Pots and pictures from Spring Fling

At last I am  getting back to normal after Spring Fling. What a weekend it was, brilliant weather in the first two days and loads of visitors, even on the last day when summer forgot it had happened and reverted to gales and driving rain. 

Thank you to all who came to see us and to all the hard work to the organisers  whose enthusiasm and  hard work made it such a successful event. 

I woke up on Tuesday unable to speak - only a croak came out.

I only took a few pictures of finished pots. Here is a close up of a dish with polar bears on ice flows and a few seals.

 'Terracotta Tour's spent the weekend driving around the garden. I can't think why I didn't take more photos of the garden. It looked lovely in the sun with all Rodger's hedge trimming, grass cutting and painting.

I made a mermaid for an order earlier this year and as I rather liked her I made a second one. Here she is brushing her hair for the Spring Fling visitors.

It's not often the workshop looks this tidy. But it is very nice, I should try to keep it This way.

It was lovely having Wendy Kershaw who down to share the space with me this year. We weren't exactly sure how we would juggle it, but decided that her ceramic pictures would look best on the exhibition boards in their own in a space in the workshop.  They did look very Special, thanks Wendy - it was an honour.

I was fascinated to listen to Wendy explaining her work to our visitors. Intricately constructed 'flat ceramics', put in frames and hung on the wall....with a narrative element which touch a chord.

The car park was constantly full, but as I was busy inside all the time I never found out until afterwards that they had been parked all the way up the road to the top of the hill. It's a good job that I didn't see, I might have panicked!

The only BAD thing to report is that my new flotilla of waterboys came out of the kiln looking really good. I was delighted. I showed them at Spring Fling even though 3 were for orders. Over the weekend I suddenly noticed that they had started to 'shimmer'. That is the glaze and body fit were mis-matched which means glaze was flaking off. It was a new batch of clay and this was the first sack. Aargh!  It has taken the week to pick myself up and face what has to be done (apart from re-making them). Lots of tests. Rolled out today. Oh ceramics can be cruel, but potters are tough......HA!