.