I made these sea fan dishes a couple of years ago, in anticipation of doing a raku firing. We never got around to that firing and I was tired of looking at them on the shelf. I had Jeff take them to a wood firing he was doing with our friend Paul. The small one on the left came out okay. Of course the underside is beautiful. The one on the right was very "dry". We re-fired it in the gas kiln last weekend and it looks much better.

I might put the small one in the next gas firing to give it a little more juice on the surface.

I have a larger one that may be a lost cause. It suffered some significant warping, which didn't surprise me. 

Here in central North Carolina we were spared any real affects from hurricane Dorian. We were thankful for some rain, we really need it. Our gardens are a little happier today. Jeff brought in this yellow watermelon the other day. The last one didn't have much flavor. This one is a little bigger and we hope a little tastier. I'll cut it open today for an afternoon snack. I'll let you know how it goes!

When it rains, it pours

When we moved to 505 E. Main we bought a used refrigerator on Craigslist. We needed something to get us by until we could afford a new one. Lowe's had a decent sale this month so we bit the bullet and bought this beauty...

It never arrived the day of the scheduled delivery. No one at Lowe's knew why it never got on the truck that morning. They would reschedule for six days later. On a good note they gave us an even better price for the inconvenience.

The new refrigerator was delivered a week ago Monday and we love it. Tuesday we woke up in the wee hours of the morning to a light flashing and a humming noise. Jeff jumped out of bed, thinking the house was on fire. It thankfully wasn't, but it was probably close. The plug on the condenser of our heat pump fried, which in turn caused, what I guess, was a power surge in the house that made our touch lamp flicker as well as burning out the power strip it was plugged into. When we called an HVAC company I was shocked that a tech arrived within an hour of the phone call. I was even more shocked when he said it was close to $3000 to repair or $8000 to replace it.
It's a 15 year old heat pump. Which is a heat pump's average life span.

UGH.

We decided to get a second opinion. The second company came out right away too. The repair estimate was about the same. The first replacement quote was for a fancy Bosch unit, super efficient, ultra-violet air cleaner, all for the fancy price of $12,000. I wanted to say, "Look around this house dude, does it look like we can afford that?"
After some discussion we settled on a Rheem unit for the low, low price of $6,100. I still wanted to throw up. The unit was installed on Thursday, just before the humidity returned.
Thank goodness for interest free payment plans.

It's already looking dirty. Maybe when I clean the stainless on the fridge I should go outside and polish this baby too.

Before the heat pump expired we had also called our electrician to assess our old well pump so that we can use the well to water the garden, instead of town water... and to install an outlet for our window AC unit in the studio. This was the smallest cha-ching of the week, and the good news is our well pump seems to work fine and hopefully we will be able to start using it soon.

If we could have foreseen the future we never would have bought a new refrigerator. I just have to have faith that everything will work out in the end. Perhaps our electric bill will be a little lighter with the new appliances.
In the mean time I have to remind myself that we are more fortunate than many others. Money can be tight but we have roof over our head, food on the table, and generally good health.

Jeff and I like to take the time each day to enjoy the beauty of nature that surrounds us. We really appreciate the land that we live on and call home.

If you look closely you will see my baby anole garden buddy. I have been watching him grow for the last couple of weeks. Yesterday I noticed he is getting a dark stripe on his back.

... and it really did rain here. The gardens are very happy.

Beautiful Light

It's times like these that I wish I had a better camera and knew more about photography.

The light this evening, as the sun was setting during a rain storm, was absolutely stunning.

My camera doesn't do it justice, but I went ahead and snapped some pics around the studio and gallery.

 The big news of the day is that Jeff cut the rest of his hair off! He had 12" lopped before the S. Korea trip, and today he went short...

If your are on FB you already know this, because it's been decided that this haircut will be the new trend. :-)
Last week I had about 6" cut off of mine... does this mean our hippy days are over?

nah... I don't think so. We still own a school bus.

please dance lightly...

We have been needing rain desperately and I think that all of us in Seagrove have been doing the rain dance.
Maybe we all danced a little too much.

Yesterday afternoon the skies opened up and it rained cats & dogs, and maybe even cows. It rained so hard that it looked like a river was running between the studio and the house. In no time at all we had a fast flowing stream running through one half of the studio! It brought with it a whole lot of silt and muck... the water that was coming in had run across the corn field next door, over our leach field and into the studio. Needless to say it didn't smell very good :-(.

Jeff ran outside with a shovel and started digging a trench along the studio and house to divert the water. I stayed inside and moved all the bags of glaze materials to drier ground.
When the rain stopped we had quite a mess in the studio and some water in our kitchen as well. The kitchen was an easy clean up... the water did not come from over the leach field so it was a matter of using the wet vac and running some fans to dry things out quickly.

The studio was another story. We had to hose down the concrete floor and suck up the mucky water. The we gave it a spray of bleach and water to disinfect it and one more wash down. We didn't get finished until around 10:00 pm.

On the bright side... it wasn't 100 degrees AND one half of the studio floor is now really clean.

This little piggy is now in the Etsy shop. I like this combo of shino with a turquoise belly. I hope he finds a new home soon.

fire and rain... or is it rain and then fire?

i will admit it... i am a crab today.  we had such torrential rain last night that we woke up to about 2" of water in our bathroom/laundry room.  jeff had to work on getting the wood kiln loaded so i stayed home to clean up the water... NOT FUN.
here are a few pics of how the loading is progressing...

shelves ground down, kiln wash applied

jeff and kurt wadding and loading pots into the salt chamber

first chamber (wood only, no salt) is loaded

there will be about 900 pots in the kiln, made by 5 potters, when all is said and done.  thankfully the rain is over and the next few days look like clear skies. (perhaps my mood will improve).