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!

Gulgong Road Trip Pt 2

The roofs of Gulgong

Kirsten Coelho

Well time is flying by and grabbing a minute to edit has been a bit of a challenge, so here's part 2 of our road trip, a bit more of skippy since I don't have any night footage of the real things!! Man they were out there lining the roads ready to pounce, pity I didn't have any night vision goggles they would have been handy :P.

This episode features the substantial pot dance section and you can see the whole thing in high res on my youtube channel. Loads of fun and tres messy, I dont think connie's white jacket survived the oxide splashes it was covered, you can see her front row directly across from me.

There's been loads happening in the studio, the Hive works are all delivered and survived which is amazing but I did fire really slowly but it's great for all the participants to get their work in one piece.
Hopefully tomorrow i'll get all the cups and bowls glazed plus the first of the Tagines and a firing Saturday perhaps, i'll need to check my gas levels on the last firing log and get that kiln filled!

This episode features Kirstsen Coelho, Jeff Mincham, Diana Fayt and of course the pot deco crew..

Gulgong Road Trip pt1...

So here's the start of Gulgong video log, Road Trip baby they just go on and on....

anyhoo heres a few pics around this really old Goldmining town and home for a while to Henry Lawson, poet...

Skippy is any reference to kangaroo and a major part of road trip....If you have no idea what i'm talking about look up the tv show, i'm sure its playing somewhere!...'what's that skip? there's peeps stuck down a mine shaft...thanks skip, we're on it!!'

vids at the bottom of this post...

raku time...

Saturday turned out lovely, rather a chilly start but the day unfolded, the kilns were lit and what ensued was just the thing....loads of raku pots some stunning turquoise, coppers abound and loads of obvara firing.

Anna was demoing and so kindly prepped all the glazes so everyone could just dive in.
We unloaded the bisque and got glazing. I had the usual breakages and time to address the clay its always hit and miss with the large bottles but to many nice pieces cracked this time...grrr

The lunch spread was just as great as the glazes!! Sally came down from woodside, Judith the sculptor dropped in plus a few visitors and faces we hadn't seen in a while so all in great raku.. anyhoo here's the pics...

the days of Gulgong....claypush conf.pt1

the days of Gulgong....claypush conf.pt1

I absorbed so much in this room ( pic above) ..and made a large decision there too. Rather epic but quit sensible really. I've slowly been processing images the last fortnight as I've had a good amount of work to do which took me down south last friday working with Connie down at Colonades, it's a community project and we were drawing up the women's river on an existing wall. It was a great day working collaboratively and chatting to heaps of peeps that were interested in the project.

The day was long and a drive down south is quite an epic journey I think I made it home by 7pm and traffic was a nightmare....must try to avoid that in future but all in a super day drawing and considering what this means to the locals, council and the indigenous people most importantly. To have a visual statement of their land and their meeting place in a major public space.

Anyhoo raku today I just got in and will process the images into something interesting after I wash the smokiness away. Anna demonstrated her very successful Obvara technique and luckily I got to have a play...we also got out some horsehair that did stick to the pots when we shielded them from the breeze!

Right more on Gulgong and raku very soon...