Thank you Mr Fixit

I have been badgering my Mr Fixit for ages. I want to move the pugmill out from the wall a little, ( or rather I wanted Mr Fixit to), so that I can bend the clay side ways as it is extruded. At the moment I can only bend it one way - outwards. Despite being tight to the wall, I did manage this small ripple effect last week. It was enough to explain to Rodger WHY I was badgering him.

He kindly moved it to priority job and many nuts and bolts and angle iron fiddling later, I now have a pugmill set at a slight angle so that I am all set to do a wavy dish.



I have been making some long flat trays, they need to be weighted down as they dry to prevent warping. These are being biscuit fired tonight, so I hope they behave themselves.


I had a whole lot of half finished dishes and plates waiting to be decorated with slip. Here are a few of January's new designs. Whaups (or curlews), to add to the oystercatchers for those bird loving visitors.



Two purring pussies,

and a peeking peacock.



I very quickly can have too many colours of slip out at once. My decorating space becomes an unholy muddle pretty quickly if I'm not careful. When I no longer have a surface I have to stop, stretch and have a tidy up.


But she'll keep me right.

Getting into gear

At last, I began to get my act together this week. I managed to have at least four full days in the workshop, enough at least to get me properly tuned and into gear. Ideas are beginning to flow. The designs for the spotty fish dish above and the 'flappy squares' took shape and whereas the week before I had felt hesitant and unsure, this week they felt bolder and more confident. It just shows, you can't force things.

These have been incised and sprayed with layers of slips and are now drying slowly.

Lovely Christmas present, this one, brings a smile every time I use it!

The icy grip of Winter is still with us. Can you believe the fellow above, a photo that would surely bring a smile to his (anonymous) donor! (There is a sledge under there, he's not just fallen over).

The nights have been extraordinarily clear. The other night the new moon was almost as breathtaking as the eclipse.

Slightly disappointed not to get a stand at Earth and Fire again this year, but I do realise that it is a hard one to get into. However the next day I heard that I'd got into Potfest in the Park which has so far been a really good show for me.

I had a note from the website 'vasefinder.com' that their online vase competition had been launched. (On request I had sent an image to them last year). My seesaw black twin vase is no. 1 on the first page which is nice for me. It's quite an impressive group of pots, worth looking at. How the judges will be able to make a decision is beyond me.

One, One, One One

Here's to One, One, One One

Or Two thousand and eleven. I like the sound of it, it has a cheerful bouncy sort of ring to it. We toasted the new year in with friends at a small ceilidh in Lauriston, a good and optimistic start for Rodger who was determined to see the year in.



I see the year in a very visual layout with January 1st right at the bottom of the big climb up to Spring. Will I have the energy and inspiration to reach the first rung, let alone get to the top ? Once I have my foot firmly on the ladder it will be fine, I tell myself, don’t be daunted by too much introspection. It is purely the dark midwinter days pulling you back.



The days between Hogmany and New Year disappeared into a general brown mush of thawing snow, much like the splendid chestnut and parsnip soup we had on boxing day but not so appetising.


Could we please just skip the dirty bit now and fast forward to new buds and shoots?


Christmas treats were a walk up the frozen Wyming valley on the edge of the Peaks, and out to Stanwich Edge.



Then sledging at Winster in Cumbria - we nearly got stranded there, it took the family the morning to clear the cars and the long driveway of snow!


Me and my boys, well hatted up.

I should be back into the workshop properly Monday. Pots are beckoning. The water is back on, and the ice bound drains back in use. I did look in a couple of times during the week but never managed to get much of a head of steam up in both senses. Christmas and Hogmany are fine, but there will be something to be said for getting back to what my parents used to call 'glorious monotony.'

The Winter Soltice

In case I don't get another chance, Here's a toast - Good health and happiness to you all!


.....and here are a few numbers:
Snow fall Saturday 5 inches (och, that's nothing compared to some I know, but nevertheless......)

Hours to dig away snow to get car out, two


Temperature today -15c


Six layers worn in workshop today


Five doves nestling in the snow (waiting for their breakfast)




378 Years since the the lunar eclipse occurred on the Northern Winter solstice.


Time I got up to watch this spectacular event, 6.00am (Brrrr)


Fourteen years since the schoolboy Oskar recorded his first Album, 'Chicken in the Winter,' so named after this scrawny bit of winter topiary.


Enough of numbers.

It has been a week of icy wonders and a lot of time has been taken up with keeping warm, shovelling, clearing and ice breaking, and I have to admit, one afternoon, sledging. Apart from the sheer breathtaking beauty of every vista, and every sun lit icicle, I love the muffled calm. I crawled out in the car to the Feral Choir's Forgotten Carol performances which took place on three hairy driving evenings. The old Winter songs and carols are researched, arranged and some composed by our director Aly Burns, who we are so lucky to have living in Dumfries and Galloway. Picture sparkling frost, the smell of mulled wine and wonderful harmonies.

But the cats are miserable - one is bored, when she does venture outside it is to rush around for 30 seconds (another number there), and fly back in again to warm up her toes, while the other has given up going outside at all.

Today the inevitable happened, no water in the workshop. The fire has been tonking out heat and the new insulation doing it's bit, but this is extreme!

And pots, well, I have actually got loads underway. More than I can handle in the run up to Christmas, so what doesn't get finished will have to be well wrapped up. The damp cupboards are full of dishes and tiles waiting to be slipped, and I have several larger pieces underway.


This is number one of a commission for a large dish, to have a spotty fish design.



I'm making another version, similar but longer. It's still resting on the curved plaster mould and I've been adding the edges today. It goes through a stage of looking like an aircraft carrier but it should come out the other side.


Cutting into the edge helps and gives it a bit of character. It will get its handles tomorrow, they are bent and firming up tonight.

I am experimenting with the same extrusion, using it to form a square 'bowl'. A 'Flappy' bowl, this one. I have six of these in the damp cupboard. If I don't get them slipped they should keep sweet until after the break, as long as they don't freeze.

It's Cold!

Did I really say that I was getting too hot in our extra insulated workshop? Well, that was before the BIG freeze and temperatures of minus 12c. It makes me wonder how cold it would have been WITHOUT it all.




This week, despite the new underfloor insulation and home made perpex double glazing, it's back to dressing up like a rotund orange Michelin man.


But what a beautiful winter scene outside. Beautiful that is as long as you don’t have to GO anywhere. Rodger and I had front row seats to hear Afrocubism at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh last week, a long anticipated treat. Edinburgh however was all but cut off and although we looked at every mode of transport possible, it was never going to happen. Boo!



Saturday's icy drive to Castle Douglas to meet friends and enjoy the opening of the McGill Duncan Galloway Exhibition was quite a mission enough. Apart from the special Dark Sky pots, I also made a few Christmas penguins for the show. It's ridiculous, but these fellows never seem to take long to find a home.



Sunday's was an even more adventurous drive, mostly in low gears on icy ungritted roads to Corsock, for the renowned ‘Corsock Christmas Craft fair’. Crawling along at almost a cyclists pace was really rather a treat. The snow covered road was overrun by red legged partridges and iridescent pheasants.

It is amazing how such a tiny place puts on such a great fair and has such a good turn out of devotees. It was rewarding to have such a good response sales wise at both events, so I’m pretty pleased especially after all the manic firings I’ve been fitting in.


Although it’s pretty off-season for us it’s always exciting to re arrange the showroom display with new work, and Allie and I set too and put up some Christmas lights and generally made it all look very festive. Not that many brave souls are coming by our way. I even got out the nativity which I made many years ago and could never bear to sell.



There are one or two Christmas orders still to post, but that's about it for current deadlines, well, lets not talk about January. That's the other side of Christmas, miles away...ha

'Dark Skies'

I finished these two pieces a while back, but I have been saving them, plus keeping the images back, because they are for Zoe's 'Galloway Dark Skies' exhibition at the McGill Duncan Gallery, opening in a couple of weeks. Zoe used the images in her invitation leaflet and I see the Dark Skies vase is even in D and G Life magazine - thank you Zoe.


I called in to pick up some invitations yesterday but the McGill Duncan Gallery is a dangerous place. It is TOO tempting, with such beautiful things that I immediately become filled with lustful 'wants'. Of course Jill says this is exactly what they are there for! Recently aquired were some Paul Young pieces which looked particularly stunning, well displayed and beautifully lit. I simply had to stroke a few birds and sheep. In total contrast a were a pair of beakers and a teapot, made by Andrew Priestman. Quiet, simple, perfect in form, weight and finish. Uncluttered, and filled with a serene presence. In other words everything my own work is not and I loved them!


This tree bark had such a beautiful natural spiral, some sort of damage like whirling railway lines, it might well feed into a yet-to-be-made table, a far off floating idea which will have to wait until after the New Year.

Right now I still have plenty of slip decorated orders to finish. I never know at what point to say, 'Too late now for Christmas', but I hate to disappoint and will no doubt end up in a total last minute panic. Think the cut of is definitely next week though.

Yesterday I ended up doing a small glaze test as the new mix, a big batch of 10,000gms looked and behaved in such an odd way I didn't have the confidence to proceed. It was a new batch of ingredients, possibly the lead bisilicate (which has doubled in price), is from an entirely different source. I have a small and invaluable test kiln, and all seems to be ok, so even though the mix is white instead of cream in colour it seems to be behaving. Phew!

Today became filled with Sunday things, such as making a Christmas cake, and a lovely cliff walk. (Actually it was a cliff hobble, I had a 'Capoeira' beginners class the day before, great fun, sort of Tai Chi meets samba, but I think I over did it)! I also spent an hour trying to get my mobile phone monthly contract changed over to Pay as you Go. Four 'advisers' and queuing systems later I actually spoke to a human being with a soul.....

But ho ho, such a warm workshop awaits me tomorrow. Rodger had been on a mission to insulate and now we have underfloor polystyrene in place, plus double glazing - perspex sheeting held in place with magnetic tape. The windows look amazing because they have never been so clean and spider free in years. Roof insulation still to come. The only thing is that I am USED to dressing like 'Michelin Man' in the winter and now I keep getting too HOT!

Boom!

A good friend from art school Stephen Jon, who has just come back from Kurdistan where he has been working on an arts project with masks and puppets, sent me this photograph. It is an improvised water trough which a herdsman had made for his cows and goats. Well spotted Stephen. of course I recognised and loved it immediately!

What has been happening in the land of Barnbarroch Pottery? I see it is three weeks since I last caught up on blogland. I've been busy, very busy, catching up and pressing on with with plenty of Christmas orders. Some have been going more successfully than others.


How easy it is to forget to vent an enclosed runner. Never done it before and I hope that I won't be so dozy again.... Disaster at bisc, and it was no small vessel! Oh the joys of pottery....

I hadn't really relished the idea of making Christmas mugs for an order, I thought that they could turn out a bit 'naff', but in the end I quite liked them! Think I might even make a few more 'reindeer on Criffel' ones.

I felt rather smug when managed to fit three of these in this kiln, (plus pots around of course), as I had been rather expecting another slanting kiln shelf escapade. The solution to long dishes and a tight kiln fit is to give them asymmetric handles it seems.



Lots of runners to wax, and I quite like them upside down. Hmmm...!



What a beautiful example of repeating patterns which repeat themselves. It's called a 'Romanesco' and when I found it in the Castle Douglas vegetable shop I just had to buy it. Way too lovely to eat though.