An Extra special cat

She has been in our family for 15 years so to lose Extra this week has been very sad. It is barely over a month ago that she charmed us by tiptoeing into the workshop where the Feral Choir were running through their songs and sat down to listen to the harmonies with unusual feline interest.  She was called 'Extra' because she was extra to requirements at the time we got her, but soon became an essential part of family life. She was always around to meet us, a constant companion and reassuring presence. She was one of the best natured cats I have known and would play with velvet paws. Rugs were never flat for long, one of her passions was scrabbling them up. She spent her last week under her favourite bush in the rockery listening to the outside sounds. The garden seems very empty now - how we miss her!

Meanwhile in this heatwave Timbalada seems to have been too hot and ‘out for the count’  to notice that she is missing.

Ho-hot! Why oh why have I had so many kilns to fire over the last two weeks.  I have been firing the two kilns ( the small top loader and the big font loading kiln) back to back, only possible if I really push it, as in unloading with sweat trickling down me as was the case yesterday, and then glazing and repacking the same day! I must have managed to get through six weeks work in three. I have moved proceedings outside into the courtyard where there is a bit of shade - the workshop has been unbearable.

 But I am NOT complaining , it has been lovely, more vitamin D absorbed in the last few weeks than in the last three years. Meals outside and a few quick swims in the sea to cool off when the tide obliged.

 It is of course the big push for Potfest in the Park next weekend. I am just about there, though I don’t have quite as many new larger pieces as I would have liked - partly because people kept coming into the showroom and buying the ones I had mentally ‘put on one side’ for Potfest. In past years this hasn’t happened as I have stashed things away, but I have been a little short of pots all year (all the knock-on effect from that awful winter of illness), and have to keep the showroom looking good.

Mind you, three kins still to unpack has to help!

Riddle me riddle me riddle me re,

What has eight legs and comes From the sea?

You might hazard a guess - you may think that you know, 

Come to Potfest next weekend -its all at the show.

Having fun

At last - We got a chance to try out our new toy. Well, not exactly a toy. It is actually our new state of the art Peter Pugger tile extruder from the USA. She worked alright. No more standing around coaxing the old pugmill to keep going, cooling its body with cold flannels as the engine overheated. This beast has POWER! So much so in fact that the first attempt came through so fast I didn't have time to collect the extrusion before it collapsed. Being used to the old pugmill I had loaded it with a fairly soft batch of clay.

 An hour later and a lot of kneading we had a second attempt with a much firmer batch. This time it worked a treat. It still came through a little fast even on the slowest setting - I had to get Rodger to stop and start the On/Off switch as I wanted to bend the form as it came through. 

I wonder if we can somehow adjust the settings.

She certainly made light of this extrusion.  The speed with of flow in a straight line wasn't so critical.

I cut this extrusion using a piece of corrugated roof as a guide.

It was a bit tricky getting the top on and keep the angles at the same time. A fair bit of measuring and then some firm pushing down.

I  extruded pipes and shaped the legs of this creature and attached them upside down.  But how was I to get it onto turned over and on to its ripply base?

By a pulley and sling of course!  I  found myself working this one out at 3am one morning. We already have a pulley for our glaze mixer so it was easy enough to make up a hammock. It worked a treat. The body was leather hard and firm enough and I was able to lower it down and position it until it just rested on the base.

I left it supported overnight under polythene and by the next morning it had firmed up enough to attach the feet,

and remove the sling. Next instalment will be the head and tail.

Meanwhile in between all this creative excitement Rodger and I had a long weekend in Derbyshire. It was a midway place in Britain to meet up with old friends from art college.( Corsham - Bath Academy of Art). What a time we had - ten in all,and we hadn't met up in a group like this for ten years. All of us are still involved in the arts and with lots in common, shared experiences and interests it was a totally inspiring and rejuvenating few days. With a lot of laughs. Not least when Stephen Jon, mask maker extraordinaire, produced beaks for us all. 

Am I too proud to show the resulting Christine with a beak?

 Here are a beak nosed Stephen and Rodger,

and the resulting hilarity as we were treated to a picture show of our beaked evening. Well - I could post a few more pictures my friends, but then again I would like to keep your friendship!

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!

Dogs, Cats and Bubble Wrap

So here we are - a week to go before ‘Spring Fling’ open studio event. How did this happen, where did the time go?

I have been rather focused on getting some pieces finished and off to the Bowie Gallery in Hay on Wye, They have a marquee at the Hay on Wye festival  starting next weekend. I knew at the time that the two events would be uncomfortably close, but back in the Autumn it sounded just a case of efficient forward planning. I didn't anticipate a winter of making time lost to health issues.

Last weekend was spent unpacking the kiln on Saturday and packing up the pots to send on Sunday. How much bubble wrap do you use? What about the environmental issues and what was wrong with straw? You don’t get straw on a handy roll for a start, but it makes me a little uncomfortable all the same.

  I make make sure that I can’t feel any hard bits of pot through the footballs of bubble wrap and probably go a little over the top with it. But when I see the boxes (covered in ‘fragile tape’ being thrown into the back of the delivery van I realise that my only insurance is bubble wrap).

This week I have been trying to get a flotilla of boats finished. My image in the Spring Fling brochure is of a couple of these and I turned round to find that I actually only had one left. They MIGHT get finished in time if they dry out, but that depends on the weather and there is a lot of water around today!

These are some of them with the first few coats of colour sprayed.The spray gun went on strike and it turned out that the nozzle had been almost totally worn away by the abrasive slip. The gun has been playing up for some time but I kept just thinking it was my slip sieving to blame. It was driving me bats.  Oh the joy of a new replacement.

 'Ethel' is responsible for this one.

Ethel is Oskar and Rachael's Italian greyhound, infinitely drawable.

.

 In fact all my dogs are all have Ethel noses these days.

 

The details as in eyes and skin colours were finished yesterday. Now drying out with extremities wrapped in cling film for a while longer.

 Otherwise the focus has been Spring Clean for Spring Fling. Rodger has been painting outside when ever it has been dry, hedge cutting and grass cutting and the place is already looking much smarter.

Today it is has been clear the workshop up time. And look who's helping...

This year I have a ‘Springback’ sharing the workshop with me. Ceramicist Wendy Kershaw makes beautifully fine ceramic illustrative pieces. She will be showing her work and demonstrating over the weekend. Her work is very special and I think it will go well with my own. I am looking forward to a very different kind of event with double interest for visitors. Right now we still have to work out how best to share the space but the BIG TIDY up is underway and I am sure it will all suddenly slot into place.

The Leopard Changed her Spots

What a huge relief - the Leopard not only survived but came out well. It was all a bit last minute, out of the kiln on Tuesday and off to the CatStrand Community Arts Centre on Wednesday. We took it up there in a dreadful downpour, driving, with windscreen wipers on fast, past a flooded Loch Ken, to find the CatStrand in a bit of a panic. The banking wall into which it is built was bulging and water was spurting out. If it burst water would have rushed through the building. So there were Rodger and I, standing on top of a ladder trying to hang the Leopard while phones rang, builders, and a fireman squeezed by and general bedlam surrounded us.

The 'Farewell' to Cathy Agnew, who founded the Centre, and to whose name is inscribed on the piece as 'Founder Patron', took place successfully on Saturday evening so I gather the possible flood was averted.

Other pieces from the firing which I was pleased with were this dish with Night Herons. BBC Nature programmes have a lot to answer for. I recall last year a wonderful image of Night herons on a beach as baby turtle hatched and tried to make it safely past their beaks and down to the sea. Needless to say the herons had a feast.

 The first fewswallows have been spotted this week. They often nest in the shed, flying in and out depositing their droppings on our washing line. I am pleased with the movement in this dish.

Today I have been battling with a commemorative plate for a wedding. I really try not to take on too many of these. they invariably take ages and this one is no exception. The brief was 'horses and a little black dog'. Once upon a time I would go out with my sketch book, or off to Dalbeattie library and hunt through books for images to help with these designs. I would love to say that I had gone off for the day with my sketch book but alas no. The internet has made life so much simpler.

Even so it took all morning to research and refine the images. I wanted to have the horses galloping round with the dog in the middle. It would be all too easy to end up with a stodgy static design.

So half way there - a few more colour details to add tomorrow, then another fast dry and quick fire, short deadline affair. I don't like rushing plates.....

Leopard spots

I have fairly been making up for lost time in January and February. I had a batch of finished work out just in time for Easter and right now seem to have more work underway than I can handle. There are enough bisc fired pots for at least three glaze firings, with a further batch of throwing slipped and stashed away waiting patiently in the damp cupboards. Hopefully I will manage to get back to these on Monday.

This leopard dish is for a commission. After it had been bisc fired I brushed the outlines with wax and oxide and filled in with glaze using a slip trailer.  The spots seemed to go on for ages. I kept thinking of the Rudyard Kipling story 'How the Leopard got its' spots'. Certainly not this way. 

I was a bit unsure of my glaze colours, this was going to be a new combination, so I did some overnight tests in the tiny test kiln to reassure myself. The test tiles came out fine but it I know that it will look  very different on a large scale. 

I had two days of wax and oxide painting, and I still have half of the dishes to fill with glaze. After that I wax over the glazed areas and dip the whole dish in transparent glaze.  What a palaver of a method - I must be mad. But it seems to work and give me a result that I like and am in reasonable control of. Well - I hope so anyway.

Today was a marathon of mixing, dipping, pouring, wiping and eventually packing. That's it - the kiln is on tonight. I will know how things turn out on Tuesday.

 I am dying to experiment with our new extruder but I am having to be patient. Soon I should have enough essential stock made and commissions completed to be able to get started with it.