Minnie Mouse says...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Snowtober in NH

this is what we woke up to TODAY...

Arianna peeking out at the snow this morning...

deck furniture, Jeff and my sister were out there grilling while it snowed last night...

today Jeff is teaching a raku workshop here in Wolfeboro... i think we should call it snoku.

yikes...

this is what we drove in last night...

and this is what we woke up to this morning...

it's pretty but i think it is time to head back to North Carolina!

another milestone...

i hate to admit it but...
starting today i am no longer in my "late forties"... yep, that's right. the big 50.
i am really okay with it and happy to be in NH this week to celebrate with my family. the cool thing is it is also my sister's birthday today and no we aren't twins. she is four years older than me... so a BIG happy birthday to my sister Anita!


the best part of the week was spending time with Danielle. she is entering a really exciting time in her life. she is moving from NH to Connecticut for a new job. she is going to work for Pfizer Animal Health, selling veterinary pharmaceuticals. she has dedicated many years to working for the Animal Rescue League of NH and she felt it was time to move on from the non-profit world. she worked so hard to get this position and i am VERY proud of her. 


here we are at Acadia National Park in Maine... early 1980's. 

seems like just yesterday she was my little girl!

the gypsy potters are in the '603

we are off to a great start with our visit to NH. the raku workshop at Hillsboro-Deering High School was a huge success...

the students had some really nice finished pieces...

we had a big family gathering at my brother's house on Saturday and we stayed with my sister's family in  Wolfeboro, NH this weekend. Jeff taught another raku workshop on Sunday while i spent the day with my sister and her adorable granddaughter Arianna...

today we head to Bow Lake to stay with our friend Roni. we will have a few days to relax before the next round of workshops next weekend. tonight we will head to nearby Portsmouth, NH so Jeff can play music with his old friends at the Dolphin Striker... looking forward to a good cosmopolitan :-).

the gypsy potters hit the road

i haven't had much time for blogging. we had a crazy week getting ready to travel to NH. i am writing this quick post in a hotel in PA while i wait for Jeff to get out of the shower! we will arrive in NH this evening and will stay with by brother Paul and his girlfriend Harris at their home in New Ipswich. tomorrow we will be teaching a raku workshop to high school students in Hillsboro, NH.

we fired the gas kiln twice in the last week. we had a re-fire explosion in the first firing that took out too many good pots, at least our collaborative piece for the Celebration gala night auction survived...

we unloaded a portion of the 2nd kiln firing yesterday before we hit the road,  everything looked good. as we were driving last night we remembered that last year at this time we went to NH and our kiln back in Seagrove wasn't quite finished yet. the day after we got back home the gas company came and delivered our tank and connected the gas... we will be so much more ready for the Celebration of Seagrove Potters this year!

below is an example of one of the kiln explosion victims...

Jeff's covered jar with ash glaze survived unscathed!

that's all for now, time to hit the road again!

the week in review...

in between getting the ground hog kiln fired and then unloaded we were shopping for  this:

we decided this summer that we really needed a trailer to do shows and workshops... the school bus isn't practical for long distance travel and you have to make sure there is adequate parking everywhere you go. next week we will load the new trailer up and head to NH where Jeff will teach 3 raku workshops and one throwing workshop. the bus is going up for sale very soon... so if you know anyone looking for a really cool school bus, send them my way!

after the trailer purchase was complete we loaded the gas kiln and fired it yesterday...

while the kiln fired we worked on our canvasses for the Potters Palette fundraiser for the NC Pottery Center...

if i had started painting when i picked up my canvas, i would have done a mermaid... since i got a late start i decided to do the fairy portrait.

Jeff's canvas is an abstract of pots and the ground hog kiln.

Jeff is teaching a workshop today and i have mugs out in the studio that are needing some handles... guess i had better get back to work.

and the results are in...

i finally had the opportunity to take some quick pictures of pots from the ground hog kiln...

i had quite a few spoons in this firing 

Jeff's goblets fired beautifully

if you look closely these pigs are branded with the word "bacon" on the sides... they really should say "salt pork"!

slip trailed bowls

see that blob on the left side? baby sh&t looking drips from the kiln ceiling... unfortunately we had a quite a few pots with those ugly blobs. some we will live with, others will go to the shard pile.

take a peek...

Jeff took these pictures through the salt ports of the kiln, last night. This morning the temperature was at 178 degrees. I opened up the primary air in the front and took a couple of bricks out of the door. It should be cool enough to unload later today and hopefully the rain will let up. More pics to come!

all fired up...

yesterday we fired the ground hog kiln, at the NC Pottery Center, for the second time. we felt we would get better results firing longer and slower than the last time and jeff had quite a few raw pots in there. we preheated overnight and finished at about 2:00 a.m. this morning...

loading this kiln is the most painful thing. you have to crawl in on your belly to load. thank you jeff for loading the really claustrophobic, back of the kiln!

these are the pots right in front of the firebox... they should be nice and toasty.

Jeff Brown, Rob Buller, and Levi Mahan, stoking the kiln

roaring flames coming out of the chimney... that's the fun part!

ready to add salt... we pour the salt on flat boards that we then use to stoke in the front firebox. we also poured salt through the peeps on the top of the kiln. we used 30 pounds of salt.

we also did some side stoking during this firing, which we didn't do the last time. this was in hopes of getting a higher temperature in the back of the kiln. it was colder than the front last time. it took some time, but we did end up with ^11 down in both the front and the back.

tuesday is unloading day.

dirty laundry...

there is no way around it. when you are a potter, everything gets covered in clay, including your clothes. we all know that clay in your plumbing is not a good thing. this is one thing i do to prevent that...

this is my pre-wash station behind the studio! i spray the clay off with the hose, let them almost drip dry, then throw the clothes in the washer. i do this with our aprons and shop towels as well. i used to soak towels etc. in a large bucket of water and ring them out, prior to washing. i found that the wringing out and handling the heavy wet stuff was hard on my shoulder, so some time ago i decided on this method.
if our clothes aren't too clay encrusted i will just scrape off any globs before washing and skip this rinsing off step. my washer also has an extra rinse cycle that really helps.
i am curious to hear what other methods readers use to keep their washing machines and plumbing clay free.
illness update: still coughing and blowing my nose, but feeling and sleeping much better... thank you for all your get well soon wishes... despite being under the weather, all my pots are glazed and we are ready to load the ground hog kiln tomorrow. i think the sunshine helped my recovery. i did a lot of the glazing outside and absorbed some good vitamin C & D via the sunshine!

plodding along...

...as i was walking back to the studio from the mailbox this morning, i noticed that jeff found a new spot to dry some clay in the recycling process... on the bench amidst our "garden pots".

we are getting ready for a salt firing in the ground hog kiln at the NC Potter Center this weekend and aside from losing our  kitty, IV, i have been sick with a cold that has knocked me on my ass. jeff has been working until the wee hours of the morning getting pots and orders finished and i have been limping along. thankfully there isn't much glazing involved in a salt firing and i did get a lot done today.

i am experimenting with some Albany slip on these bottle forms. the interiors are temnoku. 

our friend Rob, who teaches ceramics and critical thinking at Chowan University here in NC, is coming for the weekend. he is bringing pots and helping us with the firing. we always have fun when Rob is in town and we are looking forward to seeing him!

IV's story

IV passed away early this morning. She was 19 years old and the last of Jeff's cats that moved with us from NH to NC. She was a real character. She didn't like people and spent most of her time hiding under furniture. If you surprised her she would hiss and run away. When she went to the vet before the big move, they had to wrap her in a towel to give her her vaccines. Forget about an exam, there was no way she was going to let anyone look closely at her!

During the past year her two siblings died. After we lost Frannie in March, IV slowly became friendly. She didn't hide as much, stopped hissing at us, and eventually we could pick her up! We decided that for 19 years she wished she had been an only cat! She even didn't seem to mind my cat Sophie, although Sophie still wanted nothing to do with her. Unfortunately we noticed this summer that IV was getting thin. We switched her to canned food and her appetite picked up... but she was definitely slowing down.

Since last week she wanted to sit with us a lot... and we indulged her.

We will miss you IV... and we were glad you got to be the "only" cat for a few months.