The Shortest Day (Thank goodness)

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. It's amazing and slightly scary that a year can have passed by so quickly since I wished you all the best in December 2011.

 It has been a pretty intensive year pottery wise.  I took on perhaps too much, and with no long balmy summer days it was hard to find an excuse to stop for long. So I'm actually looking forward to a short break over Christmas to recharge my batteries. The turn of the year always feels like a new beginning and I am looking forward to starting a completely new batch of work in January. I still have an order for two tables which will be great to getting going on.

This week I managed to glaze and pack both kilns so tomorrow fingers crossed I should have my orders finished.

The week was rather complicated with Rodger ending up in hospital with a weird fever, probably a virus, and he's still stuck there while they conduct loads of tests. Without my Mr Fixit to hand for advice I was scuppered when the  tiny test kiln in which I was trying to fast fire a couple of pots (which needed to catch the Christmas post), started sparking alarmingly. (This one won't make it, so sorry)!

Then to crown it all I managed to pick up the winter norovirus bug (probably from the hospital which is struggling with it), so Christmas has truly gone pear shaped! . But so far the world hasn't ended and a new beginning is just around the corner. Besides which it has given me an excuse to sit down, still feeling a little wobbly, and write a post.  However I am still quite happy it's going to be the shortest day!

This is the other owl dish. I do like his colours, I will have to remember that combination. But did I write it down?

I had this off cut from the first flow through the extruder when the clay is still settling down and splitting. What a lovely tree it made. despite a slight panic over whether the thing will settle into a good flow, I really love these first lengths and always save them for something special.

Polar bear jugs and fluffy clouds

That's it - all my slip decorating this side of Christmas is finished.  Now I just need to get everything  dried out and into the kiln over the weekend for a glaze firing next week. In the 'Feral Choir' we have been singing lots of cold wintery songs, maybe this was what made me in a Polar bearish sort of mood. Actually these poor jugs were abandoned for way too long as other priorities took over. I had them in the outside damp cupboard (an old fridge - not on of course), but then forgot to bring them in one very frosty night. I lost three of them, it was quite interesting how the ice got into the leather hard clay and split them open.

There are four large name plaques drying out too. One poor person has been waiting nearly a year, but hey - they are on their way at last.

I started to pack the bisc this afternoon. I got the monster cellist dish in, just, after a few experiments At least I could squeeze a few other pots under the slant as well, and hopefully she will have shrunk sufficiently so that by the time I glaze her I can actually close the kiln door with her on a flat shelf.

There are now a whole troop of squirrels using our feeder. What a joy to watch them. The cats just stare in amazement, usually through the window,

then go back to sleep.