got a minute up my sleeve...

So with an easy day ahead of me and the cleaning is done a lil photoshoot is called for...
This last kiln load was an entire toss up, I could have been totally pedantic and made a third batch of shino glaze but as I was feeling lucky....I glazed everything half and half of both buckets of shino....so here's what happened. I'm at the club as usual on a tuesday night and mixing up glazes all six buckets were low... I'm meticulously marking off weighing out all the glaze ingredients and Kevin comes over to chat about something then I notice the 500g weight on the end of the scale....oh crup!!
now did I finish putting in the 500's or did I just add it to the remaining amount....dang....So insteps Matt and his brilliant brain we work out that its 22% so go through all the other ingredients and add 22% of them and hope thats all I did wrong....So to be on the safe side I mixed up another batch of shino at home and of course I'm out of soda ash....now I could waste 1+1/2hrs driving across town to the 'slug mill' or I could wrack my brain for a substitute... now I have done enough glaze classes to know there are substitutes or equivalents to be found in the supermarket or the hardware store.. So off to the hardware store I know where the pool stuff is....and there tis on the shelf Soda Ash...brilliant
So I get home and $10 later I have 2kg of what I need, I crack open the bag and of course its a different grade, quite coarse so then I think I can take a punt...Ive bought it now!
So that's what I decided bung her in and get on with glazing..

The tall mugs were glazed with the 22% batch and all the tagines too..
The small bowls were all with the pool soda ash..
So how cool to crack the kiln on sunday and both glazes are great! the pool soda ash batch is very smooth even the glaze in the bucket is really soft to the touch, so whatever difference it makes I like it!

These are tenmoku with Michael coffee's white over them and they look a bit thin to me so i over glazed with B7... nice! 

 All the cups and mugs are off to Milan Rouge contemporary craft & design for Mug day 30th June, Oak Plaza Stirling

and some fat blue chun dipped several times..over a couple of days

This plate had been in the cupboard for about 6months..

As for the tagines I have 6 bisqued and 3 fired and lost one already to minor cracking, hope the rest of the firings have a better success rate..

More batts are on there way so I can get production up and running...only 17 to go :P

and some lovely straight up mugs with strap pulled handles...so nice, might have to keep one of these too. So now for the separation anxiety wanting to keep more than I should and needing to sell the lots really.. Anyhoo I'm back at it after a nasty bout of the flu, not a great start to the season but hope I'm done for a while that one was painful with bad back pain and really painful joints, I spent a whole week on the couch and watch way too many movies.... saw some good ones though, really liked Identity Thief with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, Guilt Trip with Seth Rogan and Barbra Streisand - she really should make more comedies and Arni in The last Stand, messy but great!