Winter Came

For the last several years, unless you were living in a cave you have been hearing the phase "winter is coming". Well here in Kansas City winter definitely showed up with a bang.

The last few days we have been hearing about the major winter storm that was coming. I was particularly concerned about the possibility because I had quite a bit of work that was in a state of limbo either waiting to be trimmed, decorated, or handled. I also had the last couple of batches of recycled clay that was almost ready to be wedged up. If the storm acted like it was supposed to then there was going to be a lot of ice on the roads when I woke up this morning and I wouldn't be able to get into the studio to take care of it. Thankfully with the aid of a couple of halogen construction lights and a fan most of the work all came to the ready stage at the same time. Wait, did I say thankfully? Yesterday was an insane hectic time trying to get everything ready to go so that on the off chance that I couldn't make it into the studio, I wouldn't end up with lots of work that was to dry to do anything to.

The first thing that I took care of was the recycle. To be honest this was still slightly to damp to wedge up but... better to wet than to stiff. It is going to sit for a month anyway so if it will firm up a bit during that time and it will be wedged again anyway.

I also got the last of the mugs trimmed and handled. I normally don't trim mugs I simply thumb them off, but these were for an order and I wanted them to be perfect. Plus they had firmed up a little to much on the base so thumbing was going to be challenging. I managed to remember to get a video of the handle pulling trick so that is up as well. I also got the last of the order mugs decorated. I think that they have some nice possibility.

Half of these have the Om sign and the other half say Namaste. I had hoped that I would be able to find a stamp for them that had a higher relief, but they honestly are rarer than I thought. I have some ideas on how to make them stand out more so it should be all good.

My greenware shelves are all full, or as full as I am willing to let them get.

If I let stuff get to far back on the lower shelves then I have trouble getting them out without them breaking, plus that is about 4 kiln loads to bisque let alone glaze so I think that I am going to be taking a bit of a throwing break until this is all cleared. I have studio chores that need to be done anyway and now is as good a time as any. I need to get a couple more plaster drying bats made, I am also going to make a couple of hump molds as well. It would be nice to be able to do some slab work.

These plates represent the last of the throwing that I am planning on. The one on the front left is a drip tray, I have a vase that needs to be fired and it has a super drippy ash glaze on it and I don't want to risk ruining any  kiln shelves. As it is I need to grind most of them during this break anyway. I am slightly concerned about the plates. This set should be fine but the first set was almost ready to pop off the bats. Once they do that they need to be trimmed but I am not going to be able to get to them right away. I spritzed them down and then covered them really well with plastic, now all I can do is cross my fingers and pray to the pottery gods that they are okay.


The storm was supposed to start last night and dump a good amount of ice on us over night. Well when I woke up this morning at 6 everything was clean and dry. I figured that the weather folks were up to their standard 40% accuracy and I figured that I was going to be able to go into the studio after all. I got the coffee started and then got Millei ready to go out. This is our normal routine and we have it down to a science. It was 6:12 when we were both dressed and I stepped outside. At that time there was a random flake of snow or two, no big deal. By the time we were halfway through our walk around the park the snow was starting to come down and at 6:30 when we started to head back every flat surface was covered with a solid blanket of snow. I figured maybe we were gonna get some snow after all. I came back inside to get some coffee, check my email, and try again to rectify the continuing drama between my bank and Etsy. I think it is finally taken care of and I am FINALLY ready for people to start buying on Etsy. That and reading all of the other potter's blogs that I follow ate up about 2 hours. At that point Millei came in to the room to ask if she could go out again. I wasn't really surprised by this, she loves the snow and truthfully I have a hard time saying no to her about going out into it again. What did surprise me was, I hadn't been paying any attention to the outside up to know, WOW... it was almost whiteout conditions. So I bundled up and grabbed her leash and my camera. We got outside to find that the snow was belly deep on her and she was having to deer hop to get through it. Not that she minded at all.

It is important to remember that this is 2 hours worth of snow that started out as bare ground. By noon it was not showing any signs of stopping so the decision was made to start shoveling out since it was only going to get deeper and possibly freeze hard. I am not sure what the exact official snowfall total is but I do know that it is high shin deep on me and still coming down. Also the city has stopped clearing roads until the sun comes back up so it looks like I am getting 2 days off in a row. So yes winter was coming, and it brought its entire extended family for a reunion, and I think that it may be looking to move in. Now if you will excuse me I have to go find a particular groundhog and make some dinner plans with him.

Who says that whining doesn't accomplish anything

Whoever said that whining doesn't accomplish anything is either a) not doing it right, or b) hasn't tried it. I say this because yesterday after my somewhat crabby blog post I found when I got to the studio that I had a good amount of energy. I have had an order for both mugs and tankard that I have been sitting on mostly because it makes more sense to sit down and do them all at once. That way I can pull the handles all at once and get that out of the way. I really dislike pulling handles, but more on that later. Anyway I managed to sit down yesterday and throw them all. That is 16 mugs with a couple of extras, and 8 tankards. I also managed to add into that 4 extra mugs that I could get creative with.

I came in this morning and got all of the handles pulled, unfortunately I had wrapped the mugs up in plastic to well in case I couldn't get to them right away and they were way to wet to get handles on. So in the meantime I decided to sit down and throw some plates. I haven't done them in a while and I actually don't have any in stock at the moment. I also wanted to try to refine the form and the process a bit. I will be honest, I don't like throwing plates. The process is fairly straight forward. You make a large flat surface, open it a little and pull up a rim. At that point you decide if you want a nearly vertical rim or if you want a flatter rim. The main reason I don't care for the whole thing is because I usually end up with a large percentage of them being seconds. They have a tendency to either warp or crack. Neither of these likes to do it before you fire them either. If they warp they are seconds or thirds depending on how bad the warp is, if they crack they really aren't good for anything other than test tiles or breaking up and using in mosaics.

The goal was 10 plates and I managed to get halfway there before my wrists decided that I was done with plates. The sixth one chose not to cooperate with the plan and ended up flopping over so it is a completely different style from the rest. Besides by that time I was almost out of studio time and I wanted to get started on the handles. I got the 4 "creative" mugs handled and then had to stop so that I could go cover the shop and re-wrapped the order mugs and tankards and the rest of the handles to within an inch of their lives. I can get to them tomorrow no problem.

I managed to get a couple of pics of the 2 days worth of work. The first is 3 of the plates, trust me the rest are under the plastic behind them, I didn't remember to get pics before I already had the plastic on them. They will stay on the bats until they come loose on their own and then I will trim them up.

These are what happens when a potter starts to feel pretentious. The curly spiral doesn't serve a purpose other than that I pulled the handles to long. The odd one out will get coils and sprigs added and then stamped before being slipped. The other 3 are going to be used to try out my very blue slip. I added nearly 10% cobalt to it.

I decided today that the new studio rule is that anytime I throw a bat pad and throw on a bat I am going to also throw 2 plates. That way I am not stuck having to throw a bunch of plates at one time. They really do kill my wrists.

I am honestly feeling a bit bi-polar about the pottery at the moment. Now I have tons of motivation and ideas rattling around in my head. I am actually considering sketching a few of them out (not something I do often) so that I can keep track of them. I have also decided that I am going to start keeping pulled handles ready in those big zipper storage bags. I will try to get a short video tomorrow of me pulling handles, I have a way to "cheat" at it so that it is less annoying.

Well that's it for now. Check back later as it feels like I might do a couple more blog posts this week.

These are not the pots you are looking for, you can go.

I have held off on writing this post for four days now. I had hoped that I would be able to show a little more pottery, however I am humbled to report that in the last week I have managed to make a grand total of 4, yes 4 pots. OK so it started out as 9 but due to a terminal case of bone-headedness on my part it is down to 4. And I suspect that I am holding on desperately to one of them so that that number doesn't go lower but that should be tossed into recycle with the rest of its kin.

Colanders based on the pancheon form with the addition of 3 feet on the bottom to help it drain and some holes punched in them. these started out as 4 but I waited too long to make the holes and one of them cracked and got a large quarter sized hole in it. The other one survived the hole making only to have some bone head who will remain nameless pic it up by the rim one handed. Bone Head!

Square baking dishes. These also started out as a family of 4 but someone forgot to cover them with plastic before he left for the night and cam in the next morning to find one of them curled up like a dead bug, the one on the right was past leather hard and I had to resort to attaching the handle using a couple of dabs of vinegar, It has since left us. The one on the far left is the one that I suspect that I should toss into recycle. It has what is possibly a crack running most of the way around the outside edge. I can't tell if it is just a line from where it was joined or if its an actual crack. Sometimes it is hard letting go even when you know that it is the right thing to do.

I think I wrote before that I had been having trouble finding the motivation to make pots. If I didn't well don't worry I am gonna fill you in, if I have then I apologize for going over it again. Anyway, I continue to have trouble finding motivation to make pots. I think that the reasons for this are many, some of them I won't go into, some of them I am not sure what they are, and some of them kinda relate to pottery( in much the same way that chickens are related to T-rexes I suspect but there you go). 

Part of it I suspect is that I have not been feeling well physically, or possibly I have not been feeling well physically because I have been a bit down, who knows. I know for at least a portion of that time I was running a fever, but I have also been fairly sore for no reason. I try to limit my exposure to the public when I am running a fever, and as my wheel is currently across town I was unable to spend any time with it. This was most likely for the best but dam inconvenient as I am supposed to be using the winter time to build up stock. 

I also suspect that the weather and its inability to make up its mind has something to do with my funk. I do know that I will feel better at least a little bit when I have the wheel and studio supplies back at the house when it warms up. I do love being able to work outside when its nice, and I am definitely more productive when it is here. However I think that this might be a symptom of a larger issue and what has most likely been causing me fits of nonproductive behavior. 

At heart I am not a city mouse. I really never have been. As I may have mentioned before, my ultimate goal is to be a rural country potter. My dream is to live in a house that I built myself, near a town(?), village(?), hamlet(?) with a population less than 150. I want to be able to walk to work in a studio, which I also built myself, near the house and make traditional country pottery in traditional ways, and eat food that I produce myself. None of these things are even close to life in the big city. Winter is the worst time for me in the city. It smells of heating oil, it is really not attractive even when it snows, and driving in the city during bad weather is enough to make me want to pull my hair out. 

Add to all of this the simple fact that sales for the past half a year have been abysmal. I suspect that it has been that way for a lot of people, but seriously I keep asking myself when I am gonna catch a break. I have moments when I so know that I can do this and to Hades with the knuckleheads that don't know quality. Then there are times when I can't for the life of me understand why any sane person would want to go buy something from one of the ___mart stores, fill in the blank with the one of your choice and I am including you in that group giant red bulls-eye store. Why would someone want something that millions of other people have, and that you are going to have to replace in no more than 18 months. I really don't understand it. Yes it is cheaper until you think about the fact that you are gonna have to replace it over and over and over again. If I had a product turnover like that I would probably change careers to septic tank cleaner or something. I know that the economy is depressed and possibly suicidal but seriously, how is shopping at soulless-mart gonna fix that for anyone other than 12 people on the board and the major shareholders overseas. 

Don't get me wrong I am not failing.. I just am not able to build up any savings at this point. All of my income becomes outgoing to cover surviving expenses. Which just pushes back the whole getting out of the city plan even more. I have hopes that it will get better once the weather warms up as I will be able to fire at a more regular rate, and I know I have at least one place that is wanting to get stuff from me. I also have a line on a couple of other venues that I am gonna try out this summer. 

I have been looking at kickstarter a decent amount lately, I haven't made a decision yet and I think that it is gonna take a good bit of thought on my part, and possibly someone to write the thing for me as I can sometimes fall short when trying to sell myself.

I also finally have an Etsy account. I don't know what I expected, I am sane enough to know that I wasn't going to sell out as soon as it was open but something would be nice. I mean really.... the best way to tell an artist or a crafts person that you like there work is to purchase it and bring it into your heart or give it to a loved one. Clicking a little button says, "I like your work just not enough to buy it" and I have enough places that you can do that I don't need another one. 

Anyway I suspect that this post could go on and on, and I suspect we will see more on it later. I will end the whine for now, sorry if you thought you were gonna see some pottery, what do you think this is a pottery blog.

Change of plans take 37

Okay so... the glaze firing that was supposed to happen 2 days ago didn't happen. The weather in true Missouri style decided to change its mind every 10 to 12 hours. It finally settled on being cold and windy neither of which are at all desirable for a glaze firing. The glaze firing went well if a little on the slow side. 13 hours to reach temp. Part of that I think was the way the kiln was packed. The kiln fires so much differently in the winter time with marginal outside temperatures that I am still getting used to it and I haven't quite figured out how to get it packed effectively yet. However I can't complain to much as everything came out fired nicely. In addition the test tiles that I had in the kiln have given me a good bit of information. I didn't expect them to fire all the way, but as they were bisque fired in the first load that fired very low I wanted to make sure that they were completely fired before putting them in a glaze firing.

Starting at the left which was 80% local clay 20% boron I decreased the amount of local clay in each sample by 10 % while I increased the boron by the same amount. 4 being the middle point at 50/50. As you can see 1 and 2 while being thoroughly bisqued did not begin to melt, 3 was just beginning to melt and 4 was more melted than not.

5, 6, and 7 were each melted, 5 was still somewhat milky which means that it wasn't quite hot enough where as 7 was completely melted but not matured. This means that if I had gotten the kiln a little hotter, or held the temp at the end of the firing longer 7 would have been completely matured. As these were in a part of the kiln that fired to cone 06 (right at 1000 degrees C) I suspect that 6 and 7 are going to fire to low for what I am wanting. Although they will give me the ability to fire a select group of pieces as once fired (glazed without being bisqued) in with a bisque load. I don't want to get into the habit of that as I don't have much experience with it and from what I understand it has a pretty steep learning curve. Likewise 1 and 2 probably won't work for what I want as they most likely will need to fire to cone 5 or possibly even 6. Although since I still don't have a reliable clear glaze for those temps again, I may be able to find a use for them. I suspect that my best chance lies with either 3, 4, or 5 with 4 having a slight lead in likelihood.

They will all be fired in the next glaze firing which will be a cone 6 load, but I will fire them in the very top of the kiln where they will only get to about cone 3. This should tell me what I need to know.

In other news I not only managed to get some recycle started, I even managed to get in today and get some of it started drying. Its only about 15 pounds worth but its a start, and with somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds still waiting every little bit helps.

And finally, I have after much thought, soul searching and mental turmoil decided to get an Etsy shop. I have resisted it for a long time. I won't go into the reasons but suffice it to say that they made sense to me at the time. However with the way that the world is going lately, more people are buying online than any other way and as much as this trend makes me cringe.... if I have any hope at all of this being the last winter I spend in KC then I need to go to where the shoppers are. So here now is the one and only time I will do this. I am posting the link to my Etsy shop. If anyone wants it in the future feel free to send me an email or say something in the comments and I will get it to you.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LaughingMoonCeramics

That's it. But it is one more thing that I have to keep up with.

Well I am going to finish getting glaze onto the incense burners now so that if the weather ever rolls back around to being nice I am ready for it. Hope everyone has a great week.

Pictures for yesterday's post

As promised here are the pics that I promised to go along with yesterday's post.

Tankards with slip on them, I did get to them in time.

Yarn bowls the second from the right has a double "J" cut.

Slipped mugs.

A candle holder with a honeycomb rim and a star cutout.

I am running some glaze tests with the local clay. I am very hopeful that I can use it to get a nice amber glaze.  These tiles are simply testing the local clay and boron frit (stable borax).

 Bisque kiln loaded

These are a couple of insulating firebricks that I made. They are unlikely to fire completely this high up in the kiln but they should fire enough so that they won't absorb water, and the sawdust that is mixed into the clay should burn out all the way. These are going to end up as part of the internal flue for the kiln.

I will post pics of the after firing and the glaze load that I am doing on Thursday sometime on Friday.

Slow week

I am going to apologize right up front for the lack of pictures in this post. My camera is sitting at the studio, and to be honest there aren't many pictures on it at the moment anyway. The general feeling of having to force myself to sit down and work has continued on into the past week. I have managed to get a couple of things done, or at least started and I will try to remember to get some pictures today when I go to finish them up. I got a bunch of new yarn bowls done up and have managed to get them to dry so far without cracking. I decided not to take the risk so these will be slip free, I am not sure what I will do with them from here, I suspect that this is a sign from the universe that I should start testing out the addition of cobalt to my normal "clear" glaze to see if I can get a blue glaze since someone asked me about that very thing. 

I also did up a handful of mugs and tankards. The mugs got finished off with some decorative additions and then slipped, and a couple of them where fluted on the wheel and then expanded, I kinda like the affect. The tankards all now have handles, I probably should have gone in yesterday to slip them but I just couldn't motivate myself to drive to the studio so I will hopefully get them slipped today. I wrapped them up pretty well in plastic so it should be okay. 

I decided that I really didn't like the way that the thrown trays were coming out so they got broken up and tossed back in to recycle. I haven't given up on the idea, I just think that it needs a little more thought and experimentation. 

Speaking of recycle, I find myself completely out of usable clay. I have pretty much decided that I am not going to buy anymore of the clay that I have been using. It really just isn't doing what I want it to and I get almost the same color and easily the same texture with the local clay that I dig so I am going to stick with that. I do however have a rather large amount of clay that needs to be recycled so I started that process this week. I try to let my scraps and rejects dry out completely before I start recycling them. It works out much better that way, when you mix them and water they tend to just melt away down to slip so you get fewer lumps. I also add a good glug or two of vinegar to the mix. This helps it to be more plastic so there is less aging time necessary, although it certainly benefits from it. I also found a partial batch of the dug clay tucked away outside. It has benefited from several freeze thaw cycles so far this winter so it should be rather pleasant to work with. At the moment it is a solid block of ice so I will have to wait for it to thaw out before I can work with it. That may take a few days. 

They are forecasting 50's all week this week so I think that I am going to attempt to get several firings done. I can definitely get a few bisque loads through the kiln and I might possibly be able to get a glaze load done as well.

Well that pretty much sums up the week, I will try to remember to get some pics today and get them up and also to be more diligent about getting them and video in the future. Off to work now, see you soon.