When there are hundreds of pots to be made for a firing in three short weeks in the middle of summer, the most natural thing to do would be to make pots AT the kiln....
Read Moresunday in the studio
They say if you don't like the weather in Vermont, wait five minutes. The day dawned with a quick ski around our snowy land (very important to exercise Lego the puppy before cooping him up in the studio for a bunch of hours!), and finished with a mud-boots-walk around bare, wet fields. By afternoon, the snow had completely disappeared from all but the northern slopes.
I mention the weather because the gorgeously sunny 55 degrees outside forced me to summon an extra bit of willpower to stay inside and work . . .one of the bitter-sweet things about clay is that it won't wait around indefinitely for you; you have to tend to it when the time is right. I had a few teapots, a couple small jars, and a board of mugs waiting for white slip and decoration. It's work that I really enjoy doing, and add to that some great NPR programming, a fantastic new Red Molly album, and a cute four-legged side kick, and it was a pretty great way to round out the weekend.
With fifty-plus-degree weather in the forecast for most of this week, we'll be shifting our focus out-of-doors to the last few weeks (??) of work on the new kiln! We're prepping for mudding/adobe/skin coat . . . call it what you will, but in any case, it'll be bye-bye brick work pretty soon. We'll keep you posted.
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after the fair
The days following our nine-day Fair are always ones of regrouping, resettling, and let's be honest- recovering! This past week we have:
- enjoyed the heavy rain that came from the sky the day we got home . . . unpacking had to wait a day! (it's so much easier to take a day off when it's raining!)
- watched the sun come out, got unpacked, and then repacked for the Farmer's Market
- picked up clay to make the dinner plates, lunch plates, and wedding bowls ordered over the summer
- photographed and posted new pottery in our shop
- celebrated a birthday and an anniversary
- paddled down a swollen river for the former of those celebrations, and shared a 2-year old frozen whoopie pie for the later!
- marveled at how Nathan managed to finish the hard brick layer on the first chamber of our kiln while the Fair was in full swing
- spent some days approaching completion of the second chamber
- enjoyed harvesting our potatoes, onions, carrots, and garlic
- weathered a dramatic thunderstorm huddled together under the kiln shed - a storm that dropped veritable ice cubes from the sky!
We hope you enjoyed this week, too!