that's a wrap...

Despite a chilly and damp start yesterday turned out to be a lovely one at Stirling Market, so no bubblewrap outfits this time.

The market now has a website too woohoo, there were so many folks out yesterday and being Anzac Day a lot prob came from town up the freeway.. The morning was abuzz which was great to see, the shino got lots of interest i sold my 1st lidded piece and lots of interest in the teapots and cups and mugs this month. So yey hopefully it follows on into next month. We had the wooden flute players and dancers wandering around too...i think rose will have lots of pics for her post.

So on my way home i went to Campbelltown to pick up my work and the big piece had sold so yey but i was looking forward to bringing it home there had been lots of interest in him and i won a merit award for throwing so an extra bonus.. Well you know what that means back into making some more clay mix for the next one... I have enough glaze left for one more pot, it was all brushed on and i was so happy with the surface that i'll have to repeat it...anyhoo that's about it, happy week all..

shivorites...

i couldn't resist today having another look at the last kiln load and finding some shino favourites....please indulge me..

the 2 ash test that i like the best are phils standard "the whiter one" and finnegan's runny ash, both of them are over my standard white glaze..

and thank you all who responded to the 'splish splash' white over shino, I appreciate your comments :)

april firing...

so here we have it the analytical look at this weeks pots and more things to test really..I wanted to firstly speed up my firing and that was accomplished. I put the pilots on a quarter flow and left the firing for 3 hours to really warm up the kiln and the rest is pretty quick for me.. I would say that it is this part that was crucial in getting to temp with good timing i pushed the dampers in an inch about 3.30pm and cone 6 was down about 5pm at which point i started to add the redgum chips a couple every half hour to see if upping the fuel would assist the firing, at 7.30 i put in the last pine chips and then opened up the dampers for 1 hour to oxidize the kiln..

From making these changes the firing was faster and only the rear half of the kiln had the stunning red colour.. So i think next firing i'll follow the same grid and open up the dampers for 15min on each hour and see if i can bring back some colour to the front of the kiln.. If you have any tips please comment as all this is still testing to get the best out of my kiln..

Enjoy the vid and chat soon...cheers all, happy week with your hands in clay..

cone 9 is tipping...

Just a few moments towards the end of todays firing...The whole timeline of my kiln firing really needed to be changed as staying up til 2 just doesn't suit me anymore.

So this one not intentionally has sped up quite well.. I had it warming up for 3 hours then cranked the pilots to half way and brought in the big burners at lunchtime.. Deciding not to push the dampers in so far has proved a good choice at this point only the unloading will tell if the glazes have had enough reduction.. Nearly done cone 9 is tipping should be done by 8 tonight..yey i need some sleep....

a lil bit of shino...

I was trying to figure out how to spend my afternoon today since i visited the club this morning and my saturd'y buddies were elsewhere....and suddenly i got inspired to glaze...weird perhaps but that's what i did..

There's quite a bit of shino, some celedon and shino combo's I will be very careful with the brushing this time, who was it who said shino doesn't like underpants?? any way haven't forgotten and it's separation anxiety from now on for my shinos!!

As you can see my glaze trolley is out, I love wheels! and glazing on every table top. I'm not sure when the firing will happen but i hope this week some time and a few lovely ash glaze tests from Hollis, thanks and i'll post the results... well happy wkd all, chat soon.

it's all in the details...

and here she is kiln number 2 emptied today and some successes with the kiln packing and some not so pleasing bits about ash firing... the extra layer of fibre worked a treat and the pot didn't stick to the lid but it did stick to the base! grrr... so after a bit of grinding back the base today it's all smooth again..




a few inserts pics of my favourite parts, some lovely iron coming out of the body and the ash.. the porcelain slip fired up lovely on the bare clay and some parts that the ash was quite thin are my favs..





and the pair together, the final size shrunk back to about 45cm tall...

back to wheel then..I'm inspired...

tidy...

I do love a good tidy up...
After a massive tidy up of the garden and clean out of my studio last weekend all my glaze ingredients needed to get back on the shelves, so I took the opportunity to sort out duplicates and put up some more shelves... doesn't it look purdy??
And new / old storage shelves in the other corner of the studio for bisque wares. I do have more plans for a ware board rack too but who knows when that will happen as I'm not a fan of the circular saw so will need to wait for some help on that one.. more to do yet but it's getting way more organised in there..

and a sneak peek into kiln 1 today from wednesday's firing a couple of lids for the composite piece fell over but they're not stuck to anything.. I can't wait to unload and get a decent look at the composite piece..I was very aware of not getting any glaze runs in this kiln so the base has disposable glaze catchers a lots of grog to protect the kiln base..

Kiln 2 has the large coil and throw piece which I fired today with some creative roof raising as the piece was very close to the fibre lid.. I used a single thickness of fibre all round and raised the roof just enough to clear the pot. thanks to Jill for this tip.. Will find out soon how it all went and deliver the works to Campbelltown show this weekend.

yey for demos...

And thanks to ron for his demo on lidded forms, I though I'd give those a try this afternoon and being a similar thrown form to my bottles they weren't too hard to get the hang of...after checking the second video on rons you tube page I dashed back up to the studio to place a lil hole in each lid to stop them raising up off the bats...ta mucho mr P..

Along with some trimming from yesterday I'm trying an oval shape lid to fit a barrel that i fired without it's lid last year that warped and a three pointed bowl just for fun..

I also tested some software this week recording a segment of the Pre Conference with Christy Assaud, Andy Brayman, Ron Meyers, and Ellen Shankin as they demo at the NCECA Making Through Living—Living Through Making: Studio Pottery in 2010 at the Montgomery County Community College.

The pre conference ran overnight here. The software is called Snapz Pro X and has a demo version for 15 days. It basically records what you can see and hear on your computer screen. The result is really good not cinema quality but great for this type of online event. So a big thankyou to all who promo-ed this event and yey for demo software that I got to see some of it..